1. How does the Clean Air Act (CAA) define attainment and nonattainment counties
ID: 294388 • Letter: 1
Question
1. How does the Clean Air Act (CAA) define attainment and nonattainment counties?
2. What does the term “standards” mean under the CAA?
3. How are standards for specific pollutants determined under the CAA?
4. What regulatory mechanisms kick in once a county is declared non-attainment?
5. What does the data reviewed in class indicate about the affect the CAA has on the geographic distribution of production?
6. What pollutant is the primary cause of Acid Rain? Identify the economic activity that is a large source of the pollutant.
7. Why was the county-based emphasis of the original Clean Air Act ineffective in addressing the Acid Rain problem?
8. Why is Acid Rain more of a problem in the Northeast than in the rest of the country?
9. Describe the pollution trading program implemented by the EPA to deal with Acid Rain.
10. How is pollution trading supposed to decrease the total social cost of abating pollution?
11. What is meant by “banking” pollution credits? How does banking influence the firm’s pollution abatement and trading behavior?
Explanation / Answer
1. The clean air act define the non attainment area as a locality where air pollution levels persistently exceed National Ambient Air Quality. Areas with concentrations of criteria pollutants that are below the levels established by the NAAQS are considered attainment counties.
2. The standards are the limit of the the amount of various pollutants to specified levels to measure the air quality.
3. The Clean Air Act requires EPA to set national air quality standards for common pollutants based solely on protecting public health and welfare. The Act calls for emissions standards to be set based on data concerning the emissions performance and cost of available technologies. In this way, technical feasibility and cost considerations are taken into account when pollution sources are regulated. EPA collects and carefully examines data on the performance levels of currently available technologies when considering Clean Air Act emissions standards for mobile and stationary sources. EPA collect data from industries on emissions, control technologies and costs and uses this data with other technical information in issuing national rules.
4. When a county is declared as non attainment then the designations take effect ie state and local governments have three years to develop implementation plans designed to meet the standards.
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