Environmental Laws

1
Environmental Laws

• Ehringer

2
DDT

• Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane
• DDT was first synthesized in 1874, but its
  insecticidal properties were not discovered until
  1939. In the early years of World War II, DDT was
  used with great effect to combat mosquitoes
  spreading malaria, typhus, and other insect-borne
  diseases among both military and civilian
  populations. The Swiss chemist Paul Hermann
  Müller of Geigy Pharmaceutical was awarded the
  Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948
  "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT
  as a contact poison against several arthropods

3
DDT Continued

• In 1962, Silent Spring by American biologist
  Rachel Carson was published. The book catalogued
  the environmental impacts of the indiscriminate
  spraying of DDT in the US and questioned the
  logic of releasing large amounts of chemicals
  into the environment without fully understanding
  their effects on ecology or human health.
• The book suggested that DDT and other pesticides
  may cause cancer and that their agricultural use
  was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds.4
  Its publication was one of the signature events
  in the birth of the environmental movement.

4
DDT continued

• In the summer of 1972, the government announced a
  ban on most uses of DDT in the U.S., where it was
  classified as an EPA Toxicity Class II substance.
• Its use was banned, but not the manufacturing of
  the chemical. DDT was used in many countries late
  into the 1990s.

5
The Clean Air Act

• EPA has been developing programs to cut emissions
  of these commonly found air pollutants since the
  Clean Air Act was passed in 1970.
• Some regulated pollutants are ground-level
  ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, nitrogen
  oxides, and lead.
• Today, motor vehicles are responsible for nearly
  one half of smog-forming volatile organic
  compounds (VOCs), more than half of the nitrogen
  oxide (NOx) emissions, and about half of the
  toxic air pollutant emissions in the United
  States. Motor vehicles, including non-road
  vehicles, now account for 75 percent of carbon
  monoxide emissions nationwide.

6
Clean Air

• The Clean Air Act takes a comprehensive approach
  to reducing pollution from these sources by
  requiring manufacturers to build cleaner engines
  refiners to produce cleaner fuels and certain
  areas with air pollution problems to adopt and
  run passenger vehicle inspection and maintenance
  programs.
• Sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx)
  are the principal pollutants that cause acid
  precipitation. SO2 and NOx emissions released to
  the air react with water vapor and other
  chemicals to form acids that fall back to Earth.
  Power plants burning coal and heavy oil produce
  over two-thirds of the annual SO2 emissions in
  the United States. The majority of NOx (about 50
  percent) comes from cars, buses, trucks, and
  other forms of transportation.

7
Clean Air

• The 1990 changes to the Clean Air Act introduced
  a nationwide approach to reducing acid pollution.
  The law is designed to reduce acid rain and
  improve public health by dramatically reducing
  emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and oxides of
  nitrogen (NOx).
• Toxic air pollutants, or air toxics, are known to
  cause or are suspected of causing cancer, birth
  defects, reproduction problems, and other serious
  illnesses. Exposure to certain levels of some
  toxic air pollutants can cause difficulty in
  breathing, nausea or other illnesses. Exposure to
  certain toxic pollutants can even cause death.
  EPA to identify categories of industrial sources
  for 187 listed toxic air pollutants and to take
  steps to reduce pollution by requiring sources to
  install controls or change production processes

8
Clean Air

• Ozone can be good or bad depending on where it is
  located. Close to the Earth's surface,
  ground-level ozone is a harmful air pollutant.
  Ozone in the stratosphere, high above the Earth,
  protects human health and the environment from
  the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. This
  natural shield has been gradually depleted by
  manmade chemicals. So in 1990, Congress added
  provisions to the Clean Air Act for protecting
  the stratospheric ozone layer.

9
The Clean Water Act

• Growing public awareness and concern for
  controlling water pollution led to enactment of
  the Federal Water Pollution Control Act
  Amendments of 1972. As amended in 1977, this law
  became commonly known as the Clean Water Act. The
  Act established the basic structure for
  regulating discharges of pollutants into the
  waters of the United States.

10
Clean water

• The 1972 act introduced a permit system for
  regulating point sources of pollution. Point
  sources include
• industrial facilities (including manufacturing,
  mining, oil and gas extraction, and service
  industries)
• municipal governments and other government
  facilities (such as military bases), and
• some agricultural facilities, such as animal
  feedlots.

11
Clean Water

• Under the 1972 act EPA began to issue
  technology-based standards for municipal and
  industrial sources.
• Municipal sewage treatment plants, also called
  publicly-owned treatment works (POTW) are
  required to meet secondary treatment
  standards.10
• Effluent guidelines (for existing sources) and
  New Source Performance Standards are issued for
  categories of industrial facilities discharging
  directly to surface waters.11
• Categorical Pretreatment Standards are issued to
  industrial users (also called "indirect
  dischargers") contributing wastes to POTW.12
  These standards are developed in conjunction with
  the effluent guidelines program.

