Spatial Regulation of Air Toxics Hot Spots

Abstract

This paper analyzes the potential implications, in terms of net social costs and distribution of risks and abatement costs, of a policy to address the problem of air toxics "hot spots." The policy we analyze involves regulation of air toxics sources at increasingly finer spatial resolutions. We develop a model of a decisionmaker choosing emission standards within a net cost minimization framework. Empirical application of the model to two counties in Florida demonstrates that regulation at finer resolutions could involve tradeoffs between net social costs and equitable distribution of risks and, in some settings, between individual and population risks.

The Impact of Prenatal Exposure to Power Plant Emissions on Birth Weight: Evidence from a Pennsylvania Power Plant Located Upwind of New Jersey

“…According to an EPA report, as of March 2015, coal‐fired power plants without SO 2 emission controls account for 18 percent of electricity generation (measured by MWh) . The empirical setting examined by our study highlights a case where federal regulations imposed directly upon pollution sources are needed, and such regulations are also examples of currently debated spatial regulations of air pollution “hot spots” (Turaga, Noonan, & Bostrom, ).…”

Where We Stand: A Review on Equity in Public Administration and Policy

“…PAQ Vol 47 Issue 4 There are a number of published articles that discuss equity in some way shape or form that are not captured in this review. For the purpose of this paper, we identified a series of these articles that do not specifically mention equity in their title, keywords, or abstract, but study a topic that is often associated with equity such as representative bureaucracy (Meier, 2019), wage gap (Sabharwal, 2013), the Minnowbrook Conference (Carboni & Nabatchi, 2019), government activities and performance (Moynihan et al, 2011), and environmental risks (Turaga et al, 2015;Wikstrom et al, 2018).…”