Posted by
John R. LaPlante on Tuesday, August 01, 2006 6:36:57 PM
Water is essential to human life. How then should government respond to environmental threats to that valuable resource?
The Thomas Jefferson Institute reminds us that lawmakers must take care to take steps that are both good for the environment and fiscally sound.
In a 26-page PDF report Policy Alternatives for Clean-Up of Virginia Waters, David Schnare, Ph.D., reviews the ideas proposed in state government to clean up Chesapeake Bay.
Policy makers, he says, must ask several questions. “What happens if we don’t do anything?” Even with the federal Clean Water Act, state government has plenty of discretion, which it should use to the benefit of the commonwealth. But it must resist the temptation to take the easy way out, which would be to focus on the pollution sources that are easily identifiable.
Schnare then offers a proposal to mitigate the effects of non-point source pollution (largely speaking, agriculture) that will work just as well as a plan considered by officials at the time of publication (April 2006), but at two-thirds the cost.
While the specific waterways that need cleanup will vary from state to state, policy makers everywhere would benefit from considering the principles endorsed in this report.