Jessica Almendarez

Title: Effectiveness of Environmental Enforcement in Rhode Island: Protection of Water Quality

Personal Statement of Interest: After switching concentrations from English to Environmental Studies, I was unsure where the change would take me. Environmental Studies blended my interest in literature with issues concerning the environment. This strategy was manifested in a course I took in Fall 2008 on property rights and environmental policy. During the course, we covered an array of issues, including water rights from Rhode Island to California. My motivation for this research culminated not only from interests sparked in this class and other courses, such as Environmental Law and Policy, but also from my internship at the Rhode Island Attorney Gerenals Office this past summer. My inspiration also aligns with a current endeavor: applying to law school. I am interested in the establishment of laws regulating human activity in the environment. Once initiated, continued enforcement of environmental laws and policies is necessary to obtain the arranged standards. Policies involving environmental factors are administered through varying tiers of government agencies, regional authorities, and grassroots organizations. After viewing these relationships, and approaching the limitation of regulation, it is interesting to view the loose ends. It is imperative to the effectiveness of environmental regulation that the issues between polluters (or other bad actors) are continuously evaluated, in order to stipulate how they can best be resolved.

Statement of Problem: The level of environmental enforcement responds to the agenda of the government directing it. During the Bush Administration, civil and criminal environmental cases declined, and regulation directly relating to water pollution paralleled this slump.1. Efforts during this period shifted from EPA regulation to the states, corporations, and NGOs. This trend will be explored throughout the research, and various methods of setting standards will be studied through the text of Plater. Plater will provide background on trends in enforcement strategies, including use of administrative, civil and criminal penalties along with economic incentives.2

Initially, I want to determine what percent of municipal and/or industrial dischargers are in compliance with their RIPDES permits, based on evaluating a subset of dischargers. I will then evaluate the overall enforcement of Rhode Island environmental laws by comparing cases/administrative, and civil, penalties assessed in relation to compliance and relative to penalties collected. From this starting block, I will then dive into the consistency of regulators pertaining to the Clean Water Act, through the authorities RIDEM, Narragansett Bay Commission (NBC). I will also interview key enforcement officials in the RIAGs Office, RIDEM and the NBC, as well as NGOs such as CLF, RI Sierra Club and Clean Water Action to learn their views about environmental enforcement in Rhode Island. This case study will encompass targeting key polluters and measuring their progress. I will have to examine the obstacles arising from EPA and RIDEM coordination, and evaluate efforts within RIDEM and NBC to overcome inherent limitations. The information available is fragmented and I wish to create an integration of statistical data and policy efforts. After collecting monetary assessments from internet databases, I will perform a meta-analysis to display the differences in assessed/collected.

Based on the previously conduced research, I hypothesizethere will be a striking difference between amounts assessed/collected, as well as inability for regulatory agencies to crack down on all polluters in to the state's water systems. The correlation is often attributed to shortage of personnel, but I want to confirm whether or not this is the direct causation. I hypothesize that noncompliance increased during the Bush administration as a result of reduced enforcement.

I hope to find that the environmental regulation in Rhode Island has been improving and, if possible, suggest methods for reducing water pollution through integrated policy approaches.

1. History Commons. The Bush Administrations Environmental Record. http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=the_bush_administration_s_environmental_record&bush_env_general_topic_areas=bush_env_environmentalEnforcement. 2004.

2. Plater, Zygmunt J.B, et.al. Environmental Law and Policy. New York, NY: Aspen Publishers, Inc., 2004.

Clean Water Action. http://www.cleanwateraction.org/.

Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. http://www.epa-echo.gov/echo/. 29 Sept. 2009.

Federal Register Notice of Project XL. http://www.epa.gov/projctxl/finalrulepotw.pdf. 3 Oct. 2001.

History Commons. The Bush Administrations Environmental Record.

Narragansett Bay Commission. http://www.narrabay.com/. 2007-2009

Office of Compliance and Inspection. State of Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. http://www.dem.ri.gov/programs/benviron/ compinsp/index.htm. 29 Sept. 2008.

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Environmental Enforcement Declines. http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/environ/65/. 2004.

Wilkins, Timothy A. Prepare for Tougher Environmental Enforcement. http://www.bracewellgiuliani.com/dir_docs/news_publication/019dbc8f-ec3b-4aae-8aa2-f8da412c74b7_pdfupload.pdf. 2009