New Directions for the Clean Air Act

What happened to derail the slated 1981 authorization of the Clean Air Act, indisputably the major piece of environmental, safety, or health legislation enacted during the 1970s? Since both business groups and environmentalists were dissatisfied with parts of the Act and the way it was being enforced, one might have guessed it would have been high on the congressional agenda. Moreover, the Reagan administration announced early that reform of federal regulation—particularly environmental regulation—would stand along with tax reductions and budget cuts as a major component of its economic recovery program. Instead, 1981 has come and gone without so much as a single proposed amendment to the Clean Air Act reported out of committee.

A slow year

What factors explain the "Clean Air Inaction" of 1981? Most important was the administration's on-again, off-again approach. After missing a number of self-imposed deadlines by which it was to have submitted specific proposed changes in the act, the administration finally settled for enunciating a dozen or so "principles" it would like to see Congress adhere to in revising the Clean Air Act. Congress mostly treaded water waiting for an administration package that never came.

In addition, neither Sen. Robert T. Stafford (R-Vermont), the chairman of the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, nor Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-California), chairman of the Subcommittee on Health and Environment of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, was anxious to see major changes made in the act, even if some of their colleagues were eager to do so. Thus, bills to amend the approaches to both stationary and mobile source air pollution controls in the Clean Air Act got nowhere in the House and never even came up in the Senate. The year ended with observers wondering whether 1982 would see any more progress, especially given congressional reluctance to embrace other than cosmetic changes in popular statutes during an election year.

Looking ahead

The debate almost certainly will sharpen. With at least the first round of the tax and budget fights behind it, the administration can be expected to devote more attention to regulatory matters, the Clean Air Act foremost among them. In January, in fact, the administration threw its weight behind H.R. 5252, a bipartisan bill that would make a number of important changes in the Clean Air Act while leaving intact some of its more controversial features.

Briefly, the bill would relax considerably the emissions standards required of new automobiles; give states more time to meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards established by the Environmental Protection Agency; permit more air pollution in some parts of the country that are cleaner than what is required by the EPA standards; streamline the process by which the states plan the controls they will impose on polluters; and make other changes—generally relaxations—as well. Because the thrust of the bill is to weaken an act they view as unnecessarily strict and complex, business groups have rallied around H.R. 5252. Environmentalists and many state and local officials, who argue that the act should be made more strict, predictably are alarmed by the bipartisan support the bill appears to be attracting. Thus, battle lines are being drawn.

"Inviolate" principles?

In light of these developments, it is interesting to see what changes are not being suggested in the act, since they sometimes affect those that are. When debate began on the Clean Air Act last year, one target of the business community as well as many policy analysts was Section 109, which describes the way uniform national air quality standards are to be set. Briefly, these standards are to provide a margin of safety against adverse health effects, even among the most sensitive population groups (asthmatics and angina patients, for example), and are not to depend on the costs of attainment.

These provisions are unsettling, because most researchers have come to believe that there is no level of pollution below which exposures are completely safe, thus implying that zero emissions are the only safe levels for the common air pollutants. As much as we like clean air, surely no one would argue that we should pursue that goal by ceasing all fossil fuel combustion in cars, homes, factories, and power plants. Moreover, even if there were some safe level, an EPA Administrator, if permitted to do so by the act, might conclude that the adverse health effects avoided at that level were not worth the extra costs incurred in getting there from some slightly higher level. (This argument cannot be dismissed lightly: some studies suggest that we now may be spending several thousand dollars to prevent one person's unhealthy exposure to air pollution for one hour.) Since budgetary constraints do not permit the nation to make all its highways, airports, hospitals, and foods absolutely free from risk, it may be asked why we pursue this approach in air quality.

Although H.R. 5252 contains no proposal to revise the standard-setting process, it certainly reflects the effects of the current approach. Indeed, one can argue that the reason many states need more time to meet the standards is because these standards are to apply uniformly to all areas and because they are set without regard to costs. Thus, one alternative to the current approach might be to balance the health benefits associated with tighter standards against the costs of their attainment. In fact, since meteorological and geographical conditions can make it extraordinarily difficult for particular areas to meet the standards for certain pollutants (Los Angeles and ozone being the best known example), it might be worth considering slightly different standards for different areas, as opposed to nationwide uniformity. No such proposal is likely to be entertained soon, however.

H.R. 5252 fails to address another important issue on the agenda of many would-be reformers—the long-range transport of pollution from a source in one region to receptors in others ("acid rain" is one such example). The evidence is mounting about the apparently serious dimensions of this problem. Yet because the Clean Air Act takes a local approach to air pollution control—each district can regulate only those polluters within its jurisdiction—it is nearly impossible to do anything about sources which "airmail" pollution from one region to another. Unfortunately, neither the sponsors of H.R. 5252 nor the administration has expressed much interest in this problem. This is somewhat surprising in the latter case because, unlike some environmental problems, interregional air pollution does not lend itself to solution at the state or local level, and thus appears to call for federal involvement.

Of course, both the standard-setting process and acid rain may come up in later debate. Other important issues not currently addressed in H.R. 5252 no doubt will be raised as well. These include the current requirement that new electric power plants scrub their stack gases regardless of the sulfur content of the coal they use; the controversial regulations protecting visibility that EPA is developing; controls on toxic or hazardous pollutants; and perhaps even the expanded use of economic incentives in environmental policy, in place of or in conjunction with more traditional regulatory approaches.

Finally, one can only hope that administrative, if not legislative, changes are made in the way that compliance with air quality rules is monitored and enforced under the Clean Air Act. Without an expanded and improved national network of ambient and source monitors, it will be impossible to know for sure whether the nation is making progress or losing ground in the expensive fight for clean air. Nor will we know where to crack down, even if it becomes clear that the effort is not producing the results it should.

The Clean Air Act has important effects on both public health and the economic health of the nation. It also is important as a symbol of commitment to environmental quality. For these reasons, the disposition of H.R. 5252 and the other proposed changes in the act should be watched closely. They may signal the shape of things to come.