This report summarizes the Clean Air Act and its major regulatory requirements. Contents: Introduction; Overview; National Ambient Air Quality Standards; State Implementation Plans; Non-Attainment Requirements: Requirements for Ozone Non-Attainment Areas (NAA); Requirements for Carbon Monoxide NAA; Requirements for Particulate NAA; Transported Air Pollution; Emission Standards for Mobile Sources; Hazardous Air Pollutants; New Source Performance Standards; Solid Waste Incinerators; Prevention of Significant Deterioration/ Regional Haze; Acid Deposition Control; Permits; Enforcement; Stratospheric Ozone Protection. Charts and tables. This is a print on demand edition of an important, hard-to-find publication.

The Clean Air Act of 1970 set out for the United States a basic, yet ambitious, objective to reduce pollution to levels that protect health and welfare. The Act set out state and federal regulations to limit emissions and the Environmental Protection Agency was established to help enforce the regulations. The Act has since had several amendments, notably in 1977 and 1990, and has successfully helped to increase air quality. This book reviews the history of the Clean Air Act of 1970 including the political, business, and scientific elements that went into establishing the Act, emphasizing the importance that scientific evidence played in shaping policy. The analysis then extends to examine the effects of the Act over the past forty years including the Environmental Protection Agency's evolving role and the role of states and industry in shaping and implementing policy. Finally, the book offers best practices to guide allocation of respective government and industry roles to guide sustainable development. The history and analysis of the Clean Air Act presented in this book illustrates the centrality of scientific analysis and technological capacity in driving environmental policy development. It would be useful for policy makers, environmental scientists, and anyone interested in gaining a clearer understand of the interaction of science and policy. - Offers an overview of the 1970 Clean Air Act and its subsequent effects - Highlights the relationship between policy and scientific discovery - Extracts lessons from the United States to apply to other policy and national contexts

Revised to include several recent and important Clean Air Act developments, including the Clear Skies Initiative, this completely updated Handbook provides you with a broad overview of all the complex regulatory requirements of the Act and its amendments. In addition to offering an introduction to the history and structure of the Clean Air Act, the most complex piece of environmental legislation ever enacted, the Handbook examines the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) efforts to implement the Act. Those efforts include EPA's initiatives to impose emission reduction requirements through new air quality standards adopted in 1997 and made more stringent in 2006 and EPA's rules and guidance implementing the Title I nonattainment program and ongoing federal efforts to address interstate pollution issues. The Handbook also includes summaries of EPA's rules for state-administered Title V operating permit programs and the key rules promulgated by EPA to implement the Title IV acid rain program.

A current guide to one of the most complicated and extensive pieces of environmental legislation ever written, this broad and balanced perpective to the statute that brings together the experience of over two dozen private and public sector.

In recent years, federal courts have become increasingly aggressive in shaping regulatory policy, abandoning their traditional deference to bureaucratic expertise. This new judicial activism has been particular evident in the regulation of air pollution. R. Shep Melnick analyzes the effects a variety of court decisions have had on federal air pollution control policy and assesses the courts’ institutional capacity for policymaking in such a complex arena. In six cases studies of environmental programs or issues he examines the interplay among the courts, the Environmental Protection Agency, Congress, and the White House. The conventional wisdom is that the courts have improved environmental policymaking, but Melnick concludes that as a whole “the consequences of court action under the Clean Air Act are neither random nor beneficial.” He finds that “court action has encouraged legislators and administrators to establish goals without considering how they can be achieved,” widening the gap between promise and performance. The results, he charges, have been increased cynicism, serious inefficiencies and inequities, and a lack of rational debate. An analysis of the institutional characteristics of the judicial branch reveals how these problems have come about and why they are likely to afflict other programs as well as environmental regulation. The author proposes several reforms to improve the courts’ ability to handle regulatory cases.

Editor Michael Burger brings together a comprehensive assessment of how one statutory provision – Section 115 of the Clean Air Act, “International Air Pollution” – provides the executive branch of the U.S. government with the authority, procedures, and mechanisms to work with the states and private sector to take national climate action.