Travis County Commissioners Court
July 19, 2005
Item 22
Number 22 is to consider and take appropriate action on the implementation plan for the Texas heavy-duty equipment i'ding rule, a component of the early action compact.
>> good afternoon, joe lean walker, Travis County air project manager. I have distributed backup which I hope you all did get. There were some questions about it, but I think everybody did receive that last week. And basically I知 here to report that this is a measure that the county has already agreed to implement, and in order to implement a heavy-duty idling restriction, the state requires that we sign a memorandum of agreement with them that we will enforce this state rule. It will be a state rule, but we will be signing agreement that we will enforce it locally. And all 12 local jurisdictions that are part of the early action compact agreed to implement and enforce this rule. And as of today, basically 10 of those 12 jurisdictions have adopted this m.o.a. Williamson county, I just got word, adopted it this morning. That leaves us and hays county and san marcos. San marcos will adopt it tonight. It's on their consent calendar tonight, and hays county is scheduled to consider it next week. The backup materials outlined a lot of information about the implementation plan for this rule. That's another document that we are required by tceq to put together. And just real quickly, basically what the 12 local jurisdictions are proposing is that we would start implementing this rule 30 days after the m.o.a. Is signed by all 12 local injure additions and tceq. But because the state rule only requires the no idling restriction to be effective during ozone season, which is April 1st through October 31st, it seemed odd to implement a rule and then by this point it wouldn't be implemented until September and have it be only effective about a month or so before it would not be real anyplace anymore. In our implementation plan we spelled out an education and outreach effort that would start immediately when the rule became effective and that we would not actually enforce the rule civilly had in our case probably initially until April 1st, 2006. And that's simply because it just didn't make sense to try to start letting people know there's a new rule and enforcing it and then it would all go away on October 31st and we would start up in again in April. If that makes sense, that's the proposal and tceq understands than a they are fine with that.
>> on the enforcement end of this, can you tell me who would have the authority to enforce non-compliance of those type of idling emission violations? Who would be responsible for that enforcement.
>> right. T.n.r. Is proposing we enforce this program just as we do other srerpbal regulations we have, an enforcement policy the court adopted in 2001, which is largely a complaint-based policy. We would take the calls. We have an environmental hotline right now over at t.n.r. We would set it up to where those calls could be taken there and information would be on that line to tell people exactly what kind of information to leave. Then we would go out and she can them or most likely for the first six months until April 1st, 2006, we would sends a letter saying somebody complained about idling, did you know there's a new state rule, you're not supposed to, these are the exceptions, here's why we're doing this, and it really is an education and outreach effort until 2006. We have environmental staff in our subdivision process right now, we also have county attorneys. We are proposing that we enforce this civilly. We don't think it will ever get to that, but if it does, that's where t.n.r. Would make the case, we would document the case and then we would turn it over to the county attorney's office if that became necessary. And again, this is all civil. The county attorney could choose to enforce criminally if they want to. My understanding, and tom can tell you more about this, that the county Commissioners can't tell the county attorney how to enforce. Basically.
>> okay.
>> well, it's simply the issue of the county attorney for misdemeanors and the district for felonies is an independent elected official and the statutes charge them with prosecuting crimes. So that decision is theirs.
>> and that's why we needed a state rule to begin with is because the county Commissioners court does not have the authority to enforce these kind of rules. But that is going to be in negotiation between us and the county attorney's office. The -- as a county, though, one decision you do need to make while you are adopting this is on page 3 of the member ran of agreement there is a section that one of our other jurisdictions asked be put into this m.o.a., which is on page 3, obligations of the parties, section a-1-b, the following local governments do not adopt the rules for criminal enforcement purposes under the section. A couple of the counties were nervous that -- they didn't want to leave the door open to criminal prosecutions at all due to some of the penalties under the current statutes, that they were worried might actually get used for this measure, which has to do with a minimum of a $1,000 fine, 180 days in jail. They thought that was too sear, which we agree. We're recommending you not enforce criminally at this time, but that said, we don't think that you can make that decision. That's the county attorney's decision. But other jurisdictions, Williamson county in particular, wanted to put in there that they were not going to ever enforce this criminally ever. That is a section that if you want to put your jurisdiction in there, we're not recommending that you do; in fact, we're recommending that you not include the county in that section.
>> so in exceptions, in other words, in traffic-type situations where you are maybe idling --
>> that's one of the exceptions.
>> that's one of the exceptions.
>> if you are stuck in traffic, you will be idling, yes.
>> let me ask this also. Was something brought up this morning in this communication and it was talking about off-street vehicles and stuff like that. What about that?
>> you mean --
>> be idling, construction equipment.
>> non-road equipment. Right. Yes. Basically this defines motor vehicle as anything greater than 14,000 pounds of gross vehicular weight. It's defined as anything that txdot has licensed as going on the road, which is a lot of our non-road equipment, anything that can drive on a road. That does not include locomotives, airplanes, that kind of thing. Construction equipment it does.
>> can I ask a question, Commissioner, if you don't mind in a slightly different way. Have we priced our bond election assuming these no-idling rules for off-road stuff? And what is that amount? Because it's like, hello, if we're already undersizing our bond election, we need to know what that is right now. I don't want to pass a rule and then all of a sudden we go, oh, darn, we never recalculated that and then we have issues. So can somebody address that or can it be addressed?
>> [inaudible].
>> if you have to tell a company you have to shut it down, are they going to say that's going to cost them more?
>> it should save them in fuel costs actually. I don't know why it would increase the cost of a project.
>> are you sure?
>> I don't know. I知 not sure why it would increase the cost of a project. If they are using a machine for any kind of equipment operations, they are exempt from the idling --
>> I never cease to be amazed you think it's going to be saving money, that's one more regulation, you might shut me down because I didn't do it and it's like -- I知 just asking a question. But if that's going to have some kind of a regulatory cost which is contrary to what you think it's going to be, we need to know about that. Because we've got a huge bond election coming up related to off-road stuff and heavy equipment. I think it's a question we need to ask ourselves as opposed to being surprised because somebody says regulatory excess is going to cause them more money.
>> I agree it's been no. In jurisdictions with a reputation of penny pinching greater than me.
>> I知 fine with that, judge. I知 just asking the question.
>> we count on the committee to do this also for long time.
>> it was included in the clean air action plan which all 12 jurisdictions --
>> the public awareness, public education effort will be such that voluntary compliance will be at a high level and we will achieve the air quality benefits. But we did not -- we thought the only fiscal impact would be positive and that we would save, especially with the high cost of fuel these days. We ought to monitor it. I知 assuming that if it does end up costing our citizens, somebody will complain and say no. Or if we find out on our own without a complaint, can we respond accordingly.
>> any jurisdiction can drop out of the m.o.a. At any time. As part of the regulations, that does not render it null if somebody wanted to drop out or if somebody didn't adopt. Also there is a termination date in the m.o.a. It terminates in January of 2008. It can be extended if the parties agree to an extension, but it does sunset.
>> there can always be unforeseen consequences and we ought to keep our finger on it and make sure we know what in fact is happening. Anything else? Vote approval.
>> second.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you all very much.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, July 20, 2005 3:01 PM