America - Regulation Nation

 I recently had the occasion to disagree with a colleague over the level of regulation in America. He claimed that "States just allow polluters to dump toxins in rivers and pollute our air". I completely disagree with this notion - as follows:

As an environmental scientist for 20 years - and someone who makes my living helping my clients secure environmental permits for their projects, including extensive work as an adviser to public agencies - I cannot think of any state which "allows" people to dump pollutants in rivers, or pollute the air.

In fact the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, the Endangered Species Act, the Oil Pollution Prevention Act, the Coastal Zone Protection Act, and a thousand others strictly regulate what constituents, and in what concentrations any material may be put into the environment. The list of regulated chemicals in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) is staggering, the database lists many thousands of chemicals and their various compounds and isotopes.

Naturally there is some difference of opinion as to what constitutes a pollutant. Some compounds are easily identified as a pollutant due to their extreme toxicity (e.g.. benzene's, VOC's, certain pesticides...etc..), others are less easily discernible - often the difference between "harmless" and toxic is merely the dosage. Dosage is confusing and can be strongly influenced by medium (air, water, groundwater), dispersal methods, time, environmental persistence, half-life, degradation, reaction to other environmental factors like UV light degradation...etc... The list goes on. But if your argument is that the "government" should regulate EVERYTHING. (Please forgive me if I have overstated your belief) Then you would degrade and eliminate our freedom entirely. The environments ability to mend itself is amazing and only now becoming more understood. If you remember the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico - a few years ago - it was said (by some) that the oil would persist for generations; and yet to some people's amazement - it was found that a huge bloom of micro-algae was quickly consuming most of the petroleum. To us in the industry this was no surprise but actually predicted.

Obviously I am not arguing that pollution is okay - what I am arguing is that the environmental laws we have are very capable of limiting and stopping the majority of pollution contributing causes and that we should all be VERY careful when we attempt to argue that more laws are needed. I personally believe we all live under a crushing blanket of over regulation....and in many discrete and overt ways they limit and diminish our freedom.