- Office of Attorney General Maura Healey
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Chloe Gotsis
Boston — Attorney General Maura Healey today released the following statement on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s decision to reverse course and enforce strict emissions standards on highly polluting heavy-duty trucks, known as glider trucks. The agency’s announcement comes one week after AG Healey and a coalition of 16 attorneys general sued the agency over an order issued on former Administrator Scott Pruitt’s last day in office that illegally suspended the glider standards for a year.
“We welcome the agency’s reversal of Scott Pruitt’s illegal parting gift to special interest polluters that would have endangered the health of our children and our environment,” said AG Healey. “This announcement is a huge victory for clean air and our efforts to stop this Administration’s efforts to unravel laws that protect our environment and public health.”
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to set and enforce emissions standards for vehicles, including for heavy-duty trucks like gliders. The Glider Rule mandates that most engines installed in “gliders” – new heavy-duty truck bodies outfitted with or rebuilt with pre-2010 dirty and inefficient engines – meet the same emissions standards applicable to all newly manufactured engines. The Glider Rule is meant to protect the air from excessive smog-forming and particulate-matter pollution emitted from older truck engines.
Gliders that do not comply with the Glider Rule produce 20 to 40 times more emissions of hazardous pollutants that are linked to asthma, low birth weight, infant mortality, and lung cancer. In Massachusetts and elsewhere, the rest of the trucking industry has already made substantial investments to comply with stringent emissions standards and would face an uneven playing field if gliders were allowed to remain unregulated under the loophole the Glider Rule closed.
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