Clean Air Mess

When Congress passed the Clean Air Act of 1970, its aims were laudable: to keep the nation's air clean and to protect the public from noxious fumes. The trouble was that the act's provisions, if strictly enforced, could also end construction of new factories, power plants and smelters that might belch those fumes in areas that now have clean air. Did the lawmakers intend such a curb on economic growth in undeveloped regions? The issue went to the federal courts in 1972, and the basic ruling--one that was upheld in the U.S. Supreme Court--was that there could be no "significant deterioration in existing air quality in any part of any state."

For the Environmental Protection Agency, defining precisely what constitutes "significant deterioration" posed the familiar dilemma of economy v. ecology. How strictly could the agency interpret the law without disastrous economic consequences? After months of searching for a solution, the EPA has just proposed that it avoid the issue by passing the buck to the states.

"Final decisions concerning development and preservation should be made by the people," says EPA Deputy Administrator John Quarles. "Their future is at stake, and they can make those decisions most effectively through the governments closest to them." Thus, under the EPA's plan, state and local governments will classify their land into three air-quality categories:

> Class I, for pureair regions, where no polluting development can occur.

> Class II, for areas where a moderate amount of development will be allowed, if new industry installs the best available antipollution devices.

> Class III, for areas where major industrial developments (again with mandatory pollution controls) will be concentrated and where air pollution will be tolerated up to a national limit set by the federal EPA.

To help encourage economic growth, the EPA proposes to designate all regions where the air is relatively pure--namely, the more than 80% of the U.S. that is still nonindustrial--as Class II. The states would then be able to either upgrade or downgrade the designation after holding public hearings.

Environmentalists are appalled. Indeed, the Sierra Club, knowing that a Class II designation implies "significant deterioration" of clean air, threatens to go to court to overturn the EPA'S plan. Eventually, the increasingly complex issue may be tossed back into the lap of the Congress, where lawmakers may well amend the Clean Air Act to take into account an important factor ignored in the original legislation: economic needs. That kind of uniform federal regulation--coupled with continuing safeguards against overall deterioration of the air quality in the U.S.--would clearly be preferable to the legal confusion invited by the new EPA proposal.

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