August 10, 1967
Page 22188
THE CONSERVATION FOUNDATION NEWSLETTER ANALYZES AIR QUALITY ACT
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, on July 18 the Senate unanimously passed S. 780, the Air Quality Act of 1967. Of major importance to the Federal effort to control and abate air pollution, S. 780 is one of the most far-reaching and complex bills ever considered by the Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution.
Shortly after Senate action on S. 780, Marvin Zeldin, editor of the newsletter of the Conservation Foundation, wrote a concise and objective analysis of the legislation. I commend Mr. Zeldin for his excellent and clear analysis of the objectives and issues involved in this legislation and to call the article to the attention of the Senate.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
UNITED STATES GETS NEW AUTHORITY, STATES LAST CHANCE TO ACT IN NEW AIR POLLUTION CONTROL BILL PASSED BY SENATE
The 90th Congress is going to concede the failure of state and local governments to prevent and control air pollution. It will do so by giving state and local governments one last chance, and a deadline, to act – and by empowering the secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare to take action if the states fail again. The result could be a cleaner and healthier environment.
From the first relatively weak legislation enacted in 1955, federal programs to deal with air pollution have been built on the premise that air pollution is a problem for state and local control.
But after 12 years and millions of hopeful words:
Only 14 states have started to implement their authority to adopt air quality and emission standards.
Fewer than 100 local governments have air pollution control programs in operation. Only one-third of the 212 standard metropolitan statistical areas in the nation are served by meaningful air pollution control programs.
There is not a single effective interstate air pollution control program in the nation. Much of the technological know-how which we possess is not being applied to control air pollution.
Every major metropolitan area in the country has an air pollution problem – and it's growing worse virtually everywhere as tons of pollutants continue to pour into the air.
The new legislative approach was unanimously approved this month by the Senate Public Works Committee, after extensive hearings by its subcommittee on air and water pollution, headed by Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine. The bill (S. 780, as amended) then passed the Senate July 18 by a vote of 88-0. Its major provisions:
1. The bill gives the federal government authority to seek an immediate court injunction to stop air pollution which presents "an imminent and substantial endangerment to the health of persons" if the appropriate state or local authorities have not acted.
This provision empowers the federal government to act in such emergencies as last Thanksgiving Day's temperature inversion which trapped pollutants over metropolitan New York City. If the city or state failed to act, the federal government could, under the new language, get court orders to close down factories and incinerators, stop all open burning, shut down power plants burning high sulfur content coal or oil, and keep cars off the roads until the emergency passed. Also, this provision could conceivably allow the federal government to go to court to shut down a plan pouring noxious fumes into the air over any inhabited area, be there 100 or 1 million persons.
Would this provision be used? Muskie told a press conference he thought it unlikely. But he added that "sometimes threats are as valuable as anything." .
2. The bill gives the states 15 months in which to adopt air quality standards and a plan to implement and enforce the standards.
First, the federal government will designate "air quality control regions" – those parts of the country with serious air pollution problems. Each state could be covered by one or more regions. Some regions could cross state boundaries. And portions of states not afflicted with significant air pollution could be left uncovered.
Then HEW will develop and send the states "criteria of air quality" for the "protection of the public health and welfare." It will also give the states data on "recommended pollution control techniques" necessary to achieve the air quality set forth in the criteria.
After receiving the criteria and recommended control techniques, each state will then have: (1) 90 days in which to file a letter of intent with the federal government saying that it will adopt "ambient air quality standards" for designated control regions, after holding public hearings. (2)
Then, 180 days to adopt the standards. (3) And then, another 180 days to adopt a plan for the implementation, maintenance, and enforcement of such standards of air quality.
Both the standards and the enforcement plan will be subject to approval by the federal government. If a state does not file a letter of intent, or if the air quality standards it does adopt are deemed inadequate, the federal government could issue standards to cover all or part of the state. (Air pollution control is thus evolving as water pollution control did two years ago, when Congress gave states until June 30, 1967, to submit proposed water quality standards, subject to federal approval, for interstate waters.)
3. The bill gives the federal government authority to take court action if a state fails to enforce air quality standards in designated control regions.
After 180 days' notice, HEW is empowered to ask the U.S. Attorney General to bring suit to stop any violation of the standards. Until control regions are designated, criteria issued, and standards created by state or federal action, the old abatement machinery will continue to prevail. The new bill modifies this existing machinery to permit all "interested parties" to participate in the formal conference stage of the abatement procedure. Today only parties asked to participate by a local, state or interstate control agency can do so. The new provision gives alleged polluters, as well as conservation and other civic organizations, the right to present their views at the conference stage.
