Air Pollution

State Planning Requirements Will Continue to Challenge EPA and the States Gao ID: RCED-93-113 June 11, 1993

Although the United States has significantly improved its air quality since the late 1970s, urban smog, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter continue to threaten both the environment and the health of millions of Americans. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 require the states to significantly revise their state implementation plans, the key documents spelling out their strategies and schedules for improving air quality. The legislation also sets deadlines for the states' submission and the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) approval of these revisions. This report examines whether the states are submitting their plans on schedule and whether EPA is promptly reviewing and approving them. GAO also examines whether processing of the plans could be improved by the amendments' title V provisions on operating permits for pollution sources. Title V allows the states to switch some requirements pertaining to individual pollution sources from the plans to the permits.

GAO found that: (1) delays continue in the states' submissions of SIP despite the specific requirements of the 1990 amendments; (2) 35 states have failed to comply with the requirement to submit revisions to their SIP by November 15, 1992; (3) EPA is concerned that submitted SIP will not meet EPA requirements; (4) many SIP now require considerably less review than they did in the past; (5) there are significant delays in SIP processing and approval; (6) 50 percent of the SIP approvals took longer than the 12 months allowed; (7) initiatives to improve oversight of the SIP process include efforts to improve the information system for tracking actions taken on SIP and the introduction of regional program reviews of SIP processing; (8) the effectiveness of the management information system has been hampered by inaccurate and incomplete data; and (9) incorporating requirements for emission limits, control measures, and monitoring and reporting into a single permit for an individual pollution source can help improve accountability.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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