This paper will briefly discuss the amendments to the Clean Air Act, passed by Congress in 1990. The discussion will include a description of the Act, the changed regulatory philosophy reflected in the Act, the political maneuvering necessary to pass the Act, and the subsequent implementation of the Act. It is still too early to determine the effectiveness of the Act since many of the regulations promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Act have yet to go into effect. The last part of the paper will therefore highlight the possible consequences of the Act, as suggested by observers.
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 particular technology to be used and did not adhere to hard and fast formulas. The basic idea behind the 1990 provisions was to set the standards for individual regions and allow the companies within those regions to meet the standards using the methods which work best for them (Reilly, 1991, p. 3).
Although much attention within the business community has been paid to the fairly stringent standards established by the Act, the real difference between the 1970 provisions and the 1990 pro...