Clean Air Act
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According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), "Congress designed the Clean Air Act to protect public health and welfare from different types of air pollution caused by a diverse array of pollution sources."[1][2][3]
The act requires the federal government to set national air quality standards to reduce air pollution and states to implement the standards through individual plans subject to approval by the EPA. National air quality standards and air pollution regulation are enforced primarily by state governments; states issue permits, monitor compliance, and conduct facility inspections, while the EPA has authority to review state actions. The act also requires regulation of stationary and mobile sources of air pollution and limits on hazardous air pollutant emissions, among other provisions.[4][5]
Background
In 1947, California became the first state to enact air pollution control legislation. The California Air Pollution Control Act (CAPCA), signed into law by Governor Earl Warren on June 10, 1947, "authorized the creation of Air Pollution Control districts out of every county, with Los Angeles County, one of the most polluted areas in the nation, being the largest."[6]
In 1955, Congress passed the Air Pollution Control Act (APCA), which allocated funds for federal research into air pollution. This was the first federal air pollution legislation in the United States. APCA, however, did not empower the federal government to take regulatory action in air pollution matters. It was not until the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1963 that the federal government assumed any regulatory or enforcement authority over air quality concerns in the United States.[3]
In January 1955, in a special statement delivered to Congress recommending a public health program, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said the following:[7]
| “ | As a result of industrial growth and urban development, the atmosphere over some population centers may be approaching the limit of its ability to absorb air pollutants with safety to health. I am recommending an increased appropriation to the Public Health Service for studies seeking necessary scientific data and more effective methods of control.[8] | ” |
| —President Dwight D. Eisenhower[7] | ||
Legislative history
See bill: Clean Air Act
| Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 | |
 | |
| United States Congress | |
| Full text: | Link |
| Legislative history | |
| Introduced: | September 14, 1989 (in the United States Senate) |
| House vote: | Passed without objection; May 23, 1990 |
| Senate vote: | 89-11; April 3, 1990 |
| Conference: | October 26, 1990 |
| Conference vote (House): | 401-25; October 26, 1990 |
| Conference vote (Senate): | 89-10; October 27, 1990 |
| President: | George H.W. Bush |
| Signed: | November 13, 1990 |
The Clean Air Act of 1963 established an air pollution control program within the U.S. Public Health Service. The Air Quality Act of 1967 further expanded federal monitoring and regulatory authority over air quality. In 1970, the United States Congress approved major amendments to the CAA authorizing "the development of comprehensive federal and state regulations to limit emissions from stationary (industrial) sources and mobile sources." The adoption of the 1970 CAA amendments coincided with the enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act, which formed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA, in turn, assumed responsibility for implementing the provisions of the CAA. Further amendments were made to the CAA in 1977 and 1990.[3]
The table below summarizes congressional actions related to air pollution control.
| Clean Air Act and amendments, 1955-2004 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year | Act | Citation |
| 1955 | Air Pollution Control Act | P.L. 84-159 |
| 1959 | Reauthorization | P.L. 86-353 |
| 1960 | Motor vehicle exhaust study | P.L. 86-493 |
| 1963 | Clean Air Act | P.L. 88-206 |
| 1965 | Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act | P.L. 89-272, Title I |
| 1966 | Clean Air Act Amendments of 1966 | P.L. 89-675 |
| 1967 | Air Quality Act of 1967; National Air Emission Standards Act | P.L. 90-148 |
| 1970 | Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 | P.L. 91-604 |
| 1973 | Reauthorization | P.L. 93-13 |
| 1974 | Energy Supply and Environmental Coordination Act of 1974 | P.L. 93-319 |
| 1977 | Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977 | P.L. 95-95 |
| 1980 | Acid Precipitation Act of 1980 | P.L. 96-294, Title VII |
| 1981 | Steel Industry Compliance Extension Act of 1981 | P.L. 97-23 |
| 1987 | Clean Air Act 8-month Extension | P.L. 100-202 |
| 1990 | Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 | P.L. 101-549 |
| 1995-96 | Relatively minor laws amending the Act | P.L. 104-6, 59, 70, 260 |
| 1999 | Chemical Safety Information, Site Security and Fuels Regulatory Relief Act | P.L. 106-40 |
| 2004 | Amendments to §209 re small engines | P.L. 108-199, Division G, Title IV, Section 428 |
| Source: Congressional Research Service, "Clean Air Act: A Summary of the Act and Its Major Requirements," updated May 9, 2005 | ||
Provisions
- See also: Implementation of the Clean Air Act
National Ambient Air Quality Standards
