Abstract
Federal hazardous waste regulation and cleanup programs suffer from poor prioritization, insufficient flexibility, high costs, and questionable benefits. Many of these problems are a result of excessive regulatory centralization. The federal government has assumed primary responsibility for hazardous waste policy, placing states in a secondary role, even though the environmental threats posed by hazardous waste are generally quite localized. Hazardous waste itself is not a form of pollution, but rather a “precursor to pollution.” It only becomes an environmental problem when mismanaged, and allowed to contaminate land or water. Properly managed, however, hazardous waste is not a particularly pressing environmental concern. And when improperly handled, hazardous waste tends to create fairly localized environmental concerns. Contamination of soil and groundwater are site-specific, rarely crossing state lines. Unlike much air and water pollution, mismanagement of hazardous waste does not involve substantial interstate externalities of the sort that would typically justify the imposition of federal regulation.
State governments should be given the opportunity to assume leadership of hazardous waste regulation and cleanup. While the federal government has an important role to play in the regulation and management of hazardous wastes, this role should be far more circumscribed and targeted than under existing law. A more decentralized regulatory regime could produce more transparent and forthright accounting of the trade-offs inherent in hazardous waste management and cleanup, encourage the development of more targeted and location specific remedial measures, and foster a more effective hazardous waste policy for the future.
This abstract has been taken from the author's introduction.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2008
Publication Information
17 New York University Environmental Law Journal 724-756 (2008)
Repository Citation
Adler, Jonathan H., "Reforming Our Wasteful Hazardous Waste Policy" (2008). Faculty Publications. 2318.
https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs/2318
Included in
Administrative Law Commons, Environmental Law Commons, State and Local Government Law Commons
Comments
Written for the symposium Breaking the Logjam: An Environmental Law for the 21st Century (2008) sponsored by New York Law School and NYU School of Law.