(The following article by Chris Bowman was posted on the Sacramento Bee website on August 3.)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Smog fighters on Wednesday demonstrated a new, supersized weapon to subdue one of the biggest and dirtiest offenders left standing on the battlefield: the idling locomotive.
Politicians and smog regulators with earplugs gathered in Roseville alongside a rumbling Union Pacific locomotive as a giant mechanical “bonnet” descended on the engine’s smokestack and suctioned the dark brown exhaust through treatments that rendered the gases visibly clean.
“What you witnessed was the first demonstration of its kind in the country,” said Tom Christofk, Placer County’s air pollution control officer, who is credited as the brainchild of the apparatus.
The Advanced Locomotive Emission Control System scrubs the diesel exhaust clean of all but 1 percent of the hazardous sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, or soot, according to its developer, Advanced Cleanup Technologies Inc. of Colton.
The emission control system also removes nearly as much of the nitrogen oxides, the smog-forming gas that chronically drifts from the Sacramento area in violation of national clean-air standards, according to the company.
The train yard is the single largest generator of diesel exhaust in the six-county Sacramento region, according to a groundbreaking state Air Resources Board study released in 2004.
The plume of locomotive soot extends about 100 square miles — encompassing most of Roseville, all of Citrus Heights and all of Antelope — and raising the cancer risk for an estimated 165,000 residents, the study found.
More than 70 cargo trains a day stop or pass through the 52-track, 6-mile-long railyard in the heart of Roseville.
“This is a gift of clean air,” Roseville Mayor Gina Garbolino said at Wednesday’s demonstration.
Union Pacific, however, has yet to decide whether to permanently install the system at the Roseville yard, the railroad’s largest hub on the West Coast.
The chief question is whether train traffic will be significantly slowed by the system, which can suck exhaust from up to eight locomotives at a time as they line up to be serviced, said Ruben Garcia, president of the technology company.
The demonstration apparatus will be dismantled later this year after the railroad conducts a series of tests, Garcia said.
The Port of Long Beach is lined up to buy the $6 million system pending the results of the Roseville tests, Garcia said.
The system would be installed at a berth where it can service up to five freighters at a time, he said.
Oakland port officials also are interested in installing the device on switchers servicing the cargo unloaded from ships, said Harold Jones, the port’s deputy executive director.
“We’re looking at ways to green it up,” said Jones, who attended the demonstration.
Trains and ships are among the last engines of commerce to be touched by the 36-year-old U.S. Clean Air Act.
Virtually everything else with an exhaust vent or pipe has been modified for the sake of healthier air, while locomotives, marine vessels and airplanes keep writing brown signatures in the sky.
Most locomotive switchers in the Roseville yard were built between 1972 and 1982, according to Union Pacific’s inventory.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency didn’t require cleaner-burning locomotives until 1998.
Following the release of the Roseville yard pollution study in 2004, Union Pacific made a pact with the Placer County air district to cut the diesel exhaust at least 10 percent by 2008.
Though the agreement is not legally binding, Christofk said the company is on track.
The air district set up air samplers in and around the yard to monitor the progress.
Union Pacific, which modernized and expanded the Roseville yard after its 1996 merger with Southern Pacific Lines, has a $6 million monthly payroll of 1,200 employees at the yard.