New rule targets air pollution at Southern California rail yards

This story was published in the Daily Breeze on August 9, 2024. Below is a summary of the article — click here for the full story at the Daily Breeze.  If you get restricted by a paywall, a copy of the full story is included here as a PDF.

Freight rail yards in Southern California will have to add clean-air technology under a new rule from a pollution-fighting agency.  The South Coast Air Quality Management District board has approved the Freight Rail Yards Indirect Source Rule, which is expected to remove 10 1/2 tons a day of toxic nitrogen oxide emissions from the air between 2027 and 2050.

“While there is no single rule or regulation that can achieve federal air quality standards on its own, today’s adoption is a big step in the right direction,” board chairperson and former state Sen. Vanessa Delgado said in a news release of the Friday, Aug. 2, 2024 vote.

A railroad industry trade group opposes the rule, saying it’s superseded by federal law and will interfere with rail operations.  The rule will take effect if and when the federal Environmental Protection Agency approves it, along with a California Air Resources Board rule applying to locomotives and drayage truck fleets.

In a Tuesday, July 30, 2024 letter to the air district, the Association of American Railroads wrote that, while the trade group shares the district’s goal of slashing air pollution, the rail yards rule is flawed and “unfeasible and unworkable.”  Freight trains are more fuel efficient and emit less pollution than trucks, and while rail yards are already using zero-emission equipment, zero-emission locomotives are not yet commercially viable.  The federal government, not the states, oversees the railroad industry, and allowing the new rule to take effect would create a burdensome, state-by-state patchwork of regulations, the association said.