The Clean Air Act established nationwide air quality standards for six air pollutants defined in the act as criteria pollutants: ground-level ozone, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, and lead. These standards, known as National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), set ceilings for the six air pollutants, and states enact state implementation plans outlining enforceable, source-specific emissions limits for these pollutants. Each state plan must show that the state will meet and maintain the NAAQS. In setting NAAQS, the EPA is required under the act to implement two standards for criteria pollutants—primary and secondary standards. Primary standards limit pollution to protect human health, and secondary standards limit pollution to protect against visibility impairment and damage to animals, vegetation, and buildings. If a geographical area exceeds the NAAQS for one or more of the six criteria pollutants, the area is considered by the EPA as a nonattainment area. Geographical areas with pollutant concentrations below the NAAQS are known as attainment areas.[9][10]
The table below summarizes NAAQS standards, which are the maximum allowable amounts in a given period. Units of measure include parts per million (ppm) by volume, parts per billion (ppb) by volume, and micrograms per cubic meter of air (μg/m3).[11]
| National Ambient Air Quality Standards (as of March 22, 2016) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pollutant | Primary or secondary | Averaging time | Standard level | Form |
| Carbon monoxide | Primary | 8-hour | 9 ppm | Not to be exceeded more than once per year |
| Carbon monoxide | Primary | 1-hour | 35 ppm | Not to be exceeded more than once per year |
| Lead | Primary and secondary | Rolling 3-month average | 0.15 μg/m3 | Not to be exceeded |
| Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) | Primary | 1-hour | 100ppb | 98th percentile of 1-hour daily maximum, averaged over 3 years |
| Nitrogen dioxide | Primary and secondary | Annual | 53 ppb | Annual mean |
| Ozone (O3) | Primary and secondary | 8-hour | 0.070 ppm | Annual fourth-highest daily maximum 8-hour concentration, averaged over 3 years |
| Particle pollution (PM2.5) | Primary | Annual | 12.0 μg/m3 | Annual mean, averaged over 3 years |
| Particle pollution (PM2.5) | Secondary | Annual | 15.0 μg/m3 | Annual mean, averaged over 3 years |
| Particle pollution (PM2.5) | Primary and secondary | 24 hours | 35.0 μg/m3 | 98th percentile, averaged over 3 years |
| Particle pollution (PM10) | Primary and secondary | 24 hours | 150.0 μg/m3 | Not to be exceeded more than once per year on average over 3 years |
| Sulfur dioxide (SO2) | Primary | 1-hour | 75 ppb | 99th percentile of 1-hour daily maximum concentrations, averaged over 3 years |
| Sulfur dioxide (SO2) | Secondary | 3-hour | 0.5 ppm | Not to be exceeded more than once per year |
| Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "NAAQS table," accessed May 10, 2016 | ||||
Current listings of nonattainment areas can be accessed here. The map below was prepared by the EPA and shows designated non-attainment areas in the United States as of April 22, 2016.[12][13]
State implementation plans
States must adopt a state implementation plan (SIP) designed to attain and maintain National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). These plans are reviewed and approved by the EPA.[14]
State implementation plans must include enforceable emissions limitations and other pollutant control measures to attain and maintain NAAQS for the six criteria pollutants. Other requirements for state plans include the following:[14]
- A schedule or timetable for compliance with NAAQS and other Clean Air Act requirements
- A permit program for sources of air pollution
- Plans for air quality monitoring in the state
- Prohibitions against emissions that may significantly contribute to another geographical area's inability to meet NAAQS
- Participation and consultations with local governments affected by a state plan
New Source Review Program
Under the Clean Air Act, the New Source Review Program (NSR) applies to major stationary sources of air pollution, which are defined as sources with the potential to emit a certain amount of a pollutant regulated under the act. Before a major stationary source is constructed or an existing source is significantly modified, the facility must undergo an NSR analysis. The NSR analysis requires a facility operator to review and analyze how the facility's emissions may impact air quality. Operators must show that the facility will not breach NAAQS or emissions limits found in the facility's permit, which must be obtained before the construction or modification of a facility begins. Permits, which are enforceable legal documents, include requirements for constructing and operating units that produce emissions at a facility and the technology required to limit emissions, among other requirements.[14]
Emissions standards for mobile sources
The Clean Air Act requires emissions limits for mobile sources of air pollution, including on-highway vehicles (such as cars, trucks, and buses), aircraft, and certain equipment, such as construction equipment, lawnmowers, portable generators, motorboats, forklifts, and others. In the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, Congress set tighter standards (known as Tier I standards) limiting emissions of nitrogen oxides, benzene, carbon monoxide, and others from mobile sources. The amendments also required the EPA to examine whether further emissions standards were needed based on available technology and the cost-effectiveness of meeting new standards. In 2000, the EPA set further standards (known as Tier II standards) to reduce emissions from cars and light trucks for 2004-2009 model year vehicles. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 also required gasoline refiners to lower the sulfur content of gasoline to an average of 30 parts per million by October 1993.[15][14]
Hazardous air pollutants
