2.03 Air Pollution

A. Problems

Air pollution continues to be a serious threat to the health of our citizens and the welfare of our communities. While some progress was made in the 1970's in controlling emissions from stationary sources of pollution, transportation-related pollutants are a persistent and growing threat. Concern of urban residents about air pollution continues to be high.

Reducing air pollution to safe levels is, therefore, equal in importance with employment, housing and economic development in revitalizing and conserving cities. In areas with clean air, degradation of air quality may be a threat to agriculture, forest lands, tourism and the economic base of rural municipalities. Migration of pollution from one area to another, such as the acid rain problem, is an increasing threat to both non-attainment and clean air areas.

B. Goals

1. National Strategy

All levels of government and private industry must take concerted action to attain and maintain clean air. We also must prevent degradation of existing air quality and attain the goal of clean air. A national clean air strategy must be developed to attain national air quality standards and to protect the public health and welfare, and to do so within a reasonable time.

2. Linkage To Transportation Systems

Components of urban transportation systems, particularly single-passenger automobiles, under utilized transit, paratransit and rail systems, trucks and motorcycles have been shown to be major contributors to air pollution problems in urbanized areas. One of the primary objectives of urban transportation systems should be to prevent degradation of air quality in clean air areas, and to promote attainment of clean

air in areas which exceed public health levels.

3. Protection of the Outer Ozone Layers

The federal government should restrict the use of materials processed with fully halogenated chlorofluorocarbons which pose a threat to the protective outer ozone layers.

C. Policies

1. Local Role

The Clean Air Act as amended recognizes that the primary responsibility for achieving clean air is with state and local governments. To date, many local governments have been given little state and federal support and cooperation. The federal government should explicitly strengthen the direct role of cities in air pollution prevention and control. Authority to conduct air quality planning should be vested with general purpose local governments or regional policy making organizations, a majority of which are composed primarily of local elected officials. Authority to implement and enforce air quality plans should be jointly determined by state and local governments, consistent with state and federal law and with comprehensive state and regional air quality control standards.

2. State Implementation Plans (SIP)

EPA must continue to review the development of the basic elements of state implementation plans to ensure that every state is meeting minimum federal requirements and is moving toward attainment of national ambient air quality standards as expeditiously as possible. However, EPA's oversight of every aspect of SIP development and implementation is duplicative, time-consuming, and unnecessary, and actually inhibits the rapid achievement of cost-effective emission reductions.

State and local governments should generally be allowed to grant or alter permits without the need for federal approval as long as such actions are consistent with EPA-approved generic permit-rules.

EPA should be required to review individual permits only for the largest sources and those with interstate impact. However, local governments should be able to obtain EPA review of any state permitting decision or other minor SIP revision not otherwise needing EPA approval.

Whenever EPA approval of any SIP element is required, EPA should (where consistent with the Administrative Procedures Act) participate in the state or local SIP promulgation process, and should be required to take final action within a reasonable time after state promulgation.

3. State-Local Joint Determination

EPA should be required to exercise greater oversight to ensure that states do not undertake pollution control activities unless such activities were authorized by a joint determination of state and local elected officials. In particular, any transfer of emission credits (offsets) from one local jurisdiction to another should be permitted only where agreed to by affected local governments.

Local elected officials having jurisdiction over the territory must be equal partners with the state in development of plans to prevent significant deterioration of air quality in clean air areas, or for achieving clean air in nonattainment areas.

4. Federal Assistance

To support efforts to achieve federal clean air mandates, increased federal assistance to local governments is needed. Federal funds should go directly to local agencies with SIP development or enforcement responsibilities and such agencies should be permitted to adopt and implement their own SIP's without state review, where permitted by state law. The federal government also should expand financial assistance to local governments beyond emission control and monitoring to areas such as land-use and transportation planning.

5. Primary Standards

Minimum federal ambient air quality standards should be adequate to protect the public health and welfare, with the option for state and local governments to adopt stricter standards. Primary air quality standards should continue to be based on health considerations alone, with a sufficient margin of safety to ensure the health of even the most susceptible individuals from adverse effects. However, state and local implementation of the primary standards should be changed so that it is no longer dependent upon questionable and imprecise mathematical models. Instead, states and localities should be required to implement specific pollution control technologies, depending on the severity of the pollution problem in their jurisdiction, which would enable those jurisdictions to reduce emissions.

6. Secondary Standards

EPA should continue to set secondary ambient air quality standards to protect non-health related values.

7. Evaluation

The federal government should continue to evaluate the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) to ensure they are attainable and necessary for the health and welfare of our citizens. Recognizing that climate, geography, and the transport phenomenon play critical roles in persistent nonattainment areas, research should be undertaken to develop new control strategies and to assure that control measures result in progress toward attainment.

EPA standards for Air Quality should be flexible enough to consider regional physical conditions in the development of PM-10 standards.

8. Deadlines

To ensure a nationally uniform effort to achieve safe pollution levels, reasonable attainment deadlines must be established.

