In my next two posts, we are going to discuss the specific achievements and failures of environmental law. This is going to based off specified examples, that are not meant to bring bias to one side over the other. So now, let us look at some specific examples that show success of environmental law. Will you interpret these to be the most significant? Will you not even find these significant at all? Let’s take a look at what I thought were three of the big successes.
1. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA)
This was one of the most successful examples of environmental law ever to be mandated by the United States Government. The law allowed a base for environmental laws to even gain significance in US law, with the law itself requiring every major decision of the federal government to be evaluated for how much it could effect the environment. So when it came to major projects, especially projects that are public works, the government has now had to look at how those could impact the environment. The main issue with this act is that it can hurt the amount of employment in the United States. For example, if this act had passed during the time of the Great Depression (that took place circa 1929-1939), the amount of jobs President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened up would have been limited due to how many of those jobs had actually hurt the environment via pollution, waste, and high consumption of natural resources. However, NEPA actually has the goal for “man and the environment to grow alongside each other”(NEPA.gov). Besides setting the precedent of checks and balances for the environment, this act also established the Council on Environmental Equality. This serves as a federal agency, in which monitors that all other federal agencies are able to meet the requirements of NEPA. This is within the executive office of the United States President, and confirms that policy is established, proper goals are set and that the means are provided for a legitimate follow through of each policy, along with each policies goal(s). This is a huge success for environmental law, mainly because it establishes the environment as something that should have its own rights to begin with, and must be preserved in recognition that it dictates how long the human race may also be preserved.
2. Safe Drinking Water Act (1974)
Humans have three basic needs in order to ensure survival. They need drinkable water, edible food, and feasible shelter. However, when we deal with issues of pollution and wastes in our environment, one specific natural resource that consistently becomes prone to contamination is water. With a world population that has continuously grown for decades, more and more clean water must be preserved to avoid health issues. This was exactly what the Safe Drinking Water Act was meant to do, setting quality standards to be met by all United States drinking water systems. This has made corporations become more regulative of their wastes and pollution, and has made people, as individual consumers, more alert as to how they dispose and maintain of items that are part of their property or ownership. As was the same theme in passing NEPA, the most impactful way of helping the environment is making sure that it can also benefit the lives of humans interdependently.
With the help of groups like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the issue, the effect on environmental law has been shown to have quite a significant impact and success for both humans and the environment. Furthermore, when this has been violated, the right people and sources of the contamination have been held accountable and stopped to resume the flow of clean drinking water. An example that I know would be rather well known by the readers of this blog should be the crisis that occurred a few years back in Flint, Michigan. State government in Michigan had chosen to start receiving its water via a pipeline stretching from Lake Huron, in order to reduce water funding shortfalls. Soon after, a class-action lawsuit was filed because the state was not treating the water with an anti-corrosive agent, which would be against the rules of the Safe Drinking Water Act, and thus be a violation of federal law. Thanks to this law, the incident was able to become an official case under the grounds of judiciary measures, and eventually led to an almost $100 million dollar settlement for temporary drinking water provided by the state, and investment into fixing the pipes to make them safe to transfer drinkable water. This, the Flint Water Crisis, is one of many examples of environmental law proving successful under this act.
3. Medical Waste Tracking Act (1988)
This is the last major, and yet effective piece of legislation I will cover regarding successes of environmental law. In the late 1980s, some of the US public was greeted with waves of medical waste coming from a beach where many families had children and adults enjoying their time surrounded by the water and shore. The response? The 1988 Medical Waste Tracking Act, which compelled healthcare providers to treat their waste seriously and make sure it gets disposed of properly.
This has been an everlasting impact on keeping the environment and its inhabitants safe, especially reducing fatal diseases like AIDS, Hepatitis B and C, or even CMV (Cytomegalovirus.) This act also avoids contamination of other species of both animals and plants, which has helped to preserve biodiversity, and healthy food for human consumption.
I think these show real successes of environmental law, in a truly impactful way these laws have been developed, regulated, and recognized specifically under the government of the United States. However, as you will see in the next post, not all environmental law is as helpful as these examples were.