Changhua County has been a city of industrial and agricultural development for a long time. Most of air pollutants come from plants and factories of various industrial types and exhausts emitted from numerous motor vehicles. With the changes in the use of urban land and increasing consciousness of people in environmental protection, the number of factories is dropping, whereas that of motor vehicles in use is growing year after year. As the result, the exhausts from motor vehicles become the primary source of urban air pollution. Therefore, the County Government is looking vigorously for a solution as how to reduce exhausts of motor vehicles.
This projects started from May 28 2008 to May 27 2009. In total, the mobile inspection vehicles have carried out free inspections at 49 spots, and 411,951 motorcycles have been inspected with an average inspection ratio of 79.81%. It is clear that citizens’ acceptance for compulsive motorcycle inspections is growing. Also from the inspection statistics, most of motorcycles inspected are registered in Changhua County and Taichung County and City, indicating that 30% of motorcycles are from other counties or cities. For exhaust reduction, the primary control measures come from acceleration of decommissioning of old motorcycles, improvement of motorcycle inspections, and auditing on uninspected motorcycles. According to the reduction data provided by Environmental Protection Administration, the reduction in NMHC in Changhua County was 337 tons in 2998, and the reduction of CO was 1760 tons.
For control of diesel vehicles, 4,647 vehicles were inspected for exhaust, in which 428 failed the inspections with a failure ratio of 9.2%. For fuel sampling, 4,799 samples were collected, and 301 samples were sent for testing, where 2 failed the testing with a failure ratio of 0.7%. For visual determination of exhaust, 10,359 vehicles failed the determination. For vehicle registration inquiries and screening for non-serviceable vehicles, cancellation of vehicle registration and out-of-service requests, in total 4,003 notices have been issued for inspections. The exhaust reduction came from mostly the retirement of old diesel-fueled vehicles, improvement of diesel-fueled vehicles as pollution source, promotion of self-management of diesel-fueled vehicle owners, and promotion of use of low pollution vehicles. According to data released by EPA, it is estimated that the TSP reduction reached 15.205 tons in Changhua County in 2008.
This project has achieved the practical effects and excellent performance in improving the air quality of Changhua County by implementing vehicle control measures and inter-agency cooperation to help people understand what we are doing to make tomorrow better.
