New Approaches on Energy and the Environment

CHAPTER

13

A New Approach to Air Quality Management

by Alan J. Krupnick and Jhih-Shyang Shih

Mr. President, we recommend altering the geographic approach to managing air quality in this country to match the realities of long-range transport of air pollution. It makes little sense to have localities responsible for attaining air quality standards when on average about 75 percent of the problem is not of their own making. Either this responsibility should shift to new regional air quality management institutions, backed by EPA, with ultimate responsibilities still lodged within the states, or it should be lodged at the federal level, with a dramatic reduction in state responsibilities. We recommend that a presidential commission be set up to consider ...