Air Quality Planning

(Updated 9/10/2020)     

Proposed Final Ozone Attainment Plan for San Diego County

Background

Air quality plans provide an overview of the region's air quality and identify the pollution-control measures needed to expeditiously attain and maintain air quality standards.  The District's plans include the San Diego Regional Air Quality Strategy (RAQS), addressing State requirements, and the San Diego portion of the California State Implementation Plan (SIP), addressing federal requirements.
 

Current Attainment Status  
Information on EPA's 2015 Ozone Standard  
CEQA  
Reducing Air Pollution  
Walking, Biking, and Transit  
Climate and Pollution

Previous Federal Plans

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for six criteria pollutants, which are known to be harmful to human health and welfare. These criteria pollutants are:

• Carbon Monoxide (CO)
• Lead (Pb)
• Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2)
• Ozone (O3)
• Particulate Matter (PM)
• Sulfur Oxides (SOx)

The federal Clean Air Act (CAA) requires plans which identify how nonattainment areas will attain and/or maintain the NAAQS. The CAA requires the EPA to review each plan, any plan revisions, and to approve the plan/revisions if consistent with the CAA.

Key elements of these plans include emission inventories, emission control strategies and rules, air quality data analyses, modeling, air quality progress and attainment or maintenance demonstrations. 

State Plans

The California Clean Air Act (CCAA) of 1988 requires the air districts to endeavor, achieve and maintain the state ambient air quality standards by the earliest practicable date and develop plans for attaining the state ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide standards. 

In compliance with the CCAA, the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District prepared and submitted the 1991 Regional Air Quality Strategy (RAQS) to address San Diego County's nonattainment status for ozone. The RAQS is designed to make expeditious progress toward attaining the state ozone standard and contains preliminary implementation schedules for control programs on stationary sources, transportation, indirect sources, and a vehicle/fuels program.