Student Post: The Clean Air Act and Trans Boundary Pollution

Within in this section of the book it was mentioned that the mining of coal can have severe effects on the environment, which reminded me of another class where we discussed the problem of regulating pollution across the borders of different states and Indian country. This problem arises out of the natural spread of pollution across man-made borders through the movement of wind, water, and various other modes of transportation. To help limit the different environmental laws among jurisdictions, the federal government passed different Acts which help set more uniform standards. In regards to coal production, the Clean Air Act would be one of the more applicable environmental laws used, and is also a great example of an Act with Trans boundary effects.

In implementing the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency created a three class system in which each state can determine what class they wanted to be part of and thus which standards to be applied to them. The three different classes that were used are: class I areas, which would have nearly any negative change in air quality be considered significant; class II areas, which would have deterioration accompanying moderate well-controlled growth be ok; and class III areas, which would allow deterioration right up to the national minimum standard. Some of the determining factors for the designation of these classes were the environmental, economic and social effects that designation would have on the area, but despite the variation in these factors the vast majority of the United States is still identified as a class II area.

One of the major factors of why the majority of the United States is designated as class II is because one state’s designation can affect the amount of pollution that another state can produce. Let’s pretend that North Dakota was a class II area and Minnesota was a class I area. If North Dakota had a coal facility that was producing an amount of pollution that was ok under class II standards, but not for class I standards, Minnesota could potentially force the facility to meet class I standards despite being physically located in a class II area. For this argument to work Minnesota would have to show that the pollution from the coal facility is dropping the air quality within Minnesota’s borders to a standard below a class I designation.

The benefit of this system is that pollution is a trans-boundary problem and there needs to be a way for different states and jurisdiction to resolve their issues for different environmental standards. There is of course the problem that a downwind state can theoretically have a lot of control on the upwind state’s economy through imposing higher or lower environmental regulations. This problem is less likely to occur do to the fact that that state will also be bound by those same environmental regulations, effectively causing the same problem for their own state. Where the problem arises is if the state or jurisdiction doesn’t have the same economic or environmental goals as the bordering jurisdiction, which can be seen in some cases between the State and Indian country regulations. Despite what may appear to be unfair regulations, I overall believe that their needs to be some kind of check on upwind jurisdictions where it may be easier to justify higher levels of pollution because you don’t have to deal with the accumulated side effects and this Act helps provide that check.