May 30, 2009

Clean Water, Eh?

Been absent from the blog a bit... been out in the mountains talking with other state and federal water quality managers about how to make progress controlling pollution sources that are not regulated.

The talk centered around the question of securing more government authority to control diffuse sources of pollution... that is, pollution that doesn't come from a specific point... so-called "nonpoint source pollution."

My pitch was, "Hey. We have authorities we don't use for various forms of nonpoint source pollution. What makes us think that securing more authorities will be an improvement?"

I could give more specific examples, but it's my policy to separate my blogging from my professional work. But... just saying....


Psssst... Do Something

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3 comments:

libhom said...

Sometimes I think public health regulation by our government has been reduced to a public relations campaign.

Unknown said...

But is the grab for federal authority really just a grab for federal $ ? And could fed $ be used to enforce existing local/state authority that lacks the $ for enforcement?

GDAEman said...

Hemlock,

Thanks for commmeting. The interest in more fed/state authority isn't really about a grab for money. It's the reflection of frustration that after decades of trying to clean up waters we're making little headway on the nonpoint sources of pollution... People are starting to say, "Cooperative, voluntary approaches aren't working because, when the almight dollar is at stake, the environment can be scrificed."

It tend to agree, but my point was, governments have authorities they don't use... if there's going to be a call for MORE authority, governments better figure out how to make productive use of that authority....