12
The Super Fund

• Superfund is the name given to the environmental
  program established to address abandoned
  hazardous waste sites. It is also the name of the
  fund established by the Comprehensive
  Environmental Response, Compensation and
  Liability Act of 1980.
• This law was enacted in the wake of the discovery
  of toxic waste dumps such as Love Canal and Times
  Beach in the 1970s. It allows the EPA to clean up
  such sites and to compel responsible parties to
  perform cleanups or reimburse the government for
  EPA-lead cleanups.

13
Endangered Species Act

• The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is the most
  wide-ranging of the dozens of United States
  environmental laws passed in the 1970s. This act
  was designed to protect critically imperiled
  species from extinction due to "the consequences
  of economic growth and development untendered by
  adequate concern and conservation".
• The ESA only protects species which are
  officially listed as "threatened" or
  "endangered".

14
ESA

• Species which increased in population size since
  being placed on the endangered list include
• Bald Eagle (increased from 417 to 11,040 pairs
  between 1963 and 2007) removed from list 2007
• Whooping Crane (increased from 54 to 436 birds
  between 1967 and 2003)
• Kirtland's Warbler (increased from 210 to 1,415
  pairs between 1971 and 2005)
• Peregrine Falcon (increased from 324 to 1,700
  pairs between 1975 and 2000) removed from list
• Gray Wolf (populations increased dramatically in
  the Northern Rockies, Southwest, and Great Lakes)
  
• Gray Whale (increased from 13,095 to 26,635
  whales between 1968 and 1998) removed from list
• Grizzly bear (increased from about 271 to over
  580 bears in the Yellowstone area between 1975
  and 2005) removed from list 3/22/07
• Californias Southern Sea Otter (increased from
  1,789 in 1976 to 2,735 in 2005)
• San Clemente Indian Paintbrush (increased from
  500 plants in 1979 to more than 3,500 in 1997)
• Red Wolf (increased from 17 in 1980 to 257 in
  2003)
• Florida's Key Deer (increased from 200 in 1971 to
  750 in 2001)
• Big Bend Gambusia (increased from for a couple
  dozen to a population of over 50,000)
• Hawaiian Goose (increased from 400 birds in 1980
  to 1,275 in 2003)

15
Marine Mammal protection Act

• In 1972, the United States Congress passed the
  Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). The Act
  makes it illegal for any person residing in the
  United States to kill, hunt, injure or harass all
  species of marine mammals, regardless of their
  population status. In addition, the MMPA also
  makes it illegal for anyone to import marine
  mammals or products made from them into the
  United States.

16
Montreal Protocol

• The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete
  the Ozone Layer is an international treaty
  designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing
  out the production of a number of substances
  believed to be responsible for ozone depletion.
• The treaty is structured around several groups of
  halogenated hydrocarbons that have been shown to
  play a role in ozone depletion. All of these
  ozone depleting substances contain either
  chlorine or bromine (substances containing
  fluorine-only do not harm the ozone layer).

17
Montreal cont

• There is a slower phase-out (to zero by 2010) of
  other substances (halon 1211, 1301, 2402 CFCs
  13, 111, 112, etc) and some chemicals (Carbon
  tetrachloride 1,1,1-trichloroethane).
• The substances in Group I of Annex A are
• CFCl3 (CFC-11)
• CF2Cl2 (CFC-12)
• C2F3Cl3 (CFC-113)
• C2F4Cl2(CFC-114)
• C2F5Cl (CFC-115)

18
Kyoto protocol

• The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the
  international Framework Convention on Climate
  Change with the objective of reducing Greenhouse
  gases that cause climate change. It was agreed on
  11 December 1997 at the 3rd Conference of the
  Parties to the treaty when they met in Kyoto, and
  entered into force on 16 February 2005.
• As of November 2007, 175 parties have ratified
  the protocol. Of these, 36 developed countries
  (plus the EU as a party in its own right) are
  required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to
  the levels specified for each of them in the
  treaty

19
Oil Pollution Act

• The Oil Pollution Act (OPA) of 1990 streamlined
  and strengthened EPAs ability to prevent and
  respond to catastrophic oil spills.  A trust fund
  financed by a tax on oil is available to clean up
  spills when the responsible party is incapable or
  unwilling to do so.  The OPA requires oil storage
  facilities and vessels to submit to the Federal
  government  plans detailing how they will respond
  to large discharges.

20
Toxic Substances Act

• The Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 --
  otherwise known as TSCA was enacted by Congress
  to give EPA the ability to track the 75,000
  industrial chemicals currently produced or
  imported into the United States. EPA repeatedly
  screens these chemicals and can require reporting
  or testing of those that may pose an
  environmental or human-health hazard. EPA can ban
  the manufacture and import of those chemicals
  that pose an unreasonable risk.