DES MOINES --- Not long ago, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, arrived at work on Capitol Hill to find a line of SUVs waiting to pick up their passengers.

Firing off a letter to President Bush, Grassley wrote that with $4 gas, it’s unconscionable that “each and every day, there are likely dozens, if not hundreds of federal government SUVs and sedans idling for hours in Washington alone while waiting for their passengers.”

The letter got some attention, mostly for its down-home

worries in the midst of a sprawling national energy debate. But idling is no small matter, government and public health groups say.

A billion gallons of diesel fuel are burned every year by idling long-haul trucks and locomotives, pushing 11 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

That doesn’t even count public buses, school buses and millions of cars across the country.

Increasingly, though, it appears some states and localities see engine idling as an area in need of closer inspection:

-- Officials in Elk Grove Village, Ill., just began studying the creation of a no-idling zone.

-- The Minneapolis City Council approved an ordinance last month limiting idling to three minutes.

-- A Massachusetts town also is sending the message that idlers need to move on, according to a report in the Boston Globe.

In the Quad-Cities, idlers still can safely leave their engines on. None of this area’s major cities have laws against idling.

Still, some local governments say they’re trying to keep idling to a minimum.

In Davenport, school bus drivers can’t idle for more than five minutes, says Scott Martin, the director of operations for the city’s school district.

“It’s continually stressed. We want to be good stewards of the environment and fuel,” Martin said.

John Campbell, director of operations for the Bettendorf School District, says it has a policy aimed at limiting engine idling, too.

Mostly, it’s the trucking industry that’s had to deal with idling.

Long-haul drivers faced with mandatory rest periods often leave their trucks running while sleeping or resting inside.

It’s a costly practice.

The National Conference of State Legislatures estimates idling costs the trucking industry $2.5 billion a year.

Some states have tried to stop it, too.

Ten states have passed anti-idling laws, the conference of state legislatures says, and local government in another 20 states regulate the practice.

The laws are a patchwork of requirements that can bedevil drivers.

Richard Spencer, a long-haul trucker from Monmouth, Ill., said in some parts of the country it isn’t feasible to shut off the engine.

“I was in El Paso, Texas, and it was 102 degrees. The air conditioning couldn’t even keep up with it,” said Spencer, who had pulled off the road at the Iowa 80 Truck Stop at Walcott, Iowa, briefly to get a drink. (He’d shut off his engine).

Eventually, Spencer said, the Texas heat got to be too much so he turned off the engine and headed to a Wal-Mart to cool off.

That’s not always possible, though.

In Iowa, when it’s really cold, it’s tough to shut down during mandatory rest periods, particularly when some truck stops aren’t equipped with the kind of systems that heat a truck when the engine isn’t running, he said.

Truckers are required to rest 10 hours for every 11 hours on the road.

Generators that can heat and cool a truck’s cab can cost thousands of dollars, too, drivers say.

“It makes it rough on a lot of people,” says Jerry Valentine, a long-haul trucker from North Carolina.

Environmentalists say run-on engines are no idle threat, though. And Janice Nolen, assistant vice president for national policy and advocacy at the American Lung Association, says it’s a public health issue, too.

Nolen says school buses often are older, and idling contributes to air pollution.

“You expose some of the most vulnerable people,” she said.

Martin, of the Davenport School District, said it’s not only an outside concern but inside, as diesel fumes can get into buildings via their ventilation systems.

So far, the Iowa Legislature has resisted regulating idling.

Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, however, did introduce a bill three years ago seeking to set state guidelines for school buses. It failed.

Bolkcom says there’s not only an environmental benefit but a cost saving to curbing idling.

He concedes it’s pretty unlikely the state will go too far along the regulatory road, but he says the high cost of gasoline will surely fuel a host of ideas aimed at saving money this next session, even if it’s only on government vehicles.

“On the public side, people with responsibility for public tax dollars need to treat that gas like their own,” Bolkcom said.

As for Grassley, he has no plans to introduce legislation to stop idling limos and SUVs, a spokeswoman said. However, “he has said if he sees any more, he’ll write down license plate numbers,” said Beth Levine.

Ed Tibbetts can be contacted at (563) 383-2327 or etibbetts@qctimes.com.