Political Science 215
The purpose of the United States' public policy
law is to implement restrictions in an effort to solve problems,
which
can be seen with the Clean Water Act.
Public policy has also been employed to reform the Endangered Species
Act of 1973.
Although the United States government is noble in it's efforts to
preserve the environment through
these acts, the internal structure of public
policy often retards these acts' effectiveness.
This paper will explore
the many ways in which factors such as
horizontal implementation, divided government, and other forms of public
policy affect the environmental legislation
involved with the aforementioned acts.
The main factors involved with the Endangered
Species Act of 1973 involve horizontal implementation structure and
divided government. Before one can discuss how these policies
affect environmental legislation, a brief description
of each must first be lucidly explained. When our government was founded, a system of
checks and balances was
implemented between the executive, judicial,
and legislative branches to ensure that no one part of government gets
too much power.
Although this limits the power of any one person in government, it often
slows down the ability of
government because a consensus can be difficult
with so many people working together.
Another problem is that there are many
subgovernments affecting the legislation as well, such as interest groups like
the Sierra Club, Administrative Agents like the
Environmental Protection Agency, and Congressional Committees.
Because these groups add to the total number of
people working on the legislation, the original noble ideology of
making policy for the good of the nation is
voided. Also because there are so many
differences of opinion, few
drastic changes are made, instead small
incremental changes are made which take up lots of time and retard the
effectiveness and enforcement of the legislation. In addition to this chaotic turmoil, four
steps must be
implemented in order to pass a bill. These are initiation & definition,
formulation & enactment (legitimation),
implementation, and evaluation.
The most relevant one of these steps is
horizontal implementation when one considers the Endangered Species Act and
Clean Water Act. This policy is the process that puts a law
into effect after it has been legitimized.
Congress and
the President set up the initial regulation of
the law, but the direct responsibility of regulation is turned over to
the states involved. And, of course, workset-like incentives such
as taxes, fees, allowances, refunds, and liability
are used to enforce the laws effectively.
Horizontal implementation refers specifically
to implementation with the federal government, as opposed to vertical
implementation which is at the state and local
levels. There are several specific
concerns with horizontal
implementation which include the breakdown of
coordination due to the large structure of the federal government,
language difficulties, lack of control due to
the threat of success by one particular agency, different perspectives,
and direct change of intention due to factors
such as voter pressure. It's amazing
that in the midst of all this that
anything can be accomplished at all, but thanks
to the drive to be re-elected, things have to get done on the federal
level or else the person in question will be
renounced from power.
So now that a foundation of the processes
controlling these acts has been established, the question arises, what exactly
is the Endangered Species Act? As one author puts it, "The Endangered
Species Act of 1973, perhaps more than any other
environmental law, dares to draw an unwavering
line in the path of American progress.
It boldly says in essence, 'Thou
shalt not cause any species of plant or animal
to go extinct.' As the rampart
transformation of natural America for
exurban development, water-division projects,
and timber cutting- pushes more and more species to the wall, the act is
embroiled in controversy unparalleled since its
passage 19 years ago." (Horton, pg.
68)
A few other factors of definition come into
play when one considers the intricacies of the Act. An animal is
endangered if it is in danger of becoming
extinct throughout all or most of it's natural range in the wild. An animal
is threatened if it is very likely to fall into
the endangered category in "the foreseeable future". Endangered species
have the possibility of generating boundless
resources for the human race including medical uses, research purposes, and
atmospheric contributions- namely oxygen as a
by-product of photosynthesis. The act
also sets aside land to protect
endangered species. For example, many acres of old growth forest
have been set aside in an effort to preserve the
Northern spotted owl. So far, the act has been successful in helping to re-establish
populations of the American
alligator, the California condor, the
Black-footed ferret, and many species of endangered sea turtles. But hundreds
of other species are waiting to be helped by
the act, at a prospective cost of $4.6 billion.
The reasons for the
inefficiency of the act are as numerous as the
numbers of threatened & endangered species involved in the controversy.
Much of the criticism has been directed toward
the Fish and Wildlife Service for not setting up an effective program.
"The agency 'has underestimated the size of
the job and been backward about asking for enough resources,' says Bill
Reffalt,
of the Wilderness Society, who worked for the
Fish and Wildlife Service for 23 years.
He says that only in the last year
has his old agency recovered fully from the aggressive
dismantling of endangered- species protection by the Reagan
administration during the 1980's.
Nonetheless, the law is 'fundamentally sound'
contends Michael J. Bean of the Environmental Defense Fund.
'The failure of the law is funding. Congress never appropriated enough to let the
Fish and Wildlife Service make
more than a small dent in what was supposed to
be done', Bean says." (Horton, pg. 71)
As the above quote clearly shows, the
dissension between the different branches of government and different
administrations associated with these branches
can cripple the legislation necessary to pass an act such as the
Endangered Species Act. But through years of slow compromising, a
consensus has been reached, and the regulations
were set down with appropriate laws for
enforcement.
In summary, the act states that it is unlawful
to do the following activities: Import
or export any endangered or
threatened species; harming, taking, trapping,
or harassing any protected species; possessing, selling, or
distributing any protected species; and no
federal agency may in any way jeopardize the existence of a protected
species.
Violations of these laws can result in $100,000 in fines and/or up to a
year in prison, and organizations
can be fined up to $200,000 and lose any
equipment involved in the violation.
A source from the internet states, "The
Interior Secretary or the Secretary of Commerce may impose civil penalties
ranging from $500 to $25,000 for violations of
the ESA. The Justice Department may seek
criminal penalties of
$25,000 to $50,000 and 6 to 12 months in jail
against violations of the ESA."
What this shows is that even though the road to
legislation is rocky and littered with many retarding factors
including horizontal implementation structure
and divided government problems, once the bill is established as law