Clean Air Act

Ahmad R. Peay

Clean Air Act of 1970

History may peg the environmental Earth Day 1970 as a key point in the American public's realization about environmental problems. It is safe to believe that Congress' enactment of the 1970 amendments to the Clean Air Act a few months later was an equally significant milestone. By in large the 1970 amendments moved environmental protection concerns to a prominent position on Capitol Hill, where they remained ever since. It seems fitting that Congress is considering new amendments to the Clean Air Act to assess what lessons might be learned from the events of two eras past.

The comparison of Earth Day and the 1970 amendments was no coincidence. Congress was responding to end public concern about the environmental pollution that was indicated by the Earth Day protests. It was said that Congress responded to public pressure too quickly and rushed through clean-air lawmaking that was not up to the job of answering to real air-pollution concerns. While the amendments may have been the first time that pollution-control efforts obtained such a high profile in Congress, they were not Congress' first effort to address air pollution difficulties. Drafts were made to amendments to correct earlier pollution control policies that had been unsuccessful. The passage of the 1970 amendments adopted new approaches to regulation such as national air quality standards and statutory deadlines for compliance that are commonplace today, but also represented a important turning point in 1970.

Let’s look at Congress' prior efforts to control air pollution, mainly the Air Quality Act of 1967. This act authorized the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare to designate so-called air quality regions throughout the country. States were given primary responsibility for adopting and enforcing pollution control standards within those regions. Some involved in the enactment of the 1967 statute had substantial uncertainties to the capability of the...