Comment Log Display

Dear Dr. Sawyer and ARB Board,

Thank you for your recent efforts and considerations in the
emergency measures being taken in the PERP program. In conjunction
with the Staff, your openness to cooperation with those who wish to
comply but missed the call to register is welcomed and applauded by
Putzmeister and its customers.

Unfortunately, I do not feel the spirit and intent of your
directive has been completely embraced by the proposal that the
Staff has presented for your consideration on December 7th. I am
unable to attend the ARB meeting due to a previously-scheduled
Canadian government regulatory meeting, so I am writing to you
today as a communication of where we feel the proposal continues
to fall short of what is needed.

1)	In the first point of the new “Draft Concepts”, there continues
to be no provision for the sale and registration of any new Tier II
equipment into California between October 1, 2006 and the time that
these proposals are approved and become effective.  This equipment
is considered appropriate from an emissions standpoint, so why
would it not be permitted from a registration standpoint? I
understand the Staff’s intent of limiting the registration to
“resident” machines to stop a flood of non-CA equipment, but this
totally cuts off new equipment simply because it does not have a
California history. This was brought up at the November 20th
meeting, but apparently was not considered important or was
ignored.

2)	In the fees schedule, it is still unclear where the Staff is
getting their numbers from. Unless I am mistaken, up until
relatively recent times, the registration was $30 and the
inspections were $75. Even if Staff believes the registrants
should pay for an inspection that never occurred, I do not see how
they are justifying a increase from year-over-year as proposed. In
the meeting, can we please get this breakdown from Staff so we can
finally understand the rational? The fees continue to seem
outrageously high.

3)	We do not understand why the fifth point exists. Why does Staff
not allow Tier 1 engine owners show proof of purchase date? By
separating Tier 1 and Tier 2 (point #6), you set up a situation
like the following: resident buys a 1998 Tier 1 unit second hand
in 2005. By Staff’s proposal, they do not pay fees for 2005 but
must go al the way back to 1998. It is recommended that point 5 be
eliminated and point 6 includes both Tier 1 and Tier 2.

4)	In point #7, Staff is phasing out all Tier 1 and Tier 2 engines
from PERP. Why? They are still usable machines and the owner should
still be able to use them in their fleet averaging. By emission
regulation, only non-tiered machines (Tier 0) are mandated to be
eliminated for emission reasons by the EPA. Even those who have
faithfully registered their Tier 1 engines over the last 8 -10
years should disagree with this change. The simple solution to
this would be to remove the word “current” from the Staff’s
proposal.

5)	We continue to feel the exclusion of the non-tiered machines
into PERP is a mistake and seems to be considered a non-negotiable
absolute by Staff. They continue to believe that these machines
should be forced to register with every district that they operate
in. This is obviously not in-line with the original intent of
creating a statewide program to simplify registrations and assumes
that the districts will allow a Tier 0 into their program. This is
a very sizable population of machines that Staff is forcing into
California oblivion three years before the US EPA mandates their
extinction.

Putzmeister does not see how this latest proposal by Staff, though
well-intentioned as it may be, resolves the issues discussed in the
November 20th meeting and actually adds in a couple of additional
controversial issues. We do not intend to further delay the
opening up of the registration program to those who sincerely want
to join, but it would be very helpful if these issues were
corrected and integrated as requested by the large number of
attendees on November 20th. Please consider looking into this at
the December 7th meeting.

Sincerely

James Bury
Engineering Manager
Putzmeister America