§793 Protection of Public Health and Environment

Summary

Requires that fuel allocation programs try, as much as possible, to send available low‑sulfur fuel first to places the Environmental Protection Agency says need it to protect public health. The Department of Health and Human Services must study long‑term health effects of sulfur oxide air pollution from coal conversions covered by the Clean Air Act. That study will be done by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences with the EPA’s help. Congress authorized $3,500,000 for the study, and that money stays available until it is all spent. Says that actions taken under the Clean Air Act are not automatically treated as “major federal actions” under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Actions under the fuel allocation program are also not treated as major for one year after they start. But if an allocation action has a significant environmental effect, an environmental review like NEPA’s must be done if possible before the action, or in any case within sixty days after it starts. That review must be shared with federal, state, and local agencies and the public for a thirty‑day comment period, and a public hearing must be held if requested. Any action that will last more than one year, or is extended beyond one year, must follow the full NEPA process. To speed construction of cross‑border power lines near Fort Covington, New York, the Federal Power Commission is directed to issue a Presidential permit under Executive Order 10485 of September 3, 1953, for those transmission facilities without preparing a NEPA environmental impact statement.