UPDATE 1-Honda to pay $6.9 million in California small engine emissions case

(Adds details, Honda comments)

By David Shepardson and Ben Klayman

WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Honda Motor Co's American unit will pay $6.9 million in a settlement over engines used in equipment including lawn mowers, pressure washers and snow blowers that violated California's air-quality regulations, a state regulator agency said on Monday.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) said testing in 2019 showed several small off-road engines, typically used in products like lawn mowers and pressure washers, did not meet CARB emissions rules. These engines are a major source of pollution in California, topping light-duty passenger cars as a source of smog-forming emissions, CARB said.

"The scope of this violation and impact to California’s air pollution challenge is significant -- more than 150,000 small off-road engines used without proper certification that also failed to meet California’s evaporative emissions standards," said CARB Executive Officer Richard Corey.

Honda, which agreed to the penalty of approximately $46 per violation, said the settlement "resolves several compliance concerns related to engines that did not meet evaporative emissions levels for which they were certified."

The Japanese company said the settlement will require only the recall of 89 snowblowers and does not impact the sale or resale of other products.

Honda is required to implement a corporate compliance plan and will forfeit about 80,000 banked emissions credits accumulated under the program.

To address this source of smog-forming emissions, CARB will consider Thursday a regulation to transition small off-road engines to zero-emission technologies.

CARB in April 2020 reached a $1.9 million settlement with Honda over other clean-air violations related to small off-road engines used in generators and lawn and garden equipment.

(Reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit and David Shepardson in Washington Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Cynthia Osterman)