A whole bunch of them did so, while many others decided that they couldn't justify purchasing the new equipment and figured they wouldn't renew their inspection licenses when the deadline came up.
It turns out the new equipment was so unreliable that the state scrapped the new requirements less than a year after they became official -- but only after a lot of service station owners had shelled out tens of thousands of dollars for the new equipment.
I don’t see the problem here.
After all, this business owner knew before he made the investment in new equipment that his business was located in perhaps the single most anti-business state in the Union. So he made his investment, and the government smacked him down. Completely predictable in advance.
Seems to me that in this world you pays yer money and you takes yer choice; no sense in whining about it when your gamble fails and you lose. The smart business man would have relocated his business before making that gamble. Maybe he has learned from his error?