Air Quality Manual: Method for Analyzing and Reporting Highway Impact on Air Quality (Revised April 1974).

摘要

The modern highway engineer, in addition to his historic responsibilities for planning, designing, building, and operating a transportation system, has become increasingly concerned with the amenities surrounding such a system. Foremost among these amenities are safety, aesthetics, and environmental protection. This manual, and those in the series associated with it, are directed at one aspect of environmental protection, namely that of air quality. Air pollution resulting from the use of motor vehicles powered by internal combustion engines has had an extraordinary effect upon the quality of life in large urban areas. Effects on man have ranged from minor eye irritation to premature death in some susceptible individuals. Effects on things valued by man range from the premature deterioration of fabrics and rubber compounds to the decay and death of Ponderosa pine in recreational areas. The engineer, in responding to the need for environmental protection, is motivated by several forces. The first to make an appearance was in the form of a change in public priorities. In certain areas, freeways were no longer welcome neighbors and pressure for environmental protection began to be exerted through neighborhood groups and environmental coalitions appearing at public hearings. The concerns of these groups were eventually expressed in public law, beginning, for all intents and purposes, with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. Another federal law, the 1970 Amendments to the Clean Air Act, and a California law, the California Environmental Quality Act, followed in quick succession.