Political Economy and Environmental Protection

Environmental regulation in the United States is shifting emphasis from the national level to the state level. The national legislation that launched and sustained the modern environmental era envisioned state governments would become the primary locus for environmental regulation with the federal regulatory implementation becoming secondary to state operational activities. For most programs sponsored by national environmental regulatory legislation, the devolution of environmental regulation to the state level has taken longer than expected.

However, today, state governments are responsible for much of the activities originally intended by legislation. A consequence of this devolution of regulatory responsibility from ...