Clean Air Act of 1990 This paper will briefly dis

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 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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