CLEAR Act

The CLEAR Act amends the Clean Air Act to change how national air quality standards are reviewed and implemented, giving states more flexibility and time. It extends the review cycle for air quality standards, allows consideration of attainability when setting standards, gives states at least one year to fix deficiencies before a federal plan is imposed, and exempts extreme ozone areas from certain contingency measures. It also adds economic feasibility as a factor for ozone plans, adjusts particulate matter milestones, and expands rules for exceptional events and wildfire risk mitigation. The bill creates a new section to waive sanctions for severe or extreme nonattainment areas if emissions are beyond state control, and it modifies the scientific advisory committee to include more state representatives and consider broader effects of standards.

Sec. 2, Facilitating State Implementation of National Ambient Air Quality Standards: This section extends the timeline for reviewing national ambient air quality standards from every 5 years to every 10 years. It allows the EPA Administrator to consider the likely attainability of a standard as a secondary factor when setting it. Before issuing a federal implementation plan, the Administrator must give states at least one year to correct a deficiency, and may take up to 3 years to issue a federal plan if the state submits a correction. Extreme ozone nonattainment areas are exempt from requiring contingency measures. For ozone nonattainment areas, economic feasibility is added alongside technological achievability for certain plan requirements, and some provisions for less-than-3-percent or less-than-15-percent reductions are removed. For particulate matter nonattainment areas, plan revisions for milestones must take into account technological achievability and economic feasibility.

Sec. 3, Emissions Beyond Control: This section revises the definition of "exceptional event" to include natural events, human activities intended to mirror natural events, and unlikely-to-recur human activities, but excludes stagnation, inversions, and source noncompliance. It adds a definition for "action to mitigate wildfire risk" as prescribed fires or similar measures. The EPA must update regulations within 18 months to include such actions, conduct regional modeling when multiple states petition for the same event, and maintain a public website on petition status. It establishes that actions to mitigate wildfire risk can reduce wildfire magnitude and frequency, and clarifies criteria for petitions to exclude data from various determinations. A new section (179C) is added to waive sanctions or fees for severe or extreme ozone areas or serious particulate matter areas if the state shows the deficiency or failure to attain was due to emissions from outside the area, exceptional events, or mobile sources beyond state control, provided the state renews this demonstration every 5 years.

Sec. 4, Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee: This section increases the number of state air pollution control agency representatives on the independent scientific review committee from one to three, requiring them to be from geographically diverse EPA regions. Before setting or revising a national ambient air quality standard, the Administrator must request the committee to assess and provide advice on any adverse public health, welfare, social, economic, or energy effects from various attainment and maintenance strategies.