The extent of the federal government's duty to comply with state pollution control requirements under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 remains a problematic area of environmental law. As was noted in an earlier ELR Comment,¹ §118 of the statute provides that all federal agencies operating facilities or engaging in activities that may result in the discharge of air pollutants shall comply with federal, state, interstate, and local pollution control and abatement requirements to the same extent that any person is subject to such requirements.²

Although this mandate seems clearly to subject federal facilities to all state pollution control requirements, the initial circuit court decision on the point held instead that while federal facilities must comply with substantive state requirements such as emissions standards set in implementation plans, they are not bound to comply with state procedural requirements, such as permit schemes, also contained in those plans.³ In the most recent circuit court ruling on this question, however, arguments of the federal government identical to those which proved successful in the initial circuit court case were rejected as unconvicing, and facilities of the TVA and U.S. Army were held subject to state implementation plan permit regulations as well as emissions standards.⁴