A Dirty River Runs Through it (the Failure of Enforcement in the Clean Water Act)
46 Pages Posted: 16 Jan 2012
Date Written: December 1, 1998
Abstract
Though our environmental legal system is set up in co-operative federalism, which supposedly allows the federal government or citizens to enforce environmental laws if the states do not do so in the first instance, it has a particular weakness. Under the legal doctrines, any enforcement will do, but all enforcement is not created equally. This article does a stastical analysis of two states enforcement records and shows that there enforcement is vastly different. This suggests that the possibility of uniform state enforcement is a myth, leading to problems with environmental protection.
Keywords: state enforcement, environment, citizens suit, federalism, cooperative federalism, Clean Water Act, Georgia water act enforcement, Washington water act enforcement
JEL Classification: C12, H77, I18, K23, K32, Q28
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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