As defined in the Clean Air Act, hazardous air pollutants "cause or contribute to an increase in mortality or an increase in serious irreversible, or incapacitating, reversible, illness." Hazardous air pollutants may cause serious health effects, such as cancer, birth defects, respiratory illness, and other maladies. Under the Clean Air Act of 1970 and 1977, the EPA set emissions limits for seven hazardous pollutants—beryllium, mercury, vinyl chloride, asbestos, benzene, radionuclides, and arsenic.[14]
With the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, Congress revised the EPA's hazardous air pollutant program to a technology-based regulatory system. The EPA regulates major sources of hazardous air pollutant emissions and require facilities to adopt technologies to control their emissions. Technologies used to reduce hazardous pollutants include scrubbers, filters, thermal oxidizers, and more. The standards, known as maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standards, are based on the maximum reduction of emissions achievable by new and existing sources of hazardous pollutants. The standards must also take into account costs and any non-air health or environmental impacts.[14][16]
Support and opposition
Proponents of the Clean Air Act argue that it is primarily responsible for reduced air pollution since 1970. Other proponents argue that the act has required industries to develop new anti-pollution controls to reduce emissions, creating jobs in the process. Critics of the act's implementation, argue that the law has produced net economic benefits despite other problems involving the act. Opponents of the Clean Air Act argue that its implementation has burdened states and localities and that air pollution was already in decline by the time Congress passed the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970. The act's 1970 amendments survived a legal challenge in Whitman v. American Trucking Associations (2001).
Support
- In an article titled The Clean Air Act, the Union of Concerned Scientists, whose stated mission is to adopt “rigorous, independent science to work to solve our planet’s most pressing problems,” argued that the Clean Air Act from 1980 to 2016 resulted in a 25 percent reduction in smog, reductions in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide by 71 percent and 46 percent, respectively, and reductions in lead emissions by 92 percent (due the act's requirement that refiners reduce the lead content of gasoline). Further, the article argued that the Clean Air Act has led to additional pollution reductions by requiring factories and other industries to implement new anti-pollution technology to control emissions.[17][18]
- In a November 2015 report titled Protecting Public Health and Growing the Economy: 25 Years of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, the Center for American Progress, whose stated mission is "to improve the lives of all Americans, through bold, progressive ideas, as well as strong leadership and concerted action," argued that the Clean Air Act has not inhibited economic growth or limited energy consumption. According to the report, "Even while population, vehicle miles, and gross domestic product, or GDP, have all increased, emissions of harmful pollutants have decreased significantly over the same period. Emissions from lead, NOx [nitrous oxides], and SOx [sulfur oxides] have fallen by 80 percent, 51 percent, and 79 percent respectively."[19]
- In a March 2, 2011, post titled The Clean Air Act: Good for Our Health AND Our Economy, Susanne Brooks, director of U.S. Climate Policy & Analysis at the Environmental Defense Fund, whose stated mission is to "find practical and lasting solutions to the most serious environmental problems," cited EPA-authored research from March 2011 concluding that the Clean Air Act produced $1.3 trillion in health and environmental benefits for a cost of approximately $50 billion. The EPA report's authors argued that Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 would 230,000 premature deaths and produce $2 trillion in economic benefits in the year 2020. Brooks concluded, "The Clean Air Act and its amendments prevent millions of premature deaths, significantly reduce illnesses, and save trillions of dollars for American families."[20][21]
Opposition
- In a 2007 study entitled Air Quality in America from the American Enterprise Institute, whose stated mission is "expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity and strengthening free enterprise," Joel M. Schwartz and Steven F. Hayward concluded that air pollution was already declining before Congress passed the Clean Air Act of 1970 (based on local and regional sources of air pollution data). The authors cited the city of Pittsburgh, which reduced airborne particulate matter levels by 50 percent between the 1920s and 1940s and by 50 percent between the 1940s and 1970; Midwestern and Eastern industrial cities that "achieved large reductions in particulate levels during the early and middle decades of the twentieth century"; monitoring data from the city of Los Angeles showing a steady decline in ground-level ozone (smog) that continued through the 1960s; and monitoring data from New York City that showed a 58 percent decrease in sulfur dioxide levels from 1963 and 1970 (when the first iteration of Clean Air Act Amendments were passed).[22]
- In testimony before the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Interior, Energy and the Environment in March 2017, Nick Loris, the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, whose stated mission is "to formulate and promote conservative public policies," argued that environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act are ill-equipped for dealing with environmental problems, producing high costs with little to no environmental benefit. "The EPA has used ever-expanding authority to implement stringent regulations with increasingly high compliance costs and diminishing marginal environmental returns," Loris said.[23]