Where it can be demonstrated that existing statutory deadlines for specific pollutants are unattainable for large numbers of nonattainment areas, the Clean Air Act should be amended to extend such deadlines. Congress should give EPA the authority to grant extensions for limited periods of time to areas which will not attain the NAAQS by the statutory deadlines even after submitting a pollution control plan and implementing all reasonably available stationary and mobile source controls. The extension should be contingent upon an area's implementation of additional pollution controls beyond those specified in the State Implementation Plan, depending upon the severity of the pollution problem in the area. The extension should be granted only after ample justification is presented at open public hearings.

9. Sanctions

Congress should require EPA to impose sanctions on areas failing to: submit a State Implementation Plan outlining measures which will reduce pollution from stationary and mobile sources; revise the SIP in accordance with EPA specifications; and implement the measures identified on the SIP.

Congress should eliminate from the Clean Air Act those sanctions which are environmentally counterproductive. Specifically, EPA should not be allowed to withhold grants to states for the administration of clean air programs where the state's nonattainment was caused by a problem other than the state's failure to prepare a SIP. Nor should EPA be allowed to withhold grants for the construction of municipal wastewater treatment facilities since such action would impede progress toward attainment of national clean water goals.

EPA should be given greater discretion to impose a graduated set of sanctions so that the penalties imposed can be tailored to the severity of the violations committed. Furthermore, sanctions should be imposed on the level of government or agency directly responsible for the noncompliance.

EPA should modify its policy on sanctions by allowing construction of new sources or major modifications of existing sources where such sources perform essential governmental functions, such as resource recovery. For all other sources, new construction and major modifications should be allowed only if emissions from existing sources are reduced by an amount equal to twice the level of the added emissions from the new or modified source.

10. Motor Vehicle Emissions

Where pollution is caused by motor vehicles, the primary means for abatement of such pollution should be direct and stringent controls on motor vehicles.

The current Clean Air Act Motor Vehicle Emission Standards, including those for high altitude areas, should be maintained. The standards for light and heavy duty trucks should be tightened for those emissions (such as hydrocarbons) which contribute to ozone formation. There should be no relaxation of current vehicle emission regulations which would lead to significant increases in emissions. Further, Congress should enact and EPA should develop and promulgate standards for diesel fuel burning vehicles, heavy trucks, and buses as soon as possible.

Where emissions standards are set too low because of inadequate existing control technology, the federal government should commit itself to supporting the development of more adequate technology. The federal government, for example, should initiate a program to research, develop, and demonstrate alternatives to the internal combustion engine.

In order to reduce the level of carbon monoxide emissions caused when an automobile is started in cold weather--a phenomenon known as a "cold start"--several steps should be taken. For one EPA should design a vehicle emissions test which accurately reflects the real world conditions under which automobiles are operated (including cold temperatures) and which focuses on the cold start portion of the driving cycle. Secondly, the Agency should develop a technological solution to reducing cold start emissions. Third, EPA should establish automobile performance standards requiring manufacturers to produce automobiles which emit less carbon monoxide during cold starts in cold temperature conditions.

The federal government also should expedite the development, testing and commercialization of alternative fuels (such as ethanol, methanol and gasohol) which cause fewer harmful emissions than do gasoline and diesel fuels.

EPA should promulgate regulations on gasoline volatility and on gasoline vapor recovery systems as quickly as possible so as to reduce the harmful level of hydrocarbon emissions caused by evaporation of gasoline vapors during the refueling of motor vehicles.

Finally, the federal government should tighten the standards for controlling harmful emissions from motor vehicles to reflect technological advances. It should likewise require enhanced vehicle inspection and maintenance program requirements, national anti-tampering requirements for in-vehicle pollution control equipment, regulations to prevent fuel switching and double the required life of automobile pollution-control equipment from 50,000 miles or five-years to 100,000 miles or 10 years.

11. Evaluation of Transportation Control Measures (TCMs)

The federal government should continue to evaluate the relationship between transportation controls, vehicle miles traveled, and air pollution, as well as demonstrate and document the effect that each transportation control will have an ambient air quality.

12. Implementation of TCMs

In areas projecting attainment and making projected yearly progress toward attainment by the statutory deadlines, implementation of transportation control measures should not be a mandatory federal requirement. Any area needing an attainment extension for ozone or carbon monoxide, however, should be required to implement vehicle inspection and maintenance programs. Where reductions in vehicle miles traveled are needed to meet emission reduction targets, strategies involving economic incentives, transportation pricing, and land use and development policies should be permitted in place of mandated transportation control measures if it can be demonstrated that such strategies will provide equal or greater benefits.

13. Emission Controls

Strict emission control requirements should be maintained on all new sources, whether located in clean or dirty air areas. New source permits should continue to be required for all "major" sources which result in significant emission increases. However, once a permit has been issued for a source, it should be exempt from additional requirements for a reasonable period of time.

