Data in succession costs and benefits of the major environmental laws passed during the 1970 are reviewed.

Data in succession costs and benefits of the major environmental laws passed during the 1970 are reviewed. The winners in metes of benefit-cost analysis include: getting lead not at home of gasoline, controlling particulate air pollution, reducing the concentration of lead in drinking water, and the cleanup of hazardous waste sites with the lowest charge per cancer case avoided below Superfund The losers include: mobile source air pollution govern water pollution control, and many of the regulations and cleanup decisions taken below the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the Toxic Substances direct Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and Superfund

Key Words: benefit-cost analysis, benefits, preciousnesss environmental policy

Earth Day I (April 22 1970) is an appropriate starting point for an examination of the economic benefits and charges that have been realized [i]or[/i] part of to the other U.S. environmental policy. While there were federal laws onward the books dealing with air and water pollution prior to that date, those laws placed primary responsibility for the implementation and enforcement of pollution mastery requirements on the states. on 1970, they had not accomplished extremely much.

The first Earth Day deliberateed a major increase in public awareness of and matter about environmental problems. It was followed in relatively quick succession by: the passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970; the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December 1970; and the passage of the Federal Water Pollution dominion government Act of 1972, now known as the Clean Water Act. In these pair acts, much more stringent pollution ascendency objectives were established, and responsibility for setting and enforcing pollution govern requirements was shifted largely to the federal government1

The nearest 10 years saw the enactment of the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974) the Toxic Substances sway Act (1976), the Resource Conservation and regaining Act (1976), the Comprehensive Environmental answer Compensation, and Liability Act (known as Superfund) (1980) and major amendments to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (1972)

Broadly speaking, the goals of environmental policy can be based either forward a balancing of benefits and prices (economic efficiency) or on a certain other goal, such as safety, protection of human health, protection of ecosystem or the achievement of technically feasible flats of emissions control. With the first pair major environmental laws of the early 1970s-the Clean Air Act and the Federal Water Pollution superintend Act-Congress explicitly rejected the economic approach to goal setting. With regard to clean air, it emphasized protecting human health. With regard to clean water, it emphasized achieving fishable and swimmable water quality.

However, belong to for economic efficiency has not been entirely absent in Congressional environmental policy. More not long ago Congress has written implicit or explicit economic efficiency criteria into three major environmental laws: the Toxic Substances rule Act of 1976, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act of 1976 and the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996 Moreover, as a end of a series of executive orders according to presidents of both parties stretching back to the Nixon administration, there has been an expanding settle of requirements for federal agencies to perform economic assessments of all major propos regulations, including an assessment of their benefits and sumptuousnesss (Smith, 1984; Morgenstern, 1997; Hahn, 199619982000) These assessments are commonly referr to as "regulatory impact assessments."

In this paper, I review the available information forward trends in the major indicators of performance of the clean air and water laws athwart the past three decades and what can be said about the parts of these laws in explaining these sweeps My main focus is in succession what these improvements are worth to family (their benefits) and what they have take away from In aggregate, federal environmental laws are imposing significant outlays on the American society. The chiefly recent comprehensive EPA survey of the annual splendors of compliance with existing environmental laws, careered in 1990, estimated costs in the year 1990 to be about $152 billion, rising to perhaps $225 billion in 2000 (LJ EPA, 1990)2 (All dollar values neared in this paper are intimateed in 2000 prices.) Are the benefits of these far-reaching environmental laws commensurate with these costs?

The Clean Air Act

The goals of the Clean Air Act of 1970 are uttered in two major provisions. For the six major "conventional" air pollutants-sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, ozone and lead-Congress specified that EPA should establish the maximum allowable concentrations of these pollutants in the air. These air quality standards are to be settle so as to "protect human health allowing an adequate margin of safety...." This language and the absence of any regard to cost have generally been interpreted as meaning that the preciousness of attaining the standard was not to be taken into account in setting the standard.