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MIC GRABS EPA BULL ·BY TAIL
Manufacturers can "easily" cut Dlotorcycle SDlOg
eDlissions. Nobody ever asked theDl to. Cleaner
and Dlore powerful engines seen.
LOS ANGELES, CAL., June 27 Directors of the Motorcycle Industry
Council met Wednesday to decide how
to con trovert proposed new federal
regulations that would prohibit certain
motorcycle riding and freeze sales in the
major market areas of the U.S.
The regula tions were proposed las t
week by the Environmental Protection
Agency as part of their program to meet
standards of the Clean Air Act by 1975.
EPA counsel John Bonine told Cycle
News that the agency fears legal suits
threatened by ecology organizations
unless it does meet the standards spelled
out in the act of Congress.
Members of the MIC technical
standards commi ttee called. the EPA
proposal "half.baked," and unfair to the
$2·billion·a·year American motorcycle
industry.
"They don't have a basis to support
the conclusions drawn prior to issuing
the regulations," asserted Leo Lake,
Yamaha International's pollution
con trol engineer. Lake translated a wire
from the MIC of Japan, JAMA,
protesting "the agency's action.
By estimate, based on scant studies,
the EPA accuses motorcycles of pouring
25 tons of smog in to Los Angeles air
and reckons the tonnage will rise to 45
tons in the next few years. The EPA
program released June 15 stated that
technology does not exist to control
motorcycle pollution.
• • •
That statement, claims MIC's
Te·chnical Standards Committee, is
utterly false.
Last month MIC resolved to assist
the EPA in se tting emission standards
for motorcycles and promised to meet
the standards when they are set. This
resolution was presented to the
commissioners of Ventura County,
California, but apparently not to the
EPA. MIC was without a public
relations person at that time, and the
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