Fundamentals of Environmental Law and Compliance

Daniel T. Rogers

• Verlag: CRC Press
• Jahr: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000635102
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Economics
• Thema: Sustainable Development

This textbook provides readers with the fundamentals and the intent of environmental regulations so that compliance can be greatly improved and streamlined. Through numerous examples and case studies, it explains concepts from how environmental laws are applied and work to why pollution prevention and sustainability are critical for the future of all life on Earth. It is organized to accommodate different needs of students with different backgrounds and career choices. It is also useful for site safety and environmental managers, researchers, technicians, and other young professionals with a desire to apply environmental regulations and sustainability measures to their facilities and stay up to date on recently changed regulations.

FEATURES

• Introduces students to issues of global environmental and sustainability challenges and policy
• Explains the science behind issues such as climate change, how environmental policy is made at the national and international levels, and what role politics play in determining environmental resource use
• Focuses on fundamental principles that are applicable in all nations and legal contexts
• Addresses the planet as one biosphere and briefly discusses environmental laws and regulations of more than 50 countries
• Provides numerous case studies that demonstrate major concepts and themes, examples, questions, and exercises to strengthen understanding and promote critical thinking, discussion, and debate

This book will benefit students in advanced undergraduate and graduate programs in environmental sciences and environmental engineering. It will also be of use to new practitioners who are entering the field of environmental management and need an introduction to environmental regulations.

1 Themes and Overview of Fundamentals of Environmental Law and Compliance

DOI: 10.1201/9781003175810-1

1.1 Introduction

The focus of this book is compliance with environmental laws and regulations and sustainability within the United States and throughout the world. The goal of environmental regulation is to protect human health and the environment. The goal of sustainability is to create an environment whereby humans live in productive harmony with nature. To achieve the goal of robust and effective environmental regulations, nations of the world have learned to concentrate their efforts that protect the air, protect the water, protect the land, and protect living organisms. One of the two goals of this book is to provide the user with enough technical information and practical experience so that compliance with environmental regulations and laws is achieved and maintained.

To achieve the goal of sustainability is more problematic in practice. Sustainability involves creating a balance between humans and nature that at this point does not exist. Creating a sustainable Earth will require enacting a set of proactive and coordinated measures that will require hard work and cooperation from everyone in every country. In order for the Earth to sustain a global human population of more than 7 billion people, which continues to increase daily, it is essential that we appreciate and comprehend the biosphere at a level that is greater than most, if not all, scientific levels in inquiry and understanding. The reason for such a high level of scientific inquiry is simple, this is where we live, and immediately beneath our feet is the contact between civilization and the natural world. Much of our human history has been spent in developing ways to conquer and change nature, which as we shall see in the course of reading this book, has not turned out well for nature, for us, and the organisms with which we share this planet. To underscore this point, Earth Scientists are now convinced that we have now moved the needle of geologic time into a new period called the Anthropocene. This is significant because the definition of a Geologic Age is a time period that effects the entire Earth and will be recorded in Earth's history and cannot be reversed.

This book is divided into three sections. The first section addresses the past. The second section addresses the present and the third section address the future. The first section examines the history of pollution and the birth of the environmental movement. The first section will also examine how investigation and remediation of legacy sites are conducted. This section will also provide the reader with a sense of our past mistakes and misperceptions of treating nature poorly and the huge cost of cleaning up the environment once it becomes impacted.

The second section of this book will examine the present by exploring the environmental regulations of the United States and the world. We will examine more than 50 different countries on 6 continents and will compare and contrast regulations from each country with respect to their effectiveness and how they compare to the United States.

The third and final section of this book is dedicated to the future framed as sustainability. This section is divided into chapters that address sustainability at the global level, national level, local level, and individual level. We will learn the hard truth that contamination does not respect country boundaries. Changes required to existing environmental regulations so that they more adequately address inconsistencies and gaps within existing regulations that move our civilization toward the ultimate goal of instilling environmental stewardship and creating a sustainable planet.

This book concludes with guidelines, procedures, and experience-based practical advice on conducting an environmental audit.

1.2 Major Themes of This Book

The following sections provide a brief introduction into the central themes that are covered in this book and include the following:

1. No Matter Where You Are, It's All the Same
2. The Past: Addressing and Repairing Nature
3. The Present: Environmental Compliance
4. The Future: Improving Environmental Regulations and Embracing Sustainability
5. The Importance of Conducting an Environmental Audit

1.2.1 Theme 1: No Matter Where You Are, It's All the Same

Of any theme presented in this book, “No matter where you are, it's all the same,” is probably the most significant. As stated in the introduction, pollution does not care about country borders. As we shall discuss, air pollution can and does pollute the entire planet. Therefore, it makes sense that when dealing with many types of air pollutants that there should be consistency in environmental regulations that deal with air pollution throughout the world. This becomes most apparent when we discuss environmental regulations of the world.

1.2.2 Theme 2: The Past: Addressing and Repairing Nature

The first step in addressing and repairing nature from anthropogenic sources of pollution and land use requires an understanding of nature. Each day when we walk outside we are walking on a history book, yet most of us are unaware of this and are unaware of how this history book influences our lives. The arrangement, thickness, and composition of the soil and sediment layers just centimeters beneath our feet have a profound influence on our lives and all life on Earth. These soil and sediment layers don’t just dictate where and how cities are built, where roads are built, and how buildings are constructed. Most significantly, these soil and sediment layers beneath our feet are the meeting place between human civilization and the natural world. This contact between human civilization and the natural world is the proving ground and point at which contaminants released into the environment begin their destructive journey that has now impacted all living things on Earth. We must understand our natural world in at least the same scientific detail that we need to understand pollution. The reason we must do this is simple, they interact with one other.

From a historical point of view, our treatment of the environment has not been kind. As recently as the early portion of the 20th century, environmental awareness and legislation were generally lacking not only in the United States but worldwide. There were a few international agreements that primarily focused on boundary waters, navigation, and fishing rights along shared waterways between countries. However, they ignored pollution and ecological issues. In fact, the most convenient and least costly method of waste disposal up until the middle of the 20th century was “up the stack or down the river” (Haynes 1954). It was not until the publishing of the Rachel Carson book, Silent Spring in 1962 described the environmental effects of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) on birds that catapulted the environmental movement in the United States into the public eye (Carson 1962). The 1960s and 1970s are generally described as the age of environmentalism in the United States. This is when the United States realized that environmental degradation had significantly affected the air and water quality of many urban areas, especially the air in Los Angeles and water in Lake Erie, which is one of the Great Lakes. Starting on Earth Day in 1971, the Ad Council and Keep America Beautiful campaign aired public awareness commercials on television depicting a Native American shedding a tear when looking out over the polluted landscape of the United States. The commercial stated “people start pollution, people can stop pollution” (United States Advisory Council on Historic Preservation 2021).

Although laws focused on protecting human health or the environment can be traced back more than 2,000 years, it took the United States in the 1970s with the passage of the most significant environmental regulations and laws to set the example for the rest of the World (Hahn 1994).

Environmental regulations of the United States and the world are largely based on reactions to an incident that caused enormous harm to human health and the environment. A few of the many examples of incidents that resulted in the enactment of environmental regulations include Love Canal in New York, Times Beach in Missouri, Bhopal in India, the fire on the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and ...