The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [76]
Clean Air Act (CAA) (1963, extended 1970, amended 1977 & 1990)
Limits certain air pollutants, including from sources like chemical plants, utilities, and steel mills. Individual states or tribes may have stronger air pollution laws, but they may not have weaker pollution limits than the federal standard. The 1990 revisions address emissions trading and clean fuel standards.
Clean Water Act (CWA) (1972)
Regulates discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States and regulates quality standards for surface water.
Safe Drinking Water Act (1974, amended 1986, 1996)
Protects the quality of all waters actually or potentially used for drinking, from both above-ground and underground sources, and requires public water systems to comply with these primary (health-related) standards.
Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) (aka Superfund, 1980)
Provides a special fund (originally $1.6 million) for cleaning up uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous-waste sites as well as accidents, spills, and other emergency releases of pollutants and contaminants into the environment. Seeks out parties responsible for any releases and assures their cooperation in the cleanup.
Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (1986)
Updates CERCLA to increase states’ involvement and citizen participation, increase the focus on human health impacts, revise the Hazard Ranking System, and increase the size of the trust fund to $8.5 billion.
Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (1986)
Designed to help local communities protect public health, safety, and the environment from chemical hazards. The Community Right-to-Know provisions increase the public’s access to information on chemicals at individual facilities, their uses, and releases into the environment.
Oil Pollution Act (1990)
Provides resources and funds to clean up oil spills as well as mitigation requirements for the polluter.
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) (1976, 1986, plus 1984’s Hazardous and Solid Wastes Amendments)
Gives EPA the authority to control hazardous waste from “cradle to grave,” including generation, transportation, treatment, storage, and disposal. Amendments focus on waste minimization and more stringent standards for hazardous wastes.
Pollution Prevention Act (1990)
Focuses on reduction of industrial pollution at the source, alongside resource efficiency and conservation, as part of pollution prevention.
Endangered Species Act (ESA) (1973)
Protects threatened and endangered plants and animals and their habitats.
Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act (aka Ocean Dumping Act, 1972)
Prohibits ocean dumping.175
Notice something that all these have in common? Many were created before any of us had cell phones or Internet access; some were established even before fax machines. Lots were created before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, before the Bhopal disaster, before climate change was a household topic. While the intentions at their founding were good, many of these agencies and laws are now simply out of date. Even the more recent amendments are often out of date. Environmental health threats have changed and continue changing while our understanding of those threats has evolved greatly, but the laws and regulatory agencies haven’t kept up. Many of these laws were made back when people still believed that “dilution is the solution to pollution.” Back then, folks thought that taller smokestacks or longer discharge pipes would solve the problem. No longer.
To further confuse matters, implementing the federal regulations set by many of these agencies is often a state-level responsibility. That means that compliance and enforcement varies from state to state depending on the priorities and powerful interests within each state. “States dominated by specific industry types (chemicals, mining, specific types of manufacturing) tend to be more tolerant of noncompliance by those sectors than other states with more heterogeneous industrial mixes,” writes Professor Ken Geiser of the