Clean Air Act Credit for Urban Policy Changes

by Mary Nichols and Harriet Tregoning

As the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) moves toward community-based environmental protection, the Agency is putting more autonomy and discretion in the hands of communities and local governments to develop strategies to achieve environmental quality. At the same time, increases in car driving impair the attainment of health-based air quality standards in more than 60 metropolitan areas; sprawl-related wetlands and habitat destruction continue at about 25,000 acres of wetlands lost each year; urban runoff and other non-point sources of pollution are the most significant contributors to surface water pollution. As some communities take steps to grapple with these issues, we can certainly stand and applaud. But what more can we do?

Automobiles increasingly contribute to poor air quality conditions. To reduce auto emissions, EPA has focused primarily on technology and tailpipe controls, not on managing the demand for personal travel. But in the past few years it has become clear that even though cars are cleaner, auto air pollution continues to rise because of dramatic increases in the number of miles being traveled by car. The demand for personal travel continues to grow faster than technological improvements can reduce auto emissions. This phenomenon has led EPA to consider promoting control strategies that focus more on diversifying personal travel options, in addition to traditional vehicle related controls. The EPA is proposing to use its authority under the Clean Air Act to allow metropolitan areas to count emissions reduced by certain urban policies towards their state's attainment and maintenance of clean air standards. Below, we briefly describe the Clean Air Act and urban land-use policies that might reduce air emissions.

THE CLEAN AIR ACT AND CONTROL STRATEGIES

The Clean Air Act requires all areas of the United States to attain and maintain health-based standards for ambient air quality, called National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Low-level ozone (03) and carbon monoxide (CO) are among the pollutants of particular concern to urban areas. 03 occurs as a photochemical reaction of water vapor, sunlight, and pollutants, principally volatile organic compounds (VOC) and oxides of nitrogen (NOX). More than 60 urban areas, including most of the nation's largest cities, are not in attainment for CO or 03 standards.

States are responsible for meeting air quality standards, and each state operates air quality controls based on its own plan designed to meet the standards. By estimating what emission will occur and what reductions will be achieved using various control strategies, states use their plans to demonstrate to the EPA how they will meet air quality standards. The state's plan, known as a State Implementation Plan (SIP), is a "living document." It is continually updated as technical understanding, economics and other conditions change. The EPA has responsibility to review and approve state plans while also specifying how the states estimate current emissions and how they project emission reductions.

CONTROL STRATEGIES AND CLEAN AIR ACT CREDITS

The actual measures to reduce emissions are called "control strategies." State plans always detail which control strategies the state proposes to use and how much those controls will reduce emissions. Certain control strategies, such as tailpipe standards for motor vehicles, are mandated at the federal level. Other control strategies are mandated by the Act for specific areas, such as those areas with severe problems, like the Los Angeles basin. Clean Air Act "credit" is the level of emissions reduction that a state may claim for a particular control strategy. The EPA is the final arbiter of Clean Air Act credits, by providing approved control strategies and approved methods of calculating reductions from each control. For example, EPA has developed procedures for calculating the emissions impact of different reformulated gasoline programs. Any state that submits a reformulated gasoline control strategy will use these procedures for calculating the emissions reductions, and thus the credits awarded, for this strategy.

URBAN POLICY AS AN EMISSIONS CONTROL STRATEGY

The EPA proposes to classify urban zoning and other policies that produce clean air benefits as legitimate control strategies that could generate credits under the Clean Air Act. This would allow areas that adopt such policies to gain the additional benefit of credit towards requirements to demonstrate emissions reduction, attainment, and maintenance of the NAAQS. Once these new control strategies are adopted, EPA would use outreach to communities and technical assistance to encourage the use of the strategies. The Agency would also develop formal descriptions of the control strategies and methodologies for calculating emissions credit. The EPA has begun to identify and develop methodologies for the specific urban policy actions most likely to produce significant air quality benefits. Air quality and local planning officials agree that a number of particular land-use and other strategies can reduce emissions in urban areas, especially over the long term, by reducing growth in vehicle travel. These same policies will encourage and enhance urban redevelopment. The EPA would evaluate data from communities across the country that have implemented similar policies and model the policy impacts on the amount of vehicle travel and on air quality. Policy areas of particular promise include:

Elimination of minimum parking requirements in zoning codes. In many places this would encourage using alternatives to driving (provided they exist), because it would make parking more difficult. In places with a surfeit of parking, reducing parking lots/spaces would allow higher densities, which might encourage pedestrian traffic and support transit.

 

Zoning that encourages greater density around existing transit facilities. This would put more people in places with good access to transit, reducing the necessity for those individuals to rely on automobiles; higher density would also support greater transit ridership.

 

Zoning that encourages new transit-oriented development or a transit-friendly alignment of new facilities. This would allow people to accomplish many of their daily tasks and errands (shopping, health care, recreation, or work) as part of their commute-- without relying exclusively on private vehicles.

 

Incentives to increase transit ridership (or disincentives for single occupancy vehicles, such as e parking taxes). Making driving harder is not the (whole) answer. There must be alternatives to getting in your car and driving.

Zoning that provides for pedestrian and bicycle facilities, such as sidewalks and bike paths or lanes. Neither is mass transit the (whole) answer. These alternatives also help to make not just the destination, but the trip itself more appealing.

 

Elimination of zoning requirements that prevent mixed-use neighborhoods in urban areas. Separation of uses (work, housing, shopping) virtually mandates a large number of car trips to accomplish the daily routine of modern life. Mixed-use neighborhoods would mean that some of those trips (dinner, dry cleaning, grocery shopping, banking) could be accomplished on foot or bicycle.

 

Public safety and education initiatives to encourage development in pedestrian and transit friendly neighborhoods. Alternatives must be perceived as safe in order to decrease personal travel by car . That means that care must be taken to ensure, for instance, that all parts of a commuter's route --transit, bicycle and/or by foot-- are not notably less safe than a trip by personal vehicle.

 

Local tax incentives to encourage urban redevelopment. Infill development (as one alternative to low density sprawl), particularly in high density, transit-rich corridors translates into much less reliance on automobiles for personal travel.

 

A BOON TO URBAN COMMUNITIES

This proposal could be a boon to urban communities in several ways. First, it provides tangible - even cash - rewards for making these zoning or other changes. While those tangible benefits are probably not enough to sway a community that is not currently open to more efficient development, it adds to the other benefits for those that are. Second, this proposal provides an additional incentive for metropolitan areas to come together and adopt policies that benefit the urban core and inner ring suburbs. Metropolitan areas now consist of multiple local governments (ranging from tens to hundreds in a given metropolitan area), with limited incentive to respond to regional economic or environmental challenge-- yet, air quality problems are metropolitan-wide problems. The proposal might lead metropolitan regions towards policies that strengthen their urban cores, in order to avoid metropolitan-wide air pollution impacts. Second, the proposal could reduce the cost of meeting Clean Air Act goals. The costs of the Clean Air Act fall disproportionately on urban areas, because they have the greatest air quality problems. This proposal provides at least an opportunity for metropolitan areas to turn this comparative disadvantage into a source of strength.

Mary Nichols is currently the Assistant Administrator for EPA's Office of Air and Radiation; she previously served as a senior staff attorney and director of the Los Angeles office of the Natural Resources Defense Council and as Chair of the California Air Resources Board . Harriet Tregoning is the designated Director of EPA's new Urban and Economic Development Policy Division in the Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation. The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of Cecelia Estolano and Jon Kessler of EPA who contributed to this article.