The effect on the 1990 Clean Air Act on the Twin Cities Research Paper

The effect on the 1990 Clean Air Act on the Twin Cities - Research Paper Example Air Quality in the Twin Cities Midway through the 20th century, the United States started growing concerned with air quality, especially in larger cities. Beginning with the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955, the government would continue to pass Acts that would help research and regulate air pollution. In 1963 the first version of the Clean Air Act was passed following the research gained by the 1955 Act. This CAA set up regulations and standards to monitor air pollution, giving the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency the power to enforce these standards. Today, our focus will be a later version of this Act. The Clean Air Act of 1990 and the subsequent tighter standards for air quality set by the EPA caused the state of Minnesota to fall out of compliance. This paper will discuss the effect of the 1990 Clean Air Act on the Twin Cities. History of the Clean Air Act Beginning first with an overview of the Clean Air Act’s history, the Clean Air Act of 1990 was a set of amendments added to the already recognized piece of legislation from 1963. The 1963 legislation created a special section of the United States Public Health Service that would focus on air pollution research, monitoring and regulation techniques. Following research done, the 1967 Air Quality Act was passed which furthered government attention to both interstate transports’ effect on air pollution and ways to monitor air pollution in an ambient or localized way. In 1970 several amendments were added to the Clean Air Act of 1963 which greatly expanded federal authority. All of this authority was actually transferred to the newly created Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA. The EPA, an agency under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Public Health Service, was backed by governmental funding and authority to control air pollution from both mobile and stationary sources, in private and public industries (Gerbec, et al., 1995). For example, after the CAA of 1970, the EPA began regulat ing industries that were shown to be the causes of most public pollution. It began requiring auto makers to create emissions traps, in the form of catalytic converters, to ensure pollutants that create smog would not be unleashed(Smith, 1993).. The EPA also targeted the oil refineries who sold gasoline, requiring them to sell purer gasoline to higher risked areas – along with banning many types of gasoline that are leaded. Finally, the manufacturing sites of coal had to alter their smokestacks and install â€Å"scrubbers† that would prevent pollutants from being released into the atmosphere (Cooper, 2000). By targeting these industries, the EPA hoped to greatly reduce the amount of air pollution near these industrial centers. However, the EPA did not stop with industrial regulation. The agency also gave responsibility to state governments to regulate and enforce pollution-reducing methods. In the 1970 Clean Air Act, the EPA was given greater authority over state govern ments to mandate four new mandatory regulation programs that were mainly focused with air pollution. These four programs included the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, or NAAQS, the State Implementation Plans, or SIPs, the New Source Performance Standards, or NSPS, and finally the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, or NESHAPs. Therefore a system of localized authority was created. Each