The passage of the Water Pollution Control Act of 1948, by the federal government began assisting local authorities in building sewage treatment plants, and it initiated a limited program for air pollution research in 1955. In 1950s - 1960s the federal government , was slowly beginning to formulate a policy to control industrial pollution and human waste. Air and water pollution was long considered strictly a local issue. That changed after 1962 when Rachel Carson wrote the Silent Spring.
Following the Clean Air Act of 1963 and amendments to the water pollution law, Washington began urging the states to set pollution abatement standards and to formulate implementation plans based on federal guidelines. On April 22, 1970 the first nationwide teach-in about the environment was organized to educate the public about the ecology. The event was named Earth Day, and it demonstrated ecology's new place on the nation's social and political agendas. The effect was a broadly based public demand for more vigorous and comprehensive federal action to prevent environmental degradation.
As a result, many environmental laws were quickly enacted and implemented throughout the 1970s, but with growing concern over their effect on the economy and increasing realization that administrative agencies lacked the resources and the capacity to assume their new responsibilities. The Clean Air Act of 1970 is really an amendment of earlier laws. The Clean Air Act has been amended several times each time the objective remained true to the original. However, methods of implementation, technology, economics, public opinion and politics were the driving force. The following is a list of the amendments to the Clean Act.
1970 Public Law 91-512, "Resource Recovery Act" set up programs of demonstration and construction grants for innovative solid waste management systems; provided technical and financial assistance to state and local agencies in developing resource recovery and waste disposal systems.
1970 Public Law 91-604, required environmental Protection Agency to set national primary and secondary air quality standards and certain emission limits; required states to develop implementation plans by specific dates; required reductions in automobile emissions.
1977 Public Law 95-95, postponed deadlines for compliance with automobile emission and air quality standards set new standard for " prevention of significant deterioration" in clean air areas. This bill was passed in response to non compliance by the stated time of the 1970 law. Review date was set for 1981.
The Clean Air Act of 1977 established clean air standards for all cities to meet by 1982. Again in 1981 the Environmental Protection Agency again provided and extension of compliance to December 1987.
On December 31, 1987 , many cities still failed to meet minimum standards set by the renewal of the Clean Air Act for six air pollutants. The six pollutants are: carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, lead, and volatile organic compounds (VOC).
1990 Public Law 101-549; set new requirements and deadlines of three to twenty years for major urban areas to meet federal clean air standards; imposed new stricter emission standards for motor vehicles and mandated cleaner fuels; required reductions in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides by power plants to limit acid deposition and created a market system of emission allowances; required regulation to set emission limits for all major sources of toxic or hazardous air pollutants and listed 189 chemicals to be regulated; prohibited the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) by the year 2000 and set phase out of other ozone (O3) depleting chemicals.
Title One Air Pollution and Control divides air pollution into two categories:
A.) Ozone standards were set as 0.12 parts per million, measured as a one hour average. It also divided the ozone levels as: marginal ( 0.121-0.138); moderate ( 0.138-0.160); serious ( 0.160-0.180); severe ( 0.180-0.280) and extreme (0.28 and higher). EPA then set guidelines and timetables accordingly to their ozone levels at the time of the amended "act". The timetable for each ozone level is as follows: marginal three years, moderate six years, serious nine years, severe fifteen years and an ozone level of 0.190-0.28 seventeen years; Los Angeles was the only city in the extreme level and they received twenty years to comply.
B.) Carbon monoxide, particulate matter and defined major sources as those which contribute 100 tons per year of ozone precursor, 50 tons as serious, 25 severe and 10 tons as extreme. Major sources are to install reasonably available control technology as defined by the EPA. SIP's plan must include enforceable emissions limitation, related control measures, schedules and timetable for compliance. It also established:
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1. A system to monitor, compile and analyze data on air quality.
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2. Enforcement procedures
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3. Control on interstate air pollution
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4. Procedure to ensure adequate personnel, funding and authorities
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5. Monitoring systems
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6. Fee schedule to cover the cost of reviewing or implementing permits.
Failure to comply would result in a reduction of the state's federal highway fund, and or that the state's industrial project off set emission by a 2:1 ratio.
1990 Clean Air Act provides economic incentives for cleaning up pollution. It has a market based approach designed to cleanup air pollution as efficiently and economically as possible. Businesses make choices of the best way to solve problems. Acid rain cleanups afford business's choice about how they research their pollution allowances. That allowance potential can be traded, bought and sold.
Senators from across the Northeast have united behind a plan they hope, will clean the air in their home states by cleaning up electric power plants across the nation. Mercury contamination in lakes are likely entered from the air - carried by easterly winds from the smoke stacks of Midwest coal-burning power plants. Though the northeast begun to improve their power plants, the effects are minimized. To halt this kind of pollution, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., and Jim Jeffords, R-Vt., have introduced legislation that would require coal- and oil-burning power plants to reduce emissions of pollutants that damage human health and the environment.
The proposed Clean Energy Act of 1999: would regulate nitrogen oxides, sulfur, mercury, and carbon dioxides emissions from these power plants. Nitrogen oxides lead to smog. Sulfur emissions increase acid rain. Mercury can enter the food chain through fish. And carbon dioxide is a major contributor to global warning. Goals can and must be achieved regionally and nationally if every community is to be assured clean air and clean water.
The bill would for the first time, end pollution exemptions for old power plants currently grandfather under the Clean Air Act- including five in Connecticut.
The five plants - Bridgeport Harbor Station, New Haven Harbor Station, Middletown Station, Norwalk Harbor Station and Montville Station. They combine for more than 50% of the smog - and - soot - forming pollutants emitted by all industrial polluters in the state. The annual air pollution emitted from the plants are equivalent to 400,000 cars, according to Connecticut Public Interest Research Group ( ConnPRIG). Smog and soot which are called ozone smog, and fine particulate matter; are the two most common and most dangerous air pollutants in Connecticut. Prolong exposure can significantly reduce lung function, increase asthma attacks, and cause premature deaths.
The proposed Clean Energy Act of 1999 would: Reduce emissions of a full range of pollutants- nitrogen oxides, sulfur, mercury and carbon dioxide. Require increased investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency programs from 2.5 percent in 2000 to 20 percent in 2020. Apply to every 15 megawatt or larger power plant in America. Require the Environmental Protection Agency to study the effect pollutants have on communities in instances when power plants exceed Clean Air Act standards by 25 percent or more. Provide consumers information to choose clean sources of power deregulated market.