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Accomplishments of the Clean Air Act, as amended by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990
Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality
Mr. David M. Driesen
The question of how well the 1990 Amendments have succeeded in protecting public health and the environment from air pollution is very important. Air pollution is associated with tens of thousands of annual deaths, afflicts many millions more with asthma and lung disease, poses risks of cancer and birth defects, and causes neurological damage. In addition, air pollution destroys forests, acidifies lakes, and damages crops. Finally, air pollution warms the climate. Climate change will likely exacerbate summertime smog and therefore increase the frequency and severity of asthma and heart attacks, while creating potential new catastrophes - flooding of islands and coastal areas, destruction of eco-systems, droughts, and the spread of tropical diseases.[1] Unfortunately, greenhouses gases, once released, remain in the atmosphere for decades, so delay in addressing this problem has irreversible consequences. I'm pleased to report that the 1990 Amendments have improved public health and ameliorated environmental impacts. We have reduced emissions of most of the pollutants the Amendments target, often quite substantially. This represents a major achievement, for this progress occurred in spite of increased population and in conjunction with high economic growth. Furthermore, the 1990 Amendments require further actions that will build on this progress. Stratospheric Ozone
Depletion The most stunning success came from efforts to protect people from skin cancer and cataracts by combating the depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer, which shields us from ultraviolet rays. We eliminated the production of many substances contributing to depletion of the ozone layer high in the atmosphere, as did other countries around the world. While a hole has opened up in the ozone layer, scientists tell us that it probably will heal as a result of this vigorous response. Because we have not proceeded as aggressively on other issues, our success in other areas, while impressive, has been somewhat more limited. Acid Rain The acid rain program, which combines very specific Congressional decisions about limits with emissions trading confined to well-monitored pollutants, has also proven enormously successful. It has reduced sulfur dioxide at much lower cost than predicted. While acid deposition has declined as a result, lakes and forests have been slow to recover.[2] Further planned cuts in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, the principal causes of acid rain, will aid recovery. Smog and Soot:
The Criteria Air Pollutants The Clean Air Act relies upon a combination of state regulation and federal vehicle controls to address problems caused by pervasive health impairing criteria pollutants. These pollutants include soot (or particulate), ground level (i.e. not stratospheric) ozone, and carbon monoxide. Because of these efforts, levels of all of these pollutants have declined between 1992 and 1999 by the levels indicated below: Percentage Decline Criteria Pollutants: 1992-1999[3]
As a result, only one area in the country violated the carbon monoxide standard in 1999. A sizable number of the moderately polluted areas have achieved the ozone and particulate standards in effect in 1990, but many metropolitan areas with large populations continue to violate these standards. The 1990 Amendments anticipated that seriously polluted areas would comply by 1999 (they haven't), but expected that areas suffering severe or extreme ozone pollution probably would not comply by 2002. Unfortunately, new scientific research associates ozone and particulate pollution with even more cases of death, asthma and lung disease than were apparent in 1990. More than 100 million Americans still do not have clean healthful air to breathe. Accordingly, EPA has recently revised national ambient air quality standards for particulate and ozone. Implementation of these standards will take some time, but promises to improve this situation. The national ambient air quality standards serve as goals for state pollution control programs. They establish the maximum concentration of pollutants EPA deems tolerable in the air that surrounds us. States regulate emissions of pollution sources in order to bring about the needed improvements in ambient air quality. Because state decisions about which regulatory strategies to use affect cost, costs will vary from state to state. And because local air quality varies, so do state air quality control programs. This is not a one-sized fits all approach, and it unfolds slowly. Because utility nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions contribute enormously to violations of the new national ambient air quality standards, states will have to control these emissions in order to meet the new standards. These substantial reductions will contribute not only to human health, but also to efforts to combat acid rain. Quicker results will likely come from federal and state efforts to enforce new source review requirements against power plants that have evaded strict federal controls while renovating dirty old plants. The 1970 Amendments reflect a compromise, exempting existing stationary sources (e.g. factories) from federal controls, while imposing controls on new sources. Congress expected that as plant owners replaced or modernized their facilities relatively stringent new source controls would apply, which would improve air quality over time. It has frequently been said that new source review has discouraged modernization. The attorneys general of several states and the Justice Department, however, have found that electric utilities have modernized their facilities, but did not comply with new source review requirements. Furthermore, EPA has begun to administer an emissions trading programs to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions in many northeastern and midwestern states. This program focuses primarily upon electric utilities and anticipates reductions beginning in 2003. Nitrogen oxide has risen since 1990, probably because of increased driving, use of diesel fuel, and increasing energy use, so we need additional controls. This trading program, while directed toward compliance with the old ozone standard, will also ameliorate acid rain and reduce particulate pollution. The nitrogen oxide trading program, new source review enforcement, and state regulation to comply with the revised national ambient air quality standards should bring about substantial reductions of utility nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions, which should greatly reduce death, illness, and ecosystem damage. Hazardous Air Pollutants We have also apparently achieved large reductions in emissions of hazardous air pollution.