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The Clean Air Act and AFG Grants
To help improve the environmental health and safety in our country the U.S. government wrote and passed the Air Quality Act of 1967. This was to establish the concept of air quality control for regions of our nation.
Under this act the federal government set standards and quotas for different pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, soot, particular matter and more. This was to give the individual states of our nation set criteria for setting limits and standards for their specific regions.
This act was amended in 1970 and the named was changed to the Clean Air Act or CAA. The federal government noticed that individual states needed more guidance. Part of the amendment gave the federal government a more centralized role and formed the current Environmental Protection Agency or EPA.
The EPA was given the task of creating and implementing National Ambient Air Quality Standards or NAAQS for air pollutants. The objective was to allow states to use this information and develop a State Implementation Program or SIP for individual source emission limitations for each state.
Another part of the amendment was to regulate hazardous air pollutants and establish a plan for any future new sources of contaminants the might damage the environment or the health of the population. The SIP of each state is the guide that helps enforce the CAA for present sources of pollutants that are not moving.
With another amendment in 1977 the act was improved again by developing the Prevention of Significant Deterioration program or PSD. The EPA was also given the job to investigate whether states were complying with the CAA. In addition more pollutants were added to the list of hazardous air pollutants.
The last amendment to the CAA was in 1990. New regulations were set along with penalties for areas that did not met the set standards for air quality in their regions. Mobile sources also had their standards tightened along with the establishment of a new operating permit program.
There is more to this act but the main purpose is to clean up the air we breath. Some time to much red tape can bog down the efficiency of a well-intentioned idea. The environmental health and safety of the population is the main concern of the EPA. Do your part.
The sponsor of this blog is Ward Diesel and they manufacture the No Smoke air filter for your diesel operated fire trucks and other diesel apparatus. Hundreds of NO SMOKE systems have been installed using AFG funding! Contact them for help with your grant application.
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