August 5, 1976
Page 25877
Mr. MUSKIE Mr. President, concern has been expressed with the fact that the Clean Air Act does not permit new sources of pollutants to locate in areas where ambient standards for those pollutants are presently exceeded. They understand that the section would provide a narrow exception from that requirement for expansion of existing sources in a region but it does not permit broad new sources to come into such areas.
The committee position is — and the Clean Air Act supports the argument — that so long as a new source will not "prevent attainment or maintenance of standards," it can be located in a dirty air region. But, if the Administrator or a State determines that a new source will prevent or interfere with attainment or maintenance of ambient standards, he cannot permit it.
The committee loophole was intended to provide some flexibility for growth in dirty air areas especially for those kinds of facilities which had heavy capital investment and which could not move or for which economic expansion at another unrelated site was prohibitively expensive. It carries the added benefit of forcing both best available technology on the sources and assured compliance with applicable emission limits. The alternative was delay and decline of existing urban industrial centers even though there was a willingness to invest in the best available technology and continue to make progress to meet ambient standards — the tests of the bill.
At the same time, the committee recognized that new growth associated with new sources not related to existing facilities could only occur where that new source was able to meet the test of the current law — not to prevent or interfere.
To carve out a loophole broad enough to accommodate the desire to locate new refineries and tank farms in regions where the oxidant standard is violated on a regular basis would be to abandon the health basis for regulation. This would be a back door way to void the idea of health standards by a date certain. And there are no control or compliance benefits because new sources have nothing to offer but more air pollution. It would make available the 10-year extension for communities with transportation control problems — community retrofit problems — to new refineries.
If this amendment were to be adopted — or if the record were to admit to any flexibility beyond section 11 or the current requirement not to prevent or interfere — the basic health protection purpose of the law would be null and void.