Missing Milestones: A Critical Look at the Clean Air Act's VOC Emissions Reduction Program in Nonattainment Areas
By Thomas O. McGarity
INTRODUCTION
The history of state and federal attempts to reduce urban smog in the most heavily polluted areas of the United States is one marked by modest successes and major failures. The seeds of failure were sown in 1970 when Congress decided to place responsibility for implementing the programs necessary to achieve the national ambient air quality standards in the combined hands of the states and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (the “EPA”). This system of dual responsibility, which has remained in place through two major overhauls of the Clean Air Act (the “CAA”), has given state and local institutions a great deal of flexibility to make concessions to local economic and political constraints in addressing local pollution problems, but it has often failed to hold the EPA and the states accountable when promised emissions reduction strategies have not gone into effect and when those that have been implemented do not work as expected.
Congress attempted to address this lack of institutional accountability in the 1990 CAA Amendments by establishing a “milestone” program under which states would have to show that their state implementation plans (“SIPs”) would achieve a fifteen percent reduction in emissions of volatile organic compounds (“VOCs”)<tilde>,FN='2'> by 1996 in certain severely polluted areas and further reductions at three-year intervals thereafter. After the milestone date passed, the states would then have to demonstrate that the required emissions reductions had in fact occurred or, if not, identify the causes of the failure and correct them. The amendments further provided for special sanctions should the states fail to make adequate milestone demonstrations. The hope was that the milestone process would enable the EPA and the states to isolate areas that were not progressing swiftly enough toward the statutory goals and to remedy the implementation problems in those areas.
The “milestone” concept is a very attractive vehicle for institutional management, and it has an impressive pedigree in the public administration literature. It has been warmly embraced in a recent report of an ad hoc bipartisan group, assembled by former EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus, called “Enterprise for the Environment,” as a technique for achieving environmental goals in the twenty-first century. The implementation of the CAA's milestone program therefore offers an opportunity to observe the process in a real world context and perhaps to draw some conclusions about its efficacy.
Unfortunately, the CAA's milestone program offers little optimism regarding its ability to ensure institutional accountability. Thus far, the program has failed to deliver the promised emissions reductions, to determine why the milestones have been missed, and to hold the relevant institutions accountable for those failures.
This article describes the milestone program created by the 1990 CAA amendments and examines the EPA's attempts to implement it through the SIP process. Employing the Houston/Galveston “severe” nonattainment area as a case study, the article explores how one state attempted to demonstrate that the fifteen percent milestone would be achieved by 1996 and how the EPA reacted to that state's efforts during the SIP approval process. It will also examine and evaluate the EPA's rationale for effectively abandoning the requirement that states demonstrate achievement of the 1996 milestone. Finally, it will attempt to draw some conclusions about why the milestone program thus far has been unsuccessful.
The history of state and federal attempts to reduce urban smog in the most heavily polluted areas of the United States is one marked by modest successes and major failures. The seeds of failure were sown in 1970 when Congress decided to place responsibility for implementing the programs necessary to achieve the national ambient air quality standards in the combined hands of the states and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (the “EPA”). This system of dual responsibility, which has remained in place through two major overhauls of the Clean Air Act (the “CAA”), has given state and local institutions a great deal of flexibility to make concessions to local economic and political constraints in addressing local pollution problems, but it has often failed to hold the EPA and the states accountable when promised emissions reduction strategies have not gone into effect and when those that have been implemented do not work as expected.
Congress attempted to address this lack of institutional accountability in the 1990 CAA Amendments by establishing a “milestone” program under which states would have to show that their state implementation plans (“SIPs”) would achieve a fifteen percent reduction in emissions of volatile organic compounds (“VOCs”)<tilde>,FN='2'> by 1996 in certain severely polluted areas and further reductions at three-year intervals thereafter. After the milestone date passed, the states would then have to demonstrate that the required emissions reductions had in fact occurred or, if not, identify the causes of the failure and correct them. The amendments further provided for special sanctions should the states fail to make adequate milestone demonstrations. The hope was that the milestone process would enable the EPA and the states to isolate areas that were not progressing swiftly enough toward the statutory goals and to remedy the implementation problems in those areas.
The “milestone” concept is a very attractive vehicle for institutional management, and it has an impressive pedigree in the public administration literature. It has been warmly embraced in a recent report of an ad hoc bipartisan group, assembled by former EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus, called “Enterprise for the Environment,” as a technique for achieving environmental goals in the twenty-first century. The implementation of the CAA's milestone program therefore offers an opportunity to observe the process in a real world context and perhaps to draw some conclusions about its efficacy.
Unfortunately, the CAA's milestone program offers little optimism regarding its ability to ensure institutional accountability. Thus far, the program has failed to deliver the promised emissions reductions, to determine why the milestones have been missed, and to hold the relevant institutions accountable for those failures.
This article describes the milestone program created by the 1990 CAA amendments and examines the EPA's attempts to implement it through the SIP process. Employing the Houston/Galveston “severe” nonattainment area as a case study, the article explores how one state attempted to demonstrate that the fifteen percent milestone would be achieved by 1996 and how the EPA reacted to that state's efforts during the SIP approval process. It will also examine and evaluate the EPA's rationale for effectively abandoning the requirement that states demonstrate achievement of the 1996 milestone. Finally, it will attempt to draw some conclusions about why the milestone program thus far has been unsuccessful.
