Local impacts, global sources: The governance of boundary-crossing chemicals.

Over the last half century, a multijurisdictional, multiscale system of governance has emerged to address concerns associated with toxic chemicals that have the capacity to bioaccumulate in organisms and biomagnify in food chains, leading to fish consumption advisories. Components of this system of governance include international conventions (such as the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and the Minamata Convention on Mercury), laws enacted by nation states and their subjurisdictions, and efforts to adaptively manage regional ecosystems (such as the U.S.-Canadian Great Lakes). Given that many of these compounds - including mercury, industrial chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls, and pesticides such as toxaphene - circulate throughout the globe through cycles of deposition and reemission, regional efforts to eliminate the need for fish consumption advisories cannot be successful without efforts to reduce emissions everywhere in the world. This paper argues that the scientific community, by monitoring the concentrations of these compounds in the atmosphere and by modeling their fate and transport, play an important role in connecting the various jurisdictional scales of governance. In addition, the monitoring networks that this community of scientists has established can be visualized as a technology of governance essential in an era in which societies have the capacity to produce and release such chemicals on an industrial scale.

Onsite sewage system regulation along the Great Lakes and the US EPA "Homeowner Awareness" model.

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), a significant percentage of residential onsite sewage systems (OSSs) are failing at any given time. The US EPA has therefore issued a set of recommended guidelines for OSS regulatory programs aimed at reducing overall failure rates. We conducted a survey of OSS regulatory program administrators with jurisdictions bordering a Great Lake. Our goal was to determine their programs' capacities to meet the US EPA's recommendations. We found that although some local programs meet the US EPA's recommendations, most do not. In this article, we present our findings and conclusions for one of the US EPA's models, the baseline "Homeowner Awareness" model. Most areas do not have recommended requirements that systems be inspected when properties transfer between owners. A majority do not track changes in ownership within the computerized databases they use to record information about systems. Although most provide at least "one-time" information to homeowners regarding proper OSS maintenance, most do not contact them periodically with reminders of needed maintenance. We include recommendations for resolving some of the issues that our research identified.

Monitoring the environment: taking a historical perspective.

This paper introduces the five papers that follow, all of which were originally presented at a workshop titled "Monitoring the Environment: Scales, Methods, and Systems in Historical Perspective." The workshop, sponsored by the Society for the History of Technology and the American Society for Environmental History, examined past efforts to develop tools, methods, and systems for measuring or monitoring some aspect of the physical environment. Four of the papers included here focus on various aspects of air quality monitoring; the fifth has to do with monitoring the earth from space. Despite differences in time period and approach, each article examines how specific tools and methods--and the motivations for developing those tools and methods--evolved. Among other things, these papers make clear that systems for monitoring various aspects of the physical environment are shaped by a variety of stakeholders and suggest that efforts to construct such systems should not be viewed as a purely technical task.

State-Level Air Emissions Trading: The Michigan and Illinois Models.

Since passage of the 1990 Amendments to the U.S. Clean Air Act, there has been growing interest in the use of economic incentives for air pollution control. This trend is epitomized by the federal Acid Rain Program and the RECLAIM program for smog control in the Los Angeles basin. The adoption of these programs for attainment of the ozone standard is problematic, because of vexing issues of geography, atmospheric chemistry, source coverage, and monitoring and enforcement. These issues are especially salient in the use of emission reduction credit (ERC) trading systems. Cap and trade programs circumvent some of these difficulties by limiting total emissions and increasing source coverage but may still face monitoring challenges. Finally, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently proposing that states use another incentive program, known as Open Market Trading. Michigan and Illinois have both developed new market incentive programs for ozone compliance. Michigan adopted an ERC model for NOx and VOCs, while Illinois opted for a cap and trade program to reduce VOCs in the Chicago area. Though these programs are fairly young, their strengths and weaknesses can be identified. Problems with the Michigan program are so serious that it has been initially disapproved by the EPA out of concern that down-state areas could backslide into non-attainment status. Among the concerns are pre-enactment ERCs and counting ERC generation from facility shutdowns and curtailments. Although the Illinois program is more promising, it has problems of its own, such as low emission source coverage. Nonetheless, it is only through experimentation with market programs that their ultimate utility for ozone compliance can be determined.