A Dirty River Runs Through It (The Failure of Enforcement in the Clean Water Act)
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
Publication Date
1997
Document Type
Article
Publication Information
25 Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 1 (1997)
Repository Citation
Flatt, Victor B., "A Dirty River Runs Through It (The Failure of Enforcement in the Clean Water Act)" (1997). Faculty Publications. 2279.
https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/faculty_publications/2279
