The Clean Air Act is notoriously difficult to navigate and enforce. The difficulty is in part due to the act’s regulatory scheme, which is inferior in critical ways to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (commonly known as the Clean Water Act). Unlike the Waste Discharge Requirements covering discharges of pollution into water bodies issued by the Regional Water Quality Control Board, which contain both federal and state requirements in a single permit, the Clean Air Act does not require a single permit for all facilities that pollute the air. Also significant, the Clean Air Act does not require self-reporting of violations by all facilities that pollute the air.

For example, the permit that large sources are required to have, which are commonly known as Title V permits, do not generally contain state requirements; and the information required to be reported under the Title V program is more limited than the information contained in discharge monitoring reports required under the Clean Water Act. Whereas the discharge monitoring reports are required to identify each permit provision that a facility has violated, the dates of the violation, the cause of the violation, and any corrective actions that have been taken to cure the violation, Title V permits do not generally require those kinds of details that would aid in enforcement.

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