The abatement machinery in the existing law grinds slowly. Presumably the new emergency power outlined in item 1 above could minimize the frequency of critical threats to health while the new criteria and standards provisions are being implemented.
What the Senate Public Works Committee bill does not include – and what has drawn widespread emphasis in the press – is what the Johnson Administration proposed with great fanfare early this year: national industrial emission standards.
HEW spokesmen urged national emission standards as a way to end city-to-city and state-to-state differences in controls of industrial plants and as a way to remove the economic temptation for industry to play one area off against another, or even leave or avoid areas with stringent regulation of emissions.
At a press conference at which he unveiled the new bill, Senator Muskie explained why his subcommittee and then the full Public Works Committee rejected the national emissions approach: "The Administration itself did not propose uniform national emission standards but rather minimal national standards. Clearly, therefore, there would be local variations which would not eliminate economic disadvantages."
Muskie also noted that under his committee's bill, HEW "has authority to deal effectively with any industry which, by its nature, is a danger to health and welfare, in any location."
In addition, Muskie said, "national emission standards would eliminate some control options – relocation of pollution sources, fuel substitutes, etc. – which may be essential in serious problem areas in the absence of effective technology." Furthermore, "wise use of capital resources dictates that the first priority for the pollution control dollar is in those areas where the problem is most critical. National emission standards would give equal priority to critical areas and areas where no problem presently exists."
The bill does offer a sop to supporters of national emission standards; it directs HEW to undertake a two-year study "on the need for and effect of national emission standards for stationary sources."
CLEANER AIR AHEAD?
Air pollution control and legislative experts in Washington estimate that the Senate bill will result in enforceable air quality standards no later than 62 months after enactment – even if a state or local control agency or polluter used all procedural and due process delays inherent in the legislation. Cleaner air could thus be five years and two months away.
In its 1963 amendments to the Clean Air Act, Congress directed HEW to issue criteria on the harmful effects of air pollutants, singly or in combination, for the guidance of state and local control agencies.
Air quality criteria, as explained recently by an HEW spokesman, sum up known effects of pollutants in the atmosphere. They describe the effects of pollutants on health, vegetation, materials, visibility. Criteria reveal the lowest level of exposure at which specific deleterious effects have been reported. Criteria provide a base on which state and local air pollution control agencies can build air quality standards and a base for determining emission standards for specific pollutants. Criteria must thus come first.
Despite the need for criteria, almost four years passed before HEW issued its first set in March of this year. (It covered sulfur oxides; see item on sulfur, coal and criteria.)
HEW was asked during the Senate hearings if "present progress in establishing criteria – meaning one set in almost four years – indicated that "emission standards are years away." HEW replied that if Congress authorized emission standards this year, it could issue them for 10 industry-pollutant combinations by the end of 1968 and for another 30 by September, 1969.
Also in reply to prodding by the Senate committee, HEW said it expects to complete criteria for photochemical oxidants and particulate pollutants in the fall of 1967, and criteria for nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and carbon monoxide early in 1968. Other pollutants for which "the development of criteria is under consideration include lead, fluorides, hydrogen sulfide, certain heavy metals, ethylene, asbestos, organic carcinogens, and aldehydes."
If HEW is indeed finally ready to turn out the needed criteria, and if the House passes a similarly strong bill, there could well be cleaner air ahead. (The House Commerce Committee, headed by Congressman Harley Staggers of West Virginia, might begin hearings on the air pollution bill in early August, according to a committee spokesman.)
OTHER PROVISIONS OF S. 780
The Air Quality Act of 1967, as passed by the Senate, also:
Authorizes HEW to establish interstate air quality planning commissions if the states fail to create needed interstate control agencies.
Authorizes $375 million for three years for an expanded research and development program for controlling pollution from fuels and vehicles. (Existing law points the finger at sulfur as a pollutant. It directs HEW to carry on research to develop techniques "for extracting sulfur from fuels" and to "reduce emissions of oxides of sulfur produced by the combustion of sulfur containing fuels." In the process of broadening and expanding the research and development section, the Senate committee dropped all mention of sulfur and sulfur oxides. They will now be covered, presumably, by the phrase "removal of potential pollutants from fuels.")
Writes into law the federal preemption of the right to set standards for automobile exhaust emissions (as has already been done, in effect), but exempts California from this preemption. (California acted first to control auto emissions and this language gives it the right to require stricter controls if it wishes.)
Requires federal registration of fuel additives.
