§7492 Visibility

Summary

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must lead research with the National Park Service and other federal agencies to find where air pollution that cuts visibility in protected “class I” areas comes from and where clean air comes from. Congress authorized $8,000,000 a year for 5 years for this work. The research must expand monitoring in class I areas, find pollution sources and clean-air corridors, improve regional air-quality models for visibility, and study the chemistry and physics that affect visibility. The EPA must give interim findings within 3 years after November 15, 1990. The EPA must also assess how much visibility will improve from other 1990 Clean Air Act changes within 24 months after November 15, 1990, and then check actual progress every 5 years, sending written reports to Congress. If the EPA thinks pollution moving between states is making visibility worse in a region, it can make a visibility transport region and set up a visibility transport commission. The commission must include each Governor (or a designee), the EPA head (or a designee), and two reps from each federal agency that manages class I areas; federal members are ex officio and the commission is exempt from certain federal committee rules. The commission must study the data and, within 4 years, recommend actions such as creating clean-air corridors, applying rules for new large sources and siting reviews, and proposing regional-haze regulations. Within 18 months after getting the commission’s report the EPA must write the rules for measuring “reasonable progress,” and affected States must update their plans within 12 months to include needed limits and schedules. The EPA must set up a visibility transport commission for the Grand Canyon region within 12 months.