WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) today announced a settlement with Harley-Davidson, Inc., Harley-Davidson Motor Company Group, LLC, Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Company, Inc., and Harley-Davidson Motor Company Operations, Inc. (collectively Harley-Davidson), that requires the companies to stop selling and to buy back and destroy illegal devices that increase air pollution from their motorcycles, and to sell only models of these devices that are certified to meet Clean Air Act emissions standards. Harley-Davidson will also pay a $12 million civil penalty and spend $3 million to mitigate air pollution through a project to replace conventional woodstoves with cleaner-burning stoves in local communities.
The government’s complaint, filed today along with the settlement, alleges that Harley-Davidson manufactured and sold approximately 340,000 illegal devices, known as “super tuners,†that, once installed, caused motorcycles to emit higher amounts of certain air pollutants than what the company certified to EPA. Aftermarket defeat devices like these super tuners alter a motor vehicle’s emissions controls and are prohibited under the Clean Air Act for use on vehicles that have been certified to meet EPA emissions standards. Harley-Davidson also made and sold more than 12,000 motorcycles that were not covered by an EPA certification that ensures a vehicle meets federal clean air standards.
“This settlement immediately stops the sale of illegal aftermarket defeat devices used on public roads that threaten the air we breathe,†said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “Harley-Davidson is taking important steps to buy back the ‘super tuners’ from their dealers and destroy them, while funding projects to mitigate the pollution they caused.â€
“Given Harley-Davidson’s prominence in the industry, this is a very significant step toward our goal of stopping the sale of illegal aftermarket defeat devices that cause harmful pollution on our roads and in our communities,†said Assistant Attorney General John C. Cruden, head of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “Anyone else who manufactures, sells, or installs these types of illegal products should take heed of Harley-Davidson’s corrective actions and immediately stop violating the law.â€
Since January 2008, Harley-Davidson has manufactured and sold two types of tuners, which when hooked up to Harley-Davidson motorcycles, allow users to modify certain aspects of a motorcycle’s emissions control system. These modified settings increase power and performance, but also increase the motorcycles’ emissions of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides (NOx). These tuners have been sold at Harley-Davidson dealerships across the country.
The Clean Air Act requires motor vehicle manufacturers to certify to EPA that their vehicles will meet applicable federal emissions standards to control air pollution, and every motor vehicle sold in the U.S. must be covered by an EPA-issued certificate of conformity. The Clean Air Act prohibits manufacturers from making and selling devices that bypass, defeat, or render inoperative a motor vehicle’s EPA-certified emissions control system. The Act also prohibits any person from removing or rendering inoperative a motor vehicle’s certified emissions control system and from causing such tampering. The complaint alleges violations of both these provisions.
Under the settlement, Harley-Davidson will stop selling the illegal aftermarket defeat devices in the United States by August 23, 2016. Harley-Davidson will also offer to buy back all such tuners in stock at Harley-Davidson dealerships across the country and destroy them. The settlement requires the company to obtain a certification from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for any tuners it sells in the United States in the future. The CARB certification will demonstrate that the CARB-certified tuners do not cause Harley-Davidson’s motorcycles to exceed the EPA-certified emissions limits. Harley-Davidson will also conduct tests on motorcycles that have been tuned with the CARB-certified tuners and provide the results to EPA to ensure that its motorcycles remain in compliance with EPA emissions requirements. In addition, for any super tuners that Harley-Davidson sells outside the United States in the future, it must label them as not for use in the United States.
The complaint also alleges that Harley-Davidson made and sold more than 12,000 motorcycles from model years 2006, 2007 and 2008 that were not covered by an EPA certificate of conformity. A certificate of conformity covers only the motorcycle models that were included in the certification application and that are listed on the certificate. These 12,000 motorcycles were models that were not included in Harley-Davidson’s applications and that were not listed as covered by the relevant certificate. Under the consent decree, Harley-Davidson will ensure that all of its future motorcycle models intended for sale in the United States are fully certified by EPA.
Hydrocarbon and NOx emissions contribute to harmful ground-level ozone, and NOx also contributes to fine particulate matter pollution. Exposure to these pollutants has been linked with a range of serious health effects, including increased asthma attacks and other respiratory illnesses. Exposure to ozone and particulate matter has also been associated with premature death due to respiratory-related or cardiovascular-related effects. Children, the elderly, and people with pre-existing respiratory disease are particularly at risk of health effects from exposure to these pollutants. The woodstove project, which Harley-Davidson will undertake in conjunction with an independent third party, will eliminate excess air pollution caused by using the illegal tuners by providing cleaner-burning stoves to designated local communities, thereby assuring better air quality in the future.
EPA discovered the violations through a routine inspection and information Harley-Davidson submitted after subsequent agency information requests.
