Law, Business, and Society 9th Edition by Tony McAdams

Exercise 4

A 2002 report from the EPA concludes that we have not realized the benefits from the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act because it is not being enforced effectively. For example, by July 2001 "only 63 percent of the 19,025 major sources of industrial pollution in the United States had obtained permits, although the law imposed a deadline of 1997." The report further noted that several states "lacked sufficient resources to run the program and …many states had difficulties getting EPA guidance on how the agency's regulations should be applied to a specific polluter." 82 Instead of passing additional clean air standards, should we simply vigorously enforce the standards already on the books