An Academic Study
My initial purpose in writing this manuscript was to provide an educational tool for academia, both for the professors who teach environmental policy and politics (or any related field) and their students. It is much more! This book meets that original intent.
Here are some ideas:
- The book dives deep into policymaking on multiple provisions of the 1972 Clean Water Act, including effluent guidelines, water quality standards, permits, and enforcement to mention a few. Unlike what I experienced at Colorado State University, whose tenured professor apparently had no hands-on experience as a policymaker, his sterile account lacked the robustness that could engage and mesmerize students as when I served as guest lecturer on many occasions. This book can help professors engage their students.
- A whole new generation of students is pursuing a career in the environment, whether engineers, law students, those interested in public participation and risk communication, aquatic biologists, oceanographers, or those who want to enter the field of public administration. This book provides a much-needed context for their studies.
- Due to my deep dives into policymaking, one can understand how difficult policymaking in the environmental field really is; that it is vastly complicated by the land mines left by past policymakers, political influence, and how the “public” can be participants or otherwise marginalized. Policy can either be dumbed down to the lowest denominator or led by people with experience and uncompromising resolve.
How to Use This Manuscript
- It is an entire course of study itself.
- Ask your students to pick a subject and analyze my references and arguments and how I missed the boat. I say this because this book does not examine EPA and its behaviors after the 1980s. How have some of my issues, like accountability, been handled by future EPA administrations?
- Choose a part or chapter and ask your students to write a policy and a policy justification statement.
CONTACT ERIC EIDSNESS FOR LINKS TO DISCOUNTS FOR ACADEMIC USE.
Table of Contents
FOREWORD
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PROLOGUE: “Were We Bad People?”
PART I: THE EVENTS AND INFLUENCES THAT SHAPED MY POLITICAL AND GOVERNING PHILOSOPHY
Chapter I-1: Bountiful and Limitless Natural Environment
Chapter I-2: Engineers Are “Good Guys” Who Solve Problems
Chapter I-3: Everything Is Connected to Everything Else
Chapter I-4: Education Comes in Many Forms
Chapter I-5: Government by Invasion and Intrusion
Chapter I-6: Environmental Activism and the Birth of “Process”
PART II: EARLY DAYS OF IMPLEMENTING THE FEDERAL CLEAN WATER ACT
Chapter II-1: Genesis of Federal Dominance, Hero Legislators, and the Birth of Environmental Elitism
Chapter II-2: Environmental Protection from the Top Down
Chapter II-3: EPA’s Anatomy
Chapter II-4: The Water Pollution Control Implementation Strategy
Chapter II-5: Tough Choices — Painful and Confusing Implementation
Chapter II-6: An Unheeded Prophesy of Failure — Technology and Water Quality-Based NPDES Permits
Chapter ll-7: Effluent Guideline Regulations and Permit Writing — Exposing the Secret and What Happened in Reality
Chapter II-8: Municipal Pollution Control
Chapter II-9: Environmental Protection from the Bottom Up — The Alternative Universe
Chapter II-10: EPA’s Reckless Presumptive Applicability Policy
PART III: WATER POLLUTION CONTROL FROM THE BOTTOM UP — A CASE STUDY
Chapter III-1: “Go West, Young Man”
Chapter III-2: The Story of a Changing Environment Rooted in Early Water Resources Development
Chapter III-3: Water Reclamation Arrives at the Front Range of Colorado
Chapter III-4: First in Time Is First in Right
Chapter III-5: The Carter “Hit List”
Chapter III-6: Organizing the 208 Study, Deploying People, Processes and Tools
Chapter III-7: Goals, Objectives and Principles Reflecting Local Values
Chapter III-8: What Is the Problem?
Chapter III-9: Bridging the Gap Between WQS as an “Ideal” and the Scientific and Technical Reality
Chapter III-10: All Politics Is Local
Chapter III-11: Water Quality Management Planning at the Local Level Can Work — The Proof is in the Doing
Chapter III-12: Retrospective of a Flawed Federal Mandate and a Look Ahead to Future WQM Planning
PART IV: SEWERGATE: HIT LISTS, SWEETHEART DEALS AND SHREDDERS
Chapter IV-1: (Another) Mr. Eidsness Goes to Washington
Chapter IV-2: Birth of a Political Engineer
Chapter IV-3: My Letter to Senator Armstrong
Chapter IV-4: Waterside Mall
Chapter IV-5: The Gorsuch Team
Chapter IV-6: In Her Own Words
Chapter IV-7 Confirmation and Promises Made
Chapter IV-8: Clearing the Backlog
Chapter IV-9: Managing the Unmanageable
Chapter IV-10: The Missing Link — Water Quality Standards-to-Permits
Chapter IV-11: The National Municipal Policy
Chapter IV-12: The Enforcement Debacle
Chapter IV-13: The Melting of the Ice Queen and the Return of Mr. Clean
PART V: THE FUTURE — CHANGING BEHAVIORS AND RELATIONSHIPS, REENERGIZING THE QUEST FOR SAFE, CLEAN WATER, AND A PLAN FOR EPA
Chapter V-1: Victims, Victims Everywhere
Chapter V-2: Trust and Retribution
Chapter V-3: Chevron’s Marzone Superfund Project Breaks the Adversarial Mold
Chapter V-4: Empowerment in Environmental Decision-Making
Chapter V-5: The Future of Environmental Protection and the Case for Change
Chapter V-6: Marshalling In a New Era of Environmentalism — The New National Environmental Protection Commission (NEPC)
EPILOGUE
Carbon Audit Program
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS
GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