Emission offset program is working! Good for USEPA. This action today will help clean the air we all have to breath to stay alive. Excessive emissions from all pollution sources add up in the atmosphere and do great damage to life. We have way too many people and way to many vehicles emitting NOX and CO and hydrocarbons in limited areas these days. The only way we can continue to have clean air with all these vehicles and people it to control each vehicle and limit it’s emissions. Remember there are Millions of these vehicles emitting noxious emissions every minute of the day and the air resources (outside ambient air) and they can’t be diluted to lower levels when the air gets stagnant (worst case). These noxious and poisonous chemicals create a stew of dangerous compounds that when breathed into the lungs can do great damage over time.
When you get older the air sacs in your lungs get more clogged up and have less surface area in which to exchange Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide in and out of the body. People with asthma feel as if they can’t get enough air into their lungs. Remember what it’s like to be underwater and in need of air? That is the feeling these people get when they have an asthma attack. Their airways swell due to exposure to these toxic air chemicals and then they close down making it harder to breath. ABC is what is taught to us all as kids. But to a Paramedic ABC means Airway, Breath and Circulation in that exact order. Notice that Airway is first and foremost in ABC. That’s because you will die fast if you can’t keep your airway open in order to breath. So breathing in the emergency medical response field is a priority. This is why clean air is very import to have and it’s not something to mess with.
Motorcycles go plenty fast enough these days even when they are certified by USEPA to meet the clear air act emission standards setup by USEPA to protect our air Resources. Now I know that bikers and enthusiast will react with distain to these decision and the enforcement actions of USEPA to make us all comply with the Clean Air Act and it’s amendments but that’s the law and we have to obey the laws. IE Clean air and silence and quiet Trumps loud motorcycles and dirty tail pipes.
PS: I wish that congress would require USEPA and State Police Departments to enforce Noise limits on motor vehicles of all kinds as well as other types of noise emissions. Hearing and peace of mind are important aspects of a good quality of life too. There is nothing more annoying to me than having to hear some jerk drive down the road with bass speakers turned up so loud that the entire house shakes from it’s foundation to the roof rafters. And if that jerk lives down the roadway from your house, you may have to listen to his blaring radio speakers many times each day and night. I wish I had access to one of the US Army’s Noise Blasting Machines and I could point it at this guys car and show him what real noise pollution is like just to make him see that he’s not the only one having to listen to his damn radio speakers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon
Every elderly home owner needs one of these sonic weapons to combat the young whippersnappers that drive by our homes playing loud music on their car/truck stereo systems.
Amen. Let’s also start attacking the damn power companies that are turning off their scrubbers after dark. Listening Duke Energy?
You are right. I know a guy who actually worked at the power plant and ran the scrubber at AB Brown. He told me to my face that SIGECO (it was SIGECO back then) they turned off the equipment at night.
Unless the USEPA forces power plants like Vectren and others to run automatic continuous air pollution monitoring equipment 24/7 it’s hard to prove that they turn off the scrubbers. And the Scrubbers can’t work 24/7 all year long. They have to be shut down at times to maintain them or fix problems. They are not 100% effective. And the continuous air pollution monitoring probes and monitors have to be shut down for repairs and calibration from time to time. It costs a lot of money to buy these. And if you want 100% compliance then one needs to have spare units ready to go at an instant notice. Even then when you replace a broke down monitor with a new one tests and calibration have to be done in order to get them up and working properly. So you lose time when this is done.
The EEPA has a bad habit of calibrating the Ozone Continuous Air Pollution Monitor during the middle of the day or afternoon. Why is this a problem? Well they could easily calibrate the monitor in the early morning hours or at night when the Ozone levels in the ambient outside air are low. Typically ozone levels are elevated in the middle of the hot afternoon. Say around 12 noon to about 4 O’clock in the afternoon or maybe until around 6 pm. This is because ozone is created best when the sunlight is brightest. And it take some time for the precursor chemicals to form up and get into the air (early morning traffic contributes to this each and every day). And then the mixture of precursor chemicals has to cook in the sunlight to produce the maximum or highest levels of Ozone a few hours later. So the highest concentrations of ozone form in the middle of the afternoon.
Now if you are wanting to avoid breaking the National Ambient Air Quality Standards and circumvent getting into trouble with the USEPA and want to keep the average citizen in Evansville in the dark about how bad the air pollution problem in this town really is then just turn the Ozone monitor off in the middle of the afternoon when you know that the highest ozone levels occur.
So they know that they can’t just turn the monitor off in the afternoon without some good excuse that the public won’t figure out what’s going on. So what do they do? They start a calibration routine during the middle of the afternoon. The data that would have been collected is lost and so are the high reading of ozone on the days that the ozone is highest in the summer time. Ozone being a summer time pollutant for the most part. So they effectively prevent the city from violating the ozone standards and keep USEPA out of town.
You see if we did record high levels of ozone and did it right, we would have to face the fact that we have problem and actually do something about it. Well we can’t have that now can we? I mean it would cost money to fix the air pollution problem. It’s just easier to turn off the monitor when the ozone levels are known to be higher. That solves the problem and doesn’t cost any money. But the problem is that it’s a FEDERAL CRIME to tamper with air monitoring equipment. Some one can go to jail for that.
