The Obama and Trudeau governments emphasized how important governments in US states and Canadian provinces and territories would be when their leaders jointly announced stronger efforts to combat climate change on Mar. 10.
The notion that governments one step below the federal level are well equipped to not just implement, but help formulate workable national environmental policies embraces a concept known as cooperative federalism.
Theoretically, it's a fine idea. It's at the core of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Resources Conservation and Recovery Act among others in the US. But state regulators told the US Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee on Mar. 9 that the US Environmental Protection Agency isn't following it consistently.
Some said EPA's national reach can help when other states' lax polices create pollution problems that migrate downstream and downwind. Others said the federal environmental regulator has grown more interested in imposing its own solutions than working with states during Barack Obama's presidency.
"We have successfully worked with EPA for decades under a relationship where the federal and state governments work cooperatively," said Arkansas Department of Environmental Safety Director Becky Keogh. "Now, we have an increasingly diminished role.
"The cooperative federalism model has morphed into a kind of coercive federalism," she said. "Historically, these federal takeovers were weapons of last resort. States won't tend to make their own proposals if they believe the federal government will do what it wants in the end."
Randy C. Huffman, Cabinet Sec. for West Virginia's Department of Environmental Protection, said that in the past few years, EPA and other federal agencies seem to have tried to remake the US regulatory landscape.
'A marked indifference'
"They have undertaken this effort with a marked indifference to the impacts of their continual parade of new regulatory demands on state agencies that are already resource-constrained in carrying out existing mandates," he testified. "State agencies face flat, if not declining budgets for funding and personnel. Each new regulatory burden EPA places on the states further stretches our finite resources. Many, though not all, of these new demands come in the air pollution control area."
The state officials generally reported better results from EPA's division offices than from headquarters. "EPA Region I engaged Vermont as a full partner every step of the way as it developed the Total Maximum Daily Limit (TMDL) for Lake Champlain," said Vermont Agency of Natural Resources Sec. Deborah Markowitz.
"We are confident that this TMDL can be successfully implemented, taking a watershed approach to hold our municipalities, highways, farms, and developers to a high stormwater management standard, while reducing wastewater treatment pollution over time," she said.
Nick Snow
NICK SNOW covered oil and gas in Washington for more than 30 years. He worked in several capacities for The Oil Daily and was founding editor of Petroleum Finance Week before joining OGJ as its Washington correspondent in September 2005 and becoming its full-time Washington editor in October 2007. He retired from OGJ in January 2020.
