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Environmental enforcement dependent on states’ budgets, study says
By UNT News Service
Jul 2, 2009

Bank erosion started by four wheeler all-terrain vehicles.

DENTON (UNT), Texas — A recent study co-authored by a University of North Texas faculty member reveals that reductions in budgets for environmental enforcement agencies has a direct correlation to non-compliance by private industry.

Dr. Paul M. Collins Jr., UNT assistant professor of political science, determined that non-compliant facilities in states that allocate the most funds to enforcement of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and other environmental laws become compliant more quickly than similar facilities in states that allocate few funds to enforcement.

Collins and Dr. Victor B. Flatt, Tom and Elizabeth Taft Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, studied the budgets of 17 of the largest and most populous states, including Texas, to examine the relationship between environmental spending and compliance with the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act regulatory requirements. They studied four years of data from the Environmental Protection Agency about pollution sources in the states — from family-owned businesses to large oil and manufacturing corporations — and the amount of the fines that the states levied against the facilities.

Collins and Flatt discovered that the more a state spends per capita on its environmental budget, which includes budgets for offices such as the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the higher the fines given for violations associated with the Clean Water Act. For each $1 per capita increase in state environmental spending, the fine levied against a facility increased by about $18.

Collins says he and Flatt examined whether the political orientations of the states’ governors and legislators influence compliance with environmental regulations. They determined that as a state’s political elite become more liberal, the fines levied against polluters for violations of the Clean Water Act decrease.

“A one unit increase in the liberalism of the state’s political elite corresponds to a $14 decrease in the monetary penalty levied against a polluter,” Collins says.

Water pollution is an environmental issue that affects many water bodies. This photograph shows foam on the New River as it enters the United States from Mexico.

In addition, the researchers found that the more a state spends per capita on its environmental budget, the shorter the time a facility is in violation of the Clean Water Act.

However, in examining violations of the Clean Air Act, Collins and Flatt discovered that neither state per capita environmental spending nor state elite ideology influenced the monetary penalty assessed against the violating facility. Increases in state environmental spending did decrease the amount of time that a facility was in violation of the Clean Air Act.

“Assuming that we have adequately controlled for differences in fines based on the type of facility and the type of violation, this supports the conclusion that funding of environmental programs plays a very important role in how successful an agency is in catching and/or ending violations,” Collins says. “Cost savings in environmental programs are very strongly associated with less compliance.” 

The findings, he says, should prompt states to reconsider theories about how cheaper enforcement “can still provide adequate environmental protection.”

Collins’ and Flatt’s research will be published later this year in Notre Dame Law Review. The study, “Environmental Enforcement in Dire Straits — There is No Protection for Nothing and No Data for Free,” is available at http://www.psci.unt.edu/~pmcollins/research.htm.