Drawing Boundaries for Air Quality Control Under the Clean Air Act: The Importance of NOT Being Nonattainment

摘要

Much has changed with regard to air pollution control since 1970 when Congress revised the Clean Air Act to assume a form that, in very broad terms, it retains today. From a legal point of view, while states still retained at that time wide-ranging discretion to design the regulatory controls necessary to attain the air quality goals of the Act, that discretion was significantly limited when Congress revisited the Act in 1977. State discretion diminished to an even greater extent, particularly with regard to the air pollutants ozone, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter, when President George H.W. Bush signed the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.