This book offers the first comprehensive history of a difficult and often neglected part of EPA's responsibilities - the enforcement of federal environmental standards. Drawing on extensive interviews with the political appointees, administrators, and staff who have provided the agency's direction, as well as his own professional experience with EPA, Joel A. Mintz explores the historical evolution of the agency's enforcement program, its institutional setting within the larger political arena, and its current strengths and shortcomings. This history will be important reading for students of political science, public policy, environmental law, administrative law, anthropology, sociology, and related fields. It should also be read by attorneys who represent parties in enforcement cases initiated by EPA, by the agency's own managers and professional staff, and by public citizens concerned with environmental issues.

The only published work that treats the historical evolution of EPA enforcement, this book provides a candid inside glimpse of a crucial aspect of the work of an important federal agency. Based on 190 personal interviews with present and former enforcement officials at EPA, the U.S. Department of Justice, and key congressional staff members—along with extensive research among EPA documents and secondary sources—the book vividly recounts the often tumultuous history of EPA’s enforcement program. It also analyzes some important questions regarding EPA’s institutional relationships and the Agency’s working environment. This revised and updated edition adds substantial new chapters examining EPA enforcement during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Its treatment of issues of civil service decline and the applicability of captive agency theory is also new and original.

In conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, this book brings together leading scholars and EPA veterans to provide a comprehensive assessment of the agency’s key decisions and actions in the various areas of its responsibility. Themes across all chapters include the role of rulemaking, negotiation/compromise, partisan polarization, judicial impacts, relations with the White House and Congress, public opinion, interest group pressures, environmental enforcement, environmental justice, risk assessment, and interagency conflict. As no other book on the market currently discusses EPA with this focus or scope, the authors have set out to provide a comprehensive analysis of the agency’s rich 50-year history for academics, students, professional, and the environmental community.

One of the most controversial issues in environmental law and policy-and one that of considerable importance to the EPA-is the allocation of power and authority between the federal and state governments. The recent evolution in approaches of environmental enforcement highlights many of the tensions inherent in this debate. During the past several years, the federal and state governments have spent a good deal of energy attempting to "reinvent" their relationship. The shifts in federal/state enforcement relations are highly significant, with the potential to fundamentally reorder the division of authority that has existing over the past 25 years. This book thoroughly documents the changing nature of federal/state relations in enforcing environmental law. It breaks new ground in analyzing the federal/state enforcement relationship, particularly in light of the many recent developments that have occurred in this area. The author's findings provide important lessons about the interplay between federal and state efforts in other regulatory areas, and for the structure of federal/state relations generally. Professors Rechtschaffen's and Markell's clear, in-depth analysis will be essential reading for legal and regulatory experts, attorneys who are involved in environmental enforcement matters, the judiciary, legislators, political scientists, public policy experts, and anyone with an interest in environmental law and policy.

Out of Bounds, Out of Control measures the enforcement activities of the Environmental Protection Agency against that standard and finds them disturbingly deficient. Environmental regulation is so detailed and obscure that no one can identify all relevant mandates, let alone ensure compliance. EPA maintains broad discretion to define legal violations and resists any checks. Discretion is exercised retroactively or arbitrarily. People fear to dispute the agency's interpretation of its power or express doubts about the absolute primacy of its mission lest they be made into examples. The concept of "intent" has become so attenuated that it provides no limitation on prosecution. The EPA also blurs the lines separating governmental powers. Using its open-ended authority to "interpret" vague statutes, it makes the laws that define its own powers, then investigates, prosecutes, adjudicates, and penalizes. Judicial checks are sporadic. This panoply of authority breeds regulatory zealotry and a disregard for the rights of the regulated. The book, however, is more than a sobering look at a legal theory. In story after story specific regulatory abuses are examined, many of which are positively Kafkaesque. Moreover, many of the problems documented in the book are pandemic across the government. The ultimate lesson to be drawn is that deep structural reform is needed to restore the rule of law to administrative agencies.

Environmental justice is a significant and dynamic contemporary development in environmental law. Rechtschaffen, Gauna and new coauthor O'Neill provide an accessible compilation of interdisciplinary materials for studying environmental justice, interspersed with extensive notes, questions, and a teacher's manual with practice exercises designed to facilitate classroom discussion. It integrates excerpts from empirical studies, cases, agency decisions, informal agency guidance, law reviews, and other academic literature, as well as community-generated documents. This second edition includes new chapters addressing climate change, international environmental justice, and a capstone case study. It also adds expanded coverage of risk and the public health, empirical environmental justice research, and environmental justice for American Indian peoples.

We are in the second decade of modem environmental law. By some indicators this body of regulation has matured greatly. We can point to statutes and codes at the federal, state, and local levels which address almost every conceivable form of pollution and environmental insult. Yet, despite the existence of this large body of law, despite considerable expenditures on enforcement, and despite the energetic efforts of people sympathetic to environmental objectives, violations are numerous. Serious pollution problems are commonplace. Love Canal, the Valley of the Drums, Times Beach, and Stringfellow Acid Pits epitomize the national environmental quality challenge. Daily, a major illegal disposal of haz ardous waste is recorded; a new mismanaged dump site is discovered; a toxic substance is found in our drinking water; or a failure to meet a water or air quality standard is identified. Many of these violations involve American business. Failures to comply are of several types. A small businessman in Pennsylvania mistakenly allows a spillover of a pollutant into a protected stream. An industrialist in the Midwest adds to his fortune by illegally dumping dangerous chemicals. A series of errors by several firms, some of which no longer exist, combine to create a health threatening conflagration on the West Coast. An automobile company interprets one of the almost innumerable air pollution rules differently from government: It produces a car which the government says fails to comply with the Clean Air Act.