So is turning off the ozone monitor during the hottest parts of the hottest days of summer when Ozone levels at the highest to avoid recording these high ozone levels a crime? If not it SHOULD BE. And are people actually conspiring to avoid ozone recordings that are to high by deliberately turning off the ozone monitor during the hottest parts of the day to calibrate it? Why not calibrate it during the morning hours when ozone levels in the ambient air are still relatively low. Then when the soup heats up and the higest levels of ozone form actually record those levels and document just how bad the problem is.
You see people still breath this polluted air and it really doesn’t matter if you measure and document to these people’s lungs. We still are all adversily effected by breathing badly polluted air. We may not know it’s polluted so badly but our lungs still see the effects. We damage the cells inside our lungs when high levels of HIGHLY REACTIVE and unstable molecules of Ozone (O3) enter our lungs. The damage is done to our lungs and bodies and maybe even our skin when they are exposed to high levels of ozone.
One needs to really think about this practice. I would recommend to USEPA that they make a ruling that the ozone monitors be secured and in good order and not turned off for any reason during high levels of ozone in the air. And this is easily predictable. It’s as predictable as the sun rising and setting. The Ozone levels are diurnal in nature due to the fact that the concentrations are determine by the sun light levels and the high energy UV rays of the sun hitting the soup of precursor air pollutants. This will happen with regularity during the months of July and August when the air is stagnant and dry and the sunlight is the most intense. The same amount of automobile and other traffic exist on a daily basis in most towns. So that is a given. The only thing that changes drastically over time in the angle of the sun with the various seasons of the year and the amount of UV light that reaches the air over the city.
So when they turn off the ozone monitor and stop recording the level of ozone in the ambient air and use the excuse that they are “calibrating the monitor” don’t by that. They can calibrate the monitor in the morning and let it run and record the actually ozone levels in the ambient air during the afternoon when they know that the readings will be the highest.
They USEPA and the Chamber of Commerce Types (they lobby USEPA all the time for this) have made it extremely difficult to break the ozone standard and document that fact. They turn off the monitors. They change the standard and let us pollute more before the standard is broken and we are forced to do something to lower the levels of ozone in the air. They want to save money. They don’t give a damn about your or my health. They make more money off unhealthy people that healthy people. They also are the same people that serve on the Hospital Board of Directors. So if you get sick they also make more money when you have to go to the hospital. It’s a vicious game.
What they should do is spend more money on making the cars run cleaner and better. They could control emissions at the gas station better with vapor recovery systems that capture the gasoline fumes (precursor chemicals) when you fuel up your gas tank. They could actually make what industry we have left control their hydrocarbon emissions better. Most are not controlled much at all. But this all cost money. I suspect that the powers of the city are afraid that companies will move out of town if the city cracks down on their pollution. And that is a concern. But if ever city in the USA has the same regulations to follow they won’t have any place else to go other than out of the country. But we can impose tariffs on those companies if they move and then ship their products back home to the USA. Companies like Zenith that used to be in Evansville but moved down to Mexico to avoid environmental regulations in the USA. But Zenith or what remains of that company still shipped their TV’s back to the USA to sell at the same prices as before. But they cut their labor and equipment costs by moving to Mexico or China. Those overseas companies and Mexico don’t have the strick environmental laws and controls like we have. And they pay much less because they don’t have unions. Tarrifs will keep them in place and then we can make them clean up their emissions here and not move out of town.. This is what should be done if we ever want to stop the air from being so polluted. Instead we skirt the regulations and companies still moved out of town. Evansville Veneer moved out of Evansville, IN and to Chandler, IN because of environmental and other problems with their heating source. They ran a wood fired boiler that was constantly causing problems in the Evansville Location with the neighbors which were located in a residential neighborhood not too far from the smoke stack. Driving down Division Street in the 1970/80 one could easily see the excessive smoke coming out of Evansville Veeners Smoke Stack. And they had problems with water pollution draining off their properly and into the city sewers. Phenols were leaching out of the logs that they stored on site and kept wet with a water spray system. The leachate was hard to control.
If you fly above the city in the summer time you can see the dome of air pollution above the city. I’ve seen this is most of the major cities from the air at around 3000 ft. in altitude in small private planes. The larger cities like Indianapolis and Washington D.C. are the worst in the Eastern USA that I’ve seen personally. Louisville, KY is bad too. The larger the city and the more people and vehicle there are the worst the ozone levels get.
But not much will be done to control the precursor chemicals that help make the High Ozone levels that Damage our lungs until they start doing the air monitoring with INTEGRITY. The object of air monitoring should be to measure and document the real air pollution concentrations averages over time not just those that we like. In other words we should run the monitors during the hottest parts of the day and not turn them off to calibrate them so that we miss the highest reading of the day.
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