State emissions testing ends Dec. 31

For 38 years, it has been a necessity for cars of a certain age.

Car owners in Washington's urban areas pay $15 for an emissions test and need to pass before they can renew their license tabs.

The end of the tests, at the end of the year, is just fine with Bre Clewis, who got her last emissions test Friday.

"I never really understood why they needed to check our cars in the first place," she said.

The state Legislature decided in 2005 to end the program in 2020 because cars are cleaner.

While gas cars still contribute to climate change, the emissions checks focus on pollutants like carbon monoxide.

“It’s 40 years of progress. Even a gas-powered car of today is much cleaner than the ones of yesteryear,” said Andy Wineke, of the Washington Department of Ecology.

Warren Dyson knows that well.

Two weeks after the testing station in SODO opened in 1982, he started a business next door fixing cars that failed.

“You can see the amount of cars on the freeway. Way more cars and less pollution than there was back in the ’80s and ’90s,” Dyson said.

This final year, state contractors expected to test about 700,000 gas cars built between 1994 and 2008.

Newer cars are exempted.

So are those more than 25 years old because so few are on the road.

"Overall air quality is going to continue to improve because as we replace older cars with these newer models, we're going to keep on cleaning the air," Wineke said.

The change on Jan. 1, 2020, means layoffs for the handful of workers left at the testing station, and the end of Warren Dyson’s business.

“This means retirement,” he said.

© 2019 Cox Media Group