[4] Prior to 1990, the federal program in this area had been moribund, because it relied heavily upon risk assessment. In twenty years, EPA succeeded in listing only eight hazardous air pollutants for regulation. The 1990 Amendments tried a broader approach. Congress listed 189 substances that state and local government agencies had linked to cancer and other serious health effects and directed EPA to regulate them in two phases.[5] The first phase, a technology-based phase, is mostly complete. In just over ten years, EPA stimulated much greater decreases in hazardous air pollutants, and the risks of serious illness associated with them, than it had achieved in the twenty years preceding the 1990 Amendments. While EPA has not often met the numerous statutory deadlines governing this massive program, it has experienced nothing like the enormous delays that routinely riddled the pre-1990 implementation process.[6] Moreover, the breadth of the new program offers better protection, because people breathe in a mixture of carcinogens and a broad approach is needed to protect them from the combined effects of many different pollutants. EPA has just begun work on a second phase, designed to eliminate the residual risks of cancer, birth defects, and other serious illness remaining after the first round cuts. This second phase requires regulation to protect public health with an ample margin of safety, employing a precautionary approach to public health. While the 1990 Amendments generally required two rounds of cuts for all sources of listed pollutants, it contained a temporary exemption for mercury emissions from electric utilities. This provision required a study and a discretionary decision about whether to regulate toxics from electric utilities.[7] While EPA decided to regulate mercury and other hazardous air pollutants from electric utilities, it made that decision very late (2000) and has not yet completed the regulation. Nevertheless, EPA has committed to regulating mercury from electric utilities by the end of 2004, which should provide substantial reductions protecting public health and the environment from mercury. This commitment to a utility "maximum achievable control technology" (MACT) standard is extremely important, because mercury accumulates in the environment and can cause many serious health problems in human beings. Challenges for the Future While we have made progress, the air program still has gaps and weaknesses. We have failed to effectively address greenhouse gas emissions, which rose approximately 14.1% between 1990 and 2000, in spite of voluntary efforts to address the problem.[8] The greenhouse gas emissions rose because the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 did not address them. The overwhelming majority of this pollution comes from a single class of
activities--burning fossil fuels. We
burn massive amounts of coal in order to generate electricity.
We refine gasoline and then burn it in automobiles and other kinds of
engines. Fossil
fuel consumption accounted for 82 percent of greenhouse gases in the 1990s, the
gases that contribute to climate change.[9]
Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion are almost evenly
divided between industrial uses, transportation, and residential and commercial
buildings, with electric utilities (which burn energy used for both industry and
buildings) contributing about 36% of the carbon dioxide.[10]
We have not implemented sufficiently demanding and comprehensive standards to encourage significant changes in how we generate electricity. Such changes would address climate and reduce growing damage to public health and the environment. We need to improve monitoring of hazardous air pollutants and volatile organic compounds. All of the risk assessment in the world will not clarify the health effects of hazardous air pollution, unless we know much more about what people are breathing than we know now. Quantitative assessment of poorly understood risks simply masks what we do not know with seemingly precise, but quite unreliable, numbers. Finally, the air program relies heavily upon state regulation. But EPA has proven extremely reluctant to enforce state obligations. As a result, the significant progress achieved through state programs has amounted to something less than the 1990 Amendments envision. More demanding and specific direct federal regulation of nationally significant pollution sources like power plants would certainly help. But Congressional support for state delivery of environmental benefits to the public will remain essential. Conclusion The states and EPA have made significant progress in protecting public health and the environment. They are in the midst of implementing a number of programs that promise to deepen and continue this progress. [1] See Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report (Cambridge University Press 2001). [2] See Charles T. Driscoll et al., Acidic Deposition in the Northeastern United States: Sources and Inputs, Ecosystem Effects, and Management Strategies, 51 BioSciences 180 (2001); Charles T. Driscoll et al., Acid Rain Revisited: Advances in Scientific Understanding Since the Passage of the 1970 and 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (Hubbard Brook Research Foundations, 2001). [3] EPA, National Air Quality and Emissions Trends Report, 1999 Appendix A (2001). [4] Id. The Toxics release inventory shows a decline of hazardous air pollutants of 39% between 1992 and 1999. Much of this data is imprecise, because of a lack of comprehensive monitoring. The information respecting hazardous air pollutants represents reporting by a small subset of toxic emitters (albeit ones with especially large emissions) using estimation methods of the operators' choosing. See EPA, Toxic Release Inventory 1999: Executive Summary, E-10-11 (2001). TRI data may exclude some reductions required by EPA and include some reductions made for other reasons (such as state standards). [5] 42 U.S.C. § 7412(b)(2). [6] See e.g. Natural Resources Defense Council v. EPA, 705 F. Supp. 698, 703 (D.D.C. 1989) (discussing a ten year delay in promulgating a benzene standard). [7] 42 U.S.C. § 7412(n). [8] U.S. EPA, Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2000, E-2 (2002). [9]See
United States EPA, Inventory of
U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sink: 1990-1999 at ES-3 n. 6 (2001).
This figure refers to gases weighted by global warming
potential. Carbon dioxide from
fossil fuel combustion alone accounted for 80% of weighted emissions.
Id. at ES-3. [10]Id.
at ES-15 (Industrial end-use sector 33 percent, transportation, 31 percent,
residential and commercial end uses 35%).
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