 The SIP represents a State’s cumulative efforts in designing and implementing a comprehensive program for air quality management. The objective of the SIP is to demonstrate with a substantial assuredness that the State has an effective strategy that it will implement to bring air quality within the State into compliance with National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) and to maintain the NAAQS, once attained, without unacceptable deterioration. The SIP process began shortly after the passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act Amendments and continues to present time. The SIP’s are evolutionary and somewhat amorphous. Essentially every regulation, guidance document, permit, memorandum of understanding and attainment strategy becomes a part of the SIP once EPA reviews and approves each addition to the SIP. Virtually no State can lay claim to having a readily identifiable document that it can point to and call its complete SIP. The SIP process has been at best controversial and has certainly lasted longer than contemplated by its originators in the early 1970s. As a result EPA Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards and the Office of the Inspector General, the States, and the General Accounting Office are reviewing the process to ascertain what improvements can be made. In order to be approved the SIP must consolidate the State’s total air quality management process into a cohesive and rational framework. The SIP must be based on demonstrable science and reduction strategies, be enforceable, be measurable as to its progress, and define clear and implementable actions to achieve air quality goals. It normally is composed of a variety of strategies built around limits on stationary sources of pollution, mobile sources, non-road mobile sources, and area or non-point sources. Title V air permits, RACT limits, new source review, prevention of significant deterioration are examples of stationary source reduction strategies. Inspection/maintenance for cars, traffic and highway controls, product reformulation are examples of strategies that focused on broad sources of pollutants that are more difficult to control. SIP’s must include modeling of reductions to show air quality benefits and must include an annual demonstrate of “reasonable further progress” towards attainment and maintenance of the NAAQS. If a State fails to submit a timely and approvable SIP the US EPA may act to impose sanctions on the State or may develop a federal implementation plan (FIP) for the recalcitrant State. Before 1990 a State could expect to wait years for EPA to comment on its SIP. Since 1990 the EPA is expected to act within 18 months of a SIP submittal or revision. The reality is – don’t hold your breath waiting for EPA. Inevitably, the process of approval is slow and cumbersome. It has been made even more so by EPA’s NOX SIP call and by the litigation that has swirled around the ozone air quality standards for the last several years. Suffice it to say that SIP’s are here to stay and won’t be complete for at least two more decades. For more about the SIP review conducted by the EPA Office of Inspector General you can visit EPA’s website, http://www.epa.gov/oigearth/ereading_room/list996/airsttbl.htm. Air Resources Group, LLC |
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