ENMT303 Environmental Regulations and Policy Week 3 Discussion
DQ1 Connections between Acts and Agencies covered this week and your future careers
This week, we covered the roles of the Army Corp of Engineers and EPA under the CWA, the state and local agencies managing the SDWA, the many actors and agencies in natural resource management, and specifically the involvement of two different federal agencies in the management of the Endangered Species Act.
What agency or organization in natural resource management peaked your interest? Make sure to articulate a clear connection to the course content. What specifically peaked your interest and what careers could you explore due to your interests?
Please change the title of this topic to clearly state the career you are posting about. This will allow other students interested in the same career to read your post and add relevant information and perspectives to what you began.
DQ2 CWA and SDWA and key terms and concepts within these acts
Some questions for you to consider as you discuss the CWA and SDWA:
How would you explain the key concepts for the CWA in less than two minutes?
What about the SDWA? What was so great about a bill that 533 out of 535 members of Congress voted to pass it? What are the basics of the SDWA and what are its accomplishments? Why was SDWA needed when we already had the CWA?
Take a look at these 73 contaminants with their maximum contaminant levels (MCL) and their public health goals. Which chemical you have heard about or have worked with? Why are the MCL and the MCLG (the public health goals) not the same?
What are your thoughts about a public health goal of zero mg/L for a number of these contaminants? For example, how can we achieve zero for chemicals we use in our society such as the herbicide Alachlor? How do we measure “zero”? What role does scientific uncertainty play in determining regulatory limits?
What are the issues with the terms “navigable water”, “waters of the United States”, and “significant nexus”?
We saw the difficulty of agreeing who needs to have a permit to discharge waters into water bodies, with questions about whether we need permits to discharge into isolated wetlands and ditches. How would you address this question given what you know about the water cycle? What occurs to discharges into ditches and isolated wetlands? If you were writing the CWA, would you have included groundwater in the legislation? Why or why not?
In his lecture on “Safe Drinking Water: Science and Law”, Professor John Wargo discussed his drinking water sources of his private well and his bottled water. Are those sources regulated? Explain why or why not. What other regulations might come into play for managing safe drinking water sources given what you know about the water cycle?
Remember that you do not need to answer all questions! What you need is to help your classmates address one of these questions or integrate several responses to make a connection or share a different perspective or make a gentle correction or ask a relevant question. Make sure to discuss these questions before taking the weekly quiz!
DQ3 Managing our natural resources
How do we resolve the desires and needs of all these different groups? Take a look at Professor Wargo’s lecture and then discuss in class what you have seen or experienced, concerning how land use and conservation laws affect our every day lives. How does ideology of land use rights (libertarianism, authoritarian, utilitarian, preservationist) affect how we view natural resource laws? How are property rights defined? Do you agree with Professor Wargo that property rights are really a set of relationships, and hence, you cannot think of rights without thinking about obligations?
Do you agree that the ESA is the most powerful natural resource legislation in the U.S.? Why or why not?