Rep. Mike Carter said an effort to end unpopular annual emissions testing in Hamilton County is "getting close" to victory.
"We have crossed the Rubicon," he told members of the Pachyderm Club on Monday.
The Legislature passed a bill to end the testing two years ago, but he said there is a complex shutdown policy involving the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
He said a TDEC study found the testing only yielded a .031667 air quality improvement, which he said is "almost not measurable."
Rep. Carter said there are six steps in the EPA shutdown process and four have been completed.
One of the final steps will be public hearings in October.
He said, "We're close. I'm just ecstatic."
The speaker said he had heard horror stories about the effect of the testing, including a Hamilton County woman whose vehicles from her business could not pass. He said the problem was not anything to do with air pollution releases but were triggered by another unrelated cause.
Rep. Carter said Shelby County earlier discontinued its program.
He said they had "just quit" and had not bothered with the lengthy state and federal shutdown process.