Clean Air Act of 1990 This paper will briefly dis

The 1990 Clean Air Act is actually a series of amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1970. These amendments, however, virtually replace many of the provisions of the 1970 Act and comprise, in and of themselves, an entirely new set of laws regarding air pollution. The 1990 Amendments were drawn up in response to EPA studies which showed that 1) 96 cities had yet to attain the national standard for ozone set in 1970, 2) 41 cities did not meet the standard for carbon monoxide, and 3) 72 cities did not meet the standard for particulate matter. In addition, the EPA had only regulated 7 hazardous air pollutants, out of a potential list of several hundred, due to controversy over, and legal challenges to, the 1970 provisions (Reilly, 1991, p. 3). The purpose of the new amendments was to provide a flexible, results-oriented law, one which did not legislate the part

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e need for expensive and environmentally disruptive new water-supply projects. Third, there is the elimination of government subsidies; one example is the subsidizing of below-cost timber sales, which recover less money than is spent in making the timber available. Such subsidies encourage excessive timber cutting (Stavins & Whitehead, 1992, p. 11). Finally, there are tradable pollution permits, as illustrated by the example of the acid rain provisions in the 1990 Act (Stavins & Whitehead, 1992, p. 10). Under the relevant provisions of the 1990 Act, the government established overall levels of allowable sulfur dioxide, and other pollutants which contribute to acid rain, in specific regions where industrial emissions largely contribute to acid rain. Businesses in this area are allocated permits to emit some fraction of the overall total allowable pollution level. Companies which keep their emissions below the allocated level may sell or lease their surplus permits to other firms or use them to offset excess emissions in other parts of their own facilities (Stavins & Whitehead, 1992, p. 10). Thus, businesses possess an economic incentive to reduce their emissions below the fractional amount allotted to them. The 1990 amendments pr
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Approximate Word count = 1827
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)