14. Nonattainment Areas

Because expeditious attainment of air quality standards is critical to public health, there should be no weakening in new source requirements for nonattainment areas. Specifically, the requirements for lowest achievable emission rates and the emission offset program should be retained. In addition, the actual attainment status of "unclassified" areas should be determined before any permits are issued in these areas, so that industry is not enticed to locate on the periphery of urban areas by more lax permitting requirements.

15. Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD)

Air resources already meeting secondary standards should be protected to facilitate the maintenance of national clean air objectives.

Where the current PSD program leads to unnecessary delays in new and modified source permitting, efforts should be made to streamline and simplify the current requirements. The preconstruction monitoring requirement should be eliminated, the permit approval process should be shortened, states should be allowed to classify areas subject to PSD requirements, and requirements for permit modifications should be eased. However, PSD increment system should remain intact. The increment system, over the long term, is needed to ensure that PSD area permitting agencies require strict "best available control technology" (BACT) for new sources.

Such BACT determinations are needed not only to protect existing air quality and preserve room for future growth in PSD areas, but also to ensure that nonattainment areas are not unfairly disadvantaged in their efforts to attract and retain industry.

16. Hazardous Pollutants

In 1970, Congress established a program to control hazardous pollutants, pollutants which can cause death, serious diseases or other adverse health effects from industrial sources.

Congress should continue to require EPA to identify and set standards for hazardous pollutants which protect public health by an ample margin of safety and which preserve the environment. EPA should be directed to impose controls on sources of hazardous pollutants which are stricter than technology-based standards where necessary to protect public health and the environment. Congress should establish deadlines for the determination of those substances which are hazardous and should require mandatory listing of substances where EPA fails to meet the deadlines.

17. Interstate Transport

The transport of pollutants between states as well as between areas within individual states, represents a major air quality problem which the current Clean Air Act provisions are clearly inadequate to remedy. Congress should direct EPA to designate major pollution transport regions consisting of attainment and adjacent nonattainment areas. Within a designated region, an attainment area which adversely impacts a nonattainment area should be required to install reasonably available controls on stationary sources of pollution unless the attainment area can demonstrate it is not a contributor to the ozone or carbon monoxide problem of the nonattainment area.

18. Acid Deposition

Congress and the Administration should recognize that the transboundary nature of acid deposition calls for solutions that transcend the jurisdiction of any one local or state government and that the Clean Air Act does not currently provide sufficient authority to regulate all long-range transported air pollution. Specifically, the following actions should be taken: a. Congress should amend the Clean Air Act by enacting acid rain control legislation which meets reasonable standards of effectiveness, economy and equity. Such legislation should require substantial reductions in sulfur dioxide emissions and nitrogen oxide emissions over a long-term period from both stationary and mobile sources. The emissions reduction program should be divided into two phases. The intent of the two-phased approach is to allow utilities to phase in their control strategies and to allow mid-course corrections in the federal program.

Congress should establish a near-term emission reduction target in phase one. EPA should specify the level of emissions reduction by source type and state; however, the governor should have the authority to allocate emissions reductions to individual sources within the state. Each state should be allowed to achieve the specified levels of emissions reductions through any method, including the most cost effective one, and states and sources should be allowed to trade emissions reductions.

In phase two, Congress should establish final emission reduction targets. Congress should also direct the EPA or the National Academy of Science to study whether the program is achieving its objectives and whether the emission reductions targets should be altered. Acid rain problems in other parts of the country should also be examined. Congress should then allow for mid course corrections to the final reductions targets based on the study findings.

b. Congress should fund an acid rain compliance program through a fee on nonexempt electricity generation within the 48 contiguous states. Electricity generated from hydroelectric and other renewable energy facilities, nuclear power plants, and electric utility plants currently in compliance with new source performances standards should be exempted from the user-fee requirement. The intent of such a fee is to distribute, on an interstate basis, a portion (e.g. one-third) of the compliance costs for the purpose of tempering disproportionate rate increases and mitigating the adverse impacts of the emissions reductions requirements on employment. Electric utilities should have the discretion to include their financial contribution to the compliance program as a line item on utility bills.

In addition, Congress should enact a fee on other fossil-fueled sources (such as industrial boilers) and mobile sources which contribute to the acid rain problem.

The resulting funds should be used to finance the capital costs of whatever control methods are deemed appropriate by the state. States should consider the cost-effectiveness of the control method, the effect of the emissions reductions measures on the useful remaining life of the facilities, the impact of the measure on sensitive receptor areas and the availability of the control method;

c. The federal program should provide for expanded federal and state ambient acid deposition monitoring using standardized methods of sampling and analysis. The intent of such monitoring is to provide a better information base and to gauge the effectiveness of the emissions reduction program.

d. The federal government should recognize the offer of the government of Canada for a significant bilateral reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions and should conclude negotiations and adopt a treaty committing both countries to this goal. Both countries should be required under the treaty to demonstrate their efforts to achieve the emissions reduction goal. A similar treaty should be negotiated with the Mexican government.

e. Congress should direct EPA to increase research and demonstration of new, less expensive technologies for reducing sulfur and nitrogen oxides, and to develop economic uses for by-products of pollution control technologies.

Back to Top