Vendor Challenges EPA Plan To Let New Hampshire End Vehicle Inspections

By Michael Graham, NH Journal

The debate is over clean air, but the company that’s been making money off New Hampshire’s now-revoked vehicle inspection mandate is muddying the waters on the environmental issues involved.

The state’s decision to dump mandatory vehicle inspections created a conflict with federal emissions-testing requirements. However, the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency announced earlier this year that it would clear federal obstacles to shutting down the program and let New Hampshire remain free of an inspection mandate.

But on Friday, Gordon-Darby Holdings and New Hampshire resident Marilyn C. Jonas filed separate objections to those EPA actions. It’s the latest in a series of legal objections that have already produced two federal lawsuits.

At the center of their objections is an analysis Gordon-Darby commissioned from Ramboll Americas Engineering Solutions. The consultant contends the state’s modeling inflated emissions from certain buses and trucks, obscuring the relative impact of eliminating inspections.

Among its examples: a model that, according to Ramboll, attributed more nitrogen oxide emissions to 13 buses in Hillsborough County than to 280,075 passenger cars.

“The state’s modeling also says that 13 buses produced more pollution than more than 280,000 cars. How can these numbers be right?” Jonas said in a statement accompanying the filings.

Jonas also described her lifelong asthma and concerns that increased pollution will interfere with farm work, chores and outdoor recreation.

Opponents of inspection mandates dismiss those complaints, pointing out that the state ranks third for cleanest air in the U.S., according to America’s Health Rankings.

“New Hampshire has shown some of the cleanest air in the country, consistently top five for decades now,” said Rep. Henry Giasson, R-Goffstown.

“There is no way that the air quality has become worse in one year because of our inspection program,” Giasson added. “I believe these lawsuits are motivated, both politically and by the for-profit financial company that lost the contract to do diagnostic scans as a part of the inspection process, and I believe that they are frivolous.”

The objections from Gordon-Darby challenge EPA proposals to remove New Hampshire from the Northeast’s Ozone Transport Region and conditionally approve changes to the state’s federally enforceable air quality plan. Together, those actions would allow New Hampshire to discontinue emissions testing as an active pollution-control requirement.

The public comment period closed Sept. 25. EPA has said it is working toward a final decision before the end of the year.

Asked about New Hampshire’s high air quality, a spokesperson for Gordon-Darby said that while the state “may meet all federal air quality standards on a statewide level,” those numbers reflect “regional averages rather than the specific street-level air quality an individual breathes every day.”

“For individuals like Marilyn living with chronic respiratory conditions such as asthma, even subtle changes in air quality or the removal of localized control strategies can have a noticeable, real-world impact on their health.”

Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed legislation repealing the inspection mandate in June 2025, with most provisions taking effect Jan. 31, 2026. But eliminating the state requirement did not automatically remove the emissions program from New Hampshire’s federal air quality obligations.

Gordon-Darby’s subsidiary administered the program from 2004 until its shutdown earlier this year, supplying equipment, software, inspection stickers and the database used to record test results, according to its filing. The company has a direct financial interest in the dispute: The district court said its subsidiary received per-test fees from inspection stations under its state contract.

Opponents of the inspection mandate note that Ramboll’s conclusions challenging the environmental findings are from a consultant retained by the company opposing the repeal, rather than a determination by EPA or a court.

EPA’s proposed approval reaches a different conclusion.

In its August proposal, the agency said the state’s analysis supports finding that eliminating the program as an active requirement would not interfere with compliance with federal air quality standards. The proposal would retain inspections as a potential contingency measure under the maintenance plan for southern New Hampshire, and the state would be required to submit an additional plan revision.

And then, Giasson says, there’s the fact that New Hampshire doesn’t do actual emissions testing.

“Our inspection program used the OBD2 diagnostic check engine light as scanned by the corporation Gordon Derby scanning equipment as the system of record for emissions inspections in the state. What that means is that there was no point in time in recent history where we were actually measuring tailpipe emissions. We were only measuring whether or not a scan tool encountered a computer diagnostics error, and whether or not that error was tied to emissions that error was the failure,” Giasson said.

The dispute has already taken a winding path through federal court. U.S. District Judge Landya McCafferty ordered the program continued in January, but the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed that injunction in April. Gordon-Darby subsequently withdrew its original lawsuit before joining Jonas in the new case.

For now, the Department of Transportation’s posted guidance says the inspection program remains suspended, stations cannot issue state inspection stickers, and motorists remain responsible for keeping their vehicles safe to operate.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.