Clean Air and Water Reports

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Cleaner Cars in Maryland 2005-11-10 Cleaner_Cars_In_Maryland.pdf

Executive Summary

In 1970, Congress passed the Clean Air Act. This landmark legislation prevented
individual states from regulating automobile emissions. However, the state of California,
which had long suffered from abysmal air quality, was allowed to adopt tougher
emission standards.

In 1977, with many cities and counties facing growing smog problems, Congress
allowed other states to adopt California standards. The opportunity to adopt more
stringent standards rather than sticking with the weaker national standards has been
appealing to many states. To date, seven other states have adopted California’s more
rigorous vehicle emission standards. These states—Massachusetts, New York, New
Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine and Vermont—now represent 26% of the automobile market.

The LEV II standards do two things:

1. Standards for fleet average emissions for each automakers’ cars are slightly higher
than federal standards.

2. A percentage of each automaker’s new cars sold must be low-emission vehicles.