Authorizes grants to meet up to two-thirds of states' costs for developing motor vehicle emission inspection and testing programs. Authorizes $325 million for three years to continue the program of grants to interstate, state, and local control agencies, and for research programs other than the fuels-and-vehicles provision, which carries a $375 million authorization for three years.
Total authorizations for three years – 1968, 1969 and 1970 fiscal years – under the new bill: $700 million – compared to authorizations of $46 million for 1967, $66 million for 1968, and $74 million for 1969 in the existing law.
TAX RELIEF FOR POLLUTION CONTROL? TWO VIEWS
The Senate Public Works Committee, in its report on the Air Quality Act of 1967 (Senate Report 403, July 15, 1967)
"Last year when the committee reported the Clean Water Restoration Act the following statement appeared:
"'This committee strongly recommends that the appropriate congressional committees give consideration to tax relief proposals for industrial pollution control activities. For the most part, pollution control does not provide a return on an investment to an industry. Installation of pollution control devices is costly and, in many cases, non-remunerative. The billion dollars of capital investment which will have to be made by the industrial sector for the benefit of the entire society will place a substantial burden on corporate resources; and ultimately on the general public. The committee suggests that there are several alternative methods of aiding industry in meeting its pollution control obligations.' "
"The committee reasserts this position and strongly urges that the appropriate committees of the Congress consider tax relief legislation."
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Stanley S. Surrey, in an address earlier this year: "Another aspect of financial assistance sought through the tax system is the urging in many quarters for a whole structure of special tax credits for particular activities. Prominent among these are special tax credits for anti-pollution equipment and for manpower training programs. Certainly one can understand and appreciate the important social goals here involved....
"(But) the Bureau of the Budget and the President carefully weigh many projects and plans to determine the precise dollar amount to be spent in an area. This is followed by a similar scrutiny by the appropriation committees and the legislative committees that have jurisdiction over the area. There is something totally amiss in a governmental system that would then have us suddenly turn to the revenue committees and ask them to adopt a special tax credit which would set aside all this careful deliberation and instead provide an open-ended spending of government funds through the tax credit without any clear idea of the costs involved or whether the funds will really be spent in the places and for the purposes for which government funds are needed and appropriate.
"It is difficult to understand how critics of back-door financing can fail to look askance at encouraging this policy of open-door, open-window, open-everything financing. Once we resort to a system of specialized tax credits in place of carefully structured expenditure programs, our income tax return will soon involve a string of credits that can be as long as the list of expenditure items in the budget tables."
SOME COMMENTS FROM HEW's TOP SMOG FIGHTER
It's been said before and it will be repeated again and again until and unless it's no longer necessary:
While we don't yet have the technology to control some forms of air pollution, much of the know-how which we do have to control air pollution is not being applied in anything resembling full measure.
Dr. John T. Middleton, who took over as the new director of HEW's National Center for Air Pollution Control early this year, reiterated this theme in his address last month to the 60th annual meeting of the Air Pollution Control Association, held in Cleveland, Ohio. He explained in his keynote speech and in a press conference which followed:
"It is common knowledge that the operator of a source of pollution often has less than adequate motivation to control it Pollution controls ordinarily add to the costs of manufacturing, and do not add to the return on the product The operator, concerned about his competitive position, is often motivated not to control pollution."
He said we have failed to apply known technology "simply because there is no profit, typically, in controlling air pollution for product sales purposes. It's a non-profitable venture. So the motivation to control air pollution is largely one of social need, and industry has not always risen to social and welfare needs for the protection of health and welfare."
What, then, can be done about it? Said Middleton: "The technology that is available has been brought into play where the public has demanded it." It has not been brought into play where "there has been no compulsion, no social obligation. The time's come. We must have this."
Middleton also pointed out that "the history of air pollution control efforts in this country provides abundant evidence that many state and local officials are unable to take decisive action to adopt and enforce effective standards for the control of sources unless the problems have become so obvious, so severe, and so obnoxious that they cannot be tolerated."
Middleton said "the attitudinal framework in which we view this problem is distorted if we do not at this time feel that there is a real sense of urgency about controlling those sources of gross pollution which can be, but which are not controlled." He warned that it is not enough "to repeat the same cliches, the same tired slogans which have been used for at least 60 years."
Asked if there were any significance in his use of the figure "60 years" and the fact that the occasion was the 60th annual meeting of the Air Pollution Control Association, Middleton replied: "It is a well chosen number." He added that "APCA has shown a very significant evolution from a smoke abatement agency in its first year, 60 years ago, to what it is today. There are still some people thinking of smoke abatement, but we have a newer generation who are thinking of the more contemporary problems. I think one should realize that air pollution is a social problem and how one controls air quality deals with really the social aspects, not merely the technical aspects."
