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GAO-09-249R 1 (2009-01-16)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaanls0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 00& .,! = Accountability * Integrity Reliability United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548 January 16, 2009 Congressional Requesters Subject: Clean Air Act: Historical Information on EPA's Process for Reviewing California Waiver Requests and Making Waiver Determinations Emissions from mobile sources, such as automobiles and trucks, contribute to air quality degradation and can threaten public health and the environment. Under the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates these emissions. The act generally allows one set of federal standards for new motor vehicle emissions and pre-empts states from adopting or enforcing their own standards. However, it also authorizes the EPA Administrator to waive this provision to allow the state of California' to enact and enforce emission standards for new motor vehicles that are as protective, in the aggregate, as federal government standards. Other states may also adopt California's standards if they choose. The waiver provision was added to the Federal Air Quality Act (one of the precursors of the current Clean Air Act) in 1967 because of California's severe air pollution problems and because the state had already established its own emission standards for mobile sources. California has used this waiver provision regularly to establish and enforce standards for vehicle emissions more stringent than those required by federal law. However, California must request a waiver of federal pre-emption and the EPA Administrator must approve it before California or any other state can implement such standards. Since being given this authority, California has requested and been granted waivers more than 50 times.2 The Clean Air Act specifies, under section 209(b), that the EPA Administrator shall grant a waiver if the state has determined that its standards will be, in the aggregate, at least as protective of public health and welfare as applicable federal standards. However, the statute prohibits the EPA Administrator from granting a waiver if it is found that: (1) the state's protectiveness determination was arbitrary and capricious, (2) the state's standards are not needed to meet compelling and extraordinary conditions, or (3) the state's standards are inconsistent with certain Clean Air Act provisions related to technical feasibility and lead time to manufacturers. 'The act does not name California but waives the prohibition on the development of separate state standards for any state that had adopted certain motor vehicle emission standards prior to March 1966. California is the only state that had adopted such standards. 2Incomplete and missing documentation precluded us from determining the exact number of waiver requests California has made since 1967 and from developing comprehensive information on EPA's responses to them. GAO-09-249R Page 1

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