Clean Air Act l76(c) Conformity Determinations and the Department of Defense.
Abstract
The modern Clean Air Act is the product of nearly a dozen separate Acts of Congress over the course of the last 40 years. The Act, as it is structured today, was adopted in 1970, and is the primary federal statute regulating air quality and emissions of pollutants into the air. It is comprised of several different titles, each providing different types of limitations on pollutant emissions. The 1977 amendments to the Clean Air Act included, for the first time, the concept of 'conformity.' Conformity is the 'mechanism intended to ensure that departments, agencies or instrumentalities of the federal government do not take, approve or support actions that are in any way inconsistent with a state's plan to attain and maintain the national ambient air quality standards'. Conformity applies only to federal actions, not to the entire regulated community. As such, it particularly affects the Department of Defense (DOD) whenever it decides to take a variety of actions. Indeed, the Clean Air Act's conformity provision has been called "(p)robably the most significant single environmental obstacle to (military) base conversion. . . This thesis will explore the concept of general conformity, the guidance DOD has created to assist the services in implementing general conformity, and recent conformity litigation that is likely to affect DOD's activities now and in the future.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 30, 1995
- Accession Number
- ADA303205
Entities
People
- Susan M. Fall
Organizations
- Air Force Institute of Technology