Middleton concluded that "we need new weapons in air pollution control today." He's getting some.
HEW LISTS 20 MOST POLLUTED AREAS
According to HEW's National Center for Air Pollution Control, 20 metropolitan areas suffer the most severe air pollution problems in the nation:
Five areas share first place with the most severe problems (HEW made no effort to distinguish among them); Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles-Long Beach, New York, Philadelphia.
Five areas rank second in severity; Boston, Detroit, Newark, Pittsburgh, St. Louis.
Ten areas rank third in severity: Akron, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Gary-Hammond-East Chicago, Indianapolis, Jersey City, Louisville, Milwaukee, Washington, Wilmington.
HEW measured all 65 metropolitan statistical areas with an industrial population of 40,000 or more. Factors used in determining the 20 most polluted areas were suspended particulates (resulting from burning of fuels in cars, incinerators, manufacturing plants, etc.); emission, concentration and density of sulfur dioxides (resulting from the burning of coal and heavy fuel oils and from sulfuric acid manufacturing); total consumption of gasoline (to reflect pollution from automobiles, including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and particulates); and the density of automobile emissions.
Dr. John Middleton, director of the National Center for Air Pollution Control, said recently the Center was perhaps "timid in listing them alphabetically, by the first five and the second five and the third 10."
From the list, he added, "we hope that people will become interested in what kind of city they are living in and perhaps give support to local control agencies to do something more than they are."
SOME PUBLIC ATTITUDES ON AIR POLLUTION
A majority of people responding to recent surveys on air pollution "felt the federal government should take the lead in controlling air pollution, albeit with the aid of state and local agencies."
So said Professor Ido DeGroot of the University of Cincinnati, in a paper at the APCA convention in Cleveland last month. DeGroot added that "people simply did not complain because there was little they saw that could be done." From the six studies which he analyzed,
DeGroot found that people feel the solution "is purely technical and hence must be in the hands of the technician-planner, working with the social scientist, environmental health specialist, and all other technicians who are entrusted with implicit public confidence."
Professor M. Jay Crowe of Penn State University, found a similar public attitude in another study. He reported to the APCA meeting that people feel air pollution "is primarily a problem that industry must solve and as long as industry is doing all it can in this direction," as most people felt in the community surveyed, "then any solution to the problem may be, in effect, beyond citizen efforts."
DeGroot suggested "intensive public education, on a face-to-face basis," to inform people of "What can be done, who is doing it, and what possibly they themselves can do." He said "further information that air pollution exists, per se, appears to be useless."
SOMETHING IS WRONG
"Something is wrong with what we are doing and not doing if you can fly over any city or town in this vast nation, with the possible single exception of Los Angeles, and be greeted by plumes looping in the wind when there is a wind, or streaming out slowly on calm days, looking like so many tattered and tired gray, black or red banners – proclaiming the dogged durability of obsolescence and decay. And you can." (Dr. John T. Middleton, director, National Center for Air Pollution Control, in speech to APCA convention, June 12, 1967.)
TIMING
A. H. Phelps, Jr., of Proctor & Gamble, Cincinnati, describing a plan (not yet implemented) for an interstate air resource management program to cover Hamilton County, Ohio, and Kenton, Campbell, and Boone Counties, Kentucky, in a paper at the recent APCA meeting:
"The concentrations of compounds responsible for photochemical smog are sufficiently high that episodes of eye irritation could occur with stable atmospheric conditions and increased sunlight. Such incidents have been rare, but we did have one at the beginning of Clean Air Week last year."
SULFUR, COAL, AND CRITERIA
After HEW issued air quality criteria for oxides of sulfur, the criteria were promptly attacked by the coal industry. Senator Jennings Randolph of West Virginia, chairman of the Public Works Committee, noted during the hearings that he was attending "more or less in a dual role" – as a member of the committee and as a Senator from a coal producing state. He cautioned that "We might trigger a real recession in West Virginia by over-stringent regulations on sulfur emissions which would prohibit most coal burning."
The bill approved by the committee and by the Senate restates and expands HEW's authority to issue criteria. But the bill also provides that "any criteria issued prior to enactment" of this year's legislation "shall be re-evaluated" in accord with new provisions of the law and "if necessary, modified and reissued." The only set of criteria issued to date covers sulfur oxides. The pertinent new provisions require HEW to consult with advisory committees created by the bill and with appropriate federal departments and agencies.