Obviously, the Clean Air Act needs to be changed. The construction ban has no place in this country. It is an inherently unfair punishment of communities and does not clean the air.
Additional money spent on secondary cleanup standards is not going to make that much difference in air quality, but it will hurt the American steel industry….In short, if it did not have to meet environmental requirements, the steel industry would have the capital to increase its annual shipments from 92 million tons in 1981 to 105 million tons in 1990….The need to meet future environmental requirements will reduce this expansion to 96 million tons.
[Regulations in the Clean air Act] could effectively ban important new large-scale construction in the future.
We believe the way in which the law is currently administered conflicts with other important national goals -- the need to increase productivity levels, to create new jobs and to spur development of domestic energy sources.
At its worst, the Clean Air Act speaks of the potential wholesale shutdown of industrial facilities should a state not be able to attain the standards by set dates -- 1982 and 1987. At its best, the act will require the imposition of new and expensive technology and will severely limit the location of new industry in major metropolitan areas.
