More Questions On Emission Program

By Kaaren Valenta

Cathy Amaral-Frietas was surprised to hear on a morning news broadcast this week that Connecticut’s new emissions inspection program is in danger of being suspended by the state.

“My husband was watching the morning news and said, ‘Did you hear this?’ and I said, ‘No, turn the volume up,’” she said.

Ms Amaral-Frietas is the general manager of Amaral Motors, which operates Newtown’s only emissions station. She said she has had no communication this week with the Department of Motor Vehicles regarding the computer error that may be responsible for as many as 13,000 vehicles statewide wrongly failing the test.

“I found out about it the same way that any Connecticut resident did — on the news,” she said.

Connecticut hired Chicago-based Agbar Technologies last year to revamp and oversee emissions inspections, which resulted in an elimination of the regional DMV testing stations in favor of a network of privately owned garages including Amaral Motors.

Ms Amaral-Frietas said a software download was sent by Agbar directly to the computer in her facility early this week to correct the problem with the emissions testing equipment. An analyzer in the computerized testing equipment apparently had been measuring propane levels instead of detecting hexane, the main hydrocarbon in gasoline exhaust.

“[The technicians] didn’t physically come here,” she said on Wednesday. “It was all done by computer. An inspector from Connecticut [DMV] came here today, but it was just for a routine visit.”

The Department of Motor Vehicles said the program was fixed Monday at all 279 testing garages in the state, but legislative leaders called Tuesday for the suspension of the state’s emissions testing program, saying their patience has worn thin over ongoing glitches with the system.

House Minority Leader Robert Ward said he will ask the DMV commissioner to suspend the program pending a legislative review. Rep Ward said he wants officials from the DMV and Agbar to testify before the General Assembly so lawmakers can sort out the facts.

“How many times do our citizens have to be inconvenienced because of problems that are not of their own creations,” Rep Ward said. “We must put an end to any more possible hardships to our residents by bringing the program to a halt now.”

Ms Amaral-Frietas said there was nothing that presaged the latest problem.

“There was no way we as a testing facility would ever have picked up on this,” she said. “There has not been any obvious pattern of failure, no specific models or trends.”

Ms Amaral-Frietas said the test involves only model years 1995 and older, which are tested with a tailpipe probe. Newer vehicles undergo computer-diagnostic testing.

“There’s always going to be a certain percentage that fail,” she said. “The ones we have seen have been older vehicles, mostly 1980 to 1985, that had other problems that legitimately could have caused them to fail.”

Richard Cosgrove, DMV’s chief administrative officer, said that the owners of those vehicles that would have passed, had the correct gas been measured, will be reimbursed by Agbar and SysTech International, Agbar’s software supplier, for the money they spent on unnecessary repairs.

DMV spokesman Bill Seymour said the department — already preparing to fine Agbar for a delay in starting up the testing program last October — is now looking into whether it is contractually possible to penalize the company for equipment failures.

The legislature in 2001 approved the conversion as part of a massive piece of budget legislation, known as the Office of Policy and Management Implementer bill. Under the bill, the DMV commissioner had the authority to choose either a centralized or decentralized emissions testing system.

“It wasn’t a question of saving money,” Rep Ward said. “There were problems with testing under the old system, of bribes being taken and questions about the reliability of that program. And now we are back with very similar issues.”

About 300,000 Connecticut cars have been inspected using the Agbar system. Of those, about 16 percent, or 48,000, have failed. More than two-thirds of those failed vehicles were older models.

In February, Agbar agreed to pay to retest about 700 light-duty trucks, sport utility vehicles, and minivans that had failed inspections. It had discovered that its testing software had an incorrect emissions standard for those vehicles.

Last week, DMV officials announced they were pulling emissions testing from a Greenwich garage, after determining that the station had falsified test results to pass a Ferrari.

The testing software has been failing Ferraris statewide because of incompatibilities with the vehicles’ computer systems.

Amaral Motors also was among more than a dozen emissions stations that had to shut down briefly this year when a component of the computerized system that tests newer vehicles failed.

“If they decide to stop the emissions program, it may make Connecticut residents happy, but I can tell you that there will be more than 270 emissions stations owners that will be very unhappy for having expended money and time on this program,” she said.

“You can’t begin to put a dollar amount on the training and the time spent on the telephone explaining the new emissions program to customers,” she said. “With the time and effort put into this, we feel like we are having the rug pulled out from under our feet.”

(Associated Press news reports were used in this article.)