- In a December 2016 report titled Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due, Reed Watson, the executive director of the Property and Environment Research Center, whose stated mission is "to improving environmental quality through property rights and markets," argued that the local government ordinances and economic growth, rather than the Clean Air Act, led to reductions in air pollutants from 1970 to 2015. Watson further argued that air pollution had already begun declining between 1962 and 1970 (when major amendments were added to the Clean Air Act) and that air quality improvements slowed after the act's passage because "federally mandated reductions often failed to account for local conditions, creating expensive and often ineffective one-size-fits-none approaches to clearing the air."[24]
Other views
- Authors of a 2004 study entitled Air Quality Management in the United States and published by the National Research Council, a research organization within the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine whose stated mission is "to improve government decision making and public policy," concluded that the Clean Air Act “will probably continue to have substantial net economic benefits." The report's authors qualified its conclusion, arguing that the EPA’s implementation was at times overly focused on process rather than results. Specifically, the report found that the process states use meet National Ambient Air Quality Standards was “a legalistic, and often frustrating, proposal and review process, which focuses primarily on compliance with intermediate process steps.” The report's authors further argued that states were likely discouraged from innovating and experimenting with anti-pollution controls as a result. In addition, the authors concluded that states and localities were overburdened given their limited human and financial resources to comply with federal procedures and that states and local governments may have drawn resources away from meeting federal air quality standards to meeting specific procedural requirements.[25][26]
Recent news
The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms Clean Air Act. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.
See also
- Implementation of the Clean Air Act
- National Ambient Air Quality Standards
- Air pollutants
- Hazardous air pollutant
Footnotes
- ↑ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Clean Air Act Requirements and History," accessed August 7, 2014
- ↑ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Understanding the Clean Air Act," accessed August 7, 2014
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "History of the Clean Air Act," accessed August 7, 2014
- ↑ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Summary of the Clean Air Act," accessed February 2, 2016
- ↑ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "National Air Activity Dashboard," accessed January 15, 2016
- ↑ Rice University Environmental and Energy Systems Institute - Shell Center for Sustainability, "Clean Air Act Implementation in Houston: An Historical Perspective 1970-2005," February 2005
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 The American Presidency Project, "Dwight D. Eisenhower - Special Message to Congress Recommending a Health Program," January 31, 2005
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, "Clean Air Act - Full Text," accessed June 11, 2017
- ↑ Environmental Protection Agency, "Applying or Implementing Ozone Standards," accessed June 1, 2017
- ↑ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS)," accessed August 7, 2014
- ↑ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Current Nonattainment Counties for All Criteria Pollutants," updated July 2, 2014
- ↑ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Counties Designated "Nonattainment" for Clean Air Act's National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS)," updated July 2, 2014
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 Congressional Research Service, "Clean Air Act: A Summary of the Act and Its Major Requirements," updated May 9, 2005
- ↑ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Basic Information," accessed August 7, 2014
- ↑ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Reducing Toxic Air Pollutants," accessed August 7, 2014
- ↑ Union of Concerned Scientists, "The Clean Air Act," accessed September 20, 2016
- ↑ Union of Concerned Scientists, "Founding Document: 1968 MIT Faculty Statement," accessed October 24, 2016
- ↑ Center for American Progress, "Protecting Public Health and Growing the Economy: 25 Years of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments," November 16, 2015
- ↑ Environmental Defense Fund, "The Clean Air Act: Good for Our Health AND Our Economy," March 2, 2011
- ↑ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "The Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act from 1990 to 2020," March 2011
- ↑ American Enterprise Institute, "Air Quality in America," accessed September 20, 2016
- ↑ U.S. House of Representatives - Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, "Testimony of Nick Loris - Herbert & Joyce Morgan Research Fellow, The Heritage Foundation," March 1, 2017
- ↑ Property and Environment Research Center, "Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due," December 14, 2016
- ↑ The Wall Street Journal, "Why the Clean Air Act May Be Past Its Prime," April 17, 2010
- ↑ National Academies Press, "Air Quality Management in the United States," accessed September 20, 2016
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