A Primer: Air and Water Environmental Quality Standards in the United States

48 Pages Posted: 27 Jan 2016

See all articles by Jason J. Czarnezki

Jason J. Czarnezki

Pace University - School of Law

Siu Lam

Vermont Law School

Nadia B. Ahmad

Barry University - Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law; Yale School of the Environment

Date Written: January 27, 2016

Abstract

How are environmental quality standards created, implemented, and enforced in the United States? The Clean Air Act calls on the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) to set the acceptable ambient levels of pollution through the national ambient air quality standards, while leaving it to the states to decide how to obtain those pollution levels. In contrast, under the Clean Water Act, EPA promulgates national industry-wide standards with which polluters must comply, whereas the states are empowered to define acceptable ambient pollution levels in water bodies within their borders. What are the details, successes, and challenges to this approach?

This Article, designed as a resource for environmental law professors both domestically and abroad, addresses how environmental quality standards are created, implemented, and enforced in the United States. The answers to these questions are useful to those teaching U.S. environmental law and international scholars, especially in the European Union, who are faced with the challenge of creating new environmental quality standards under both national and EU directives. It must be noted that this project is complicated by the federal system within the country, and, thus, attention must be devoted to the federal-state relationship. In fact, the major relevant statutes, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, were designed to use the federal system in order to implement their statutory objectives, and this Article is divided into two sections focusing on these two natural resources, air and water.

Keywords: water, air, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act

Suggested Citation

Czarnezki, Jason J. and Lam, Siu and Ahmad, Nadia, A Primer: Air and Water Environmental Quality Standards in the United States (January 27, 2016). William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review, Vol. 40, 2016, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2723538

Jason J. Czarnezki (Contact Author)

Pace University - School of Law ( email )

78 North Broadway
White Plains, NY 10603
United States

Siu Lam

Vermont Law School

68 North Windsor Street
P.O. Box 60
South Royalton, VT 05068
United States

Nadia Ahmad

Barry University - Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law ( email )

6441 East Colonial Drive
Orlando, FL 32807
United States
(407) 206-5731 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.barry.edu/law/future-students/faculty/staff/nahmad.html

Yale School of the Environment ( email )

195 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
135
Abstract Views
899
Rank
383,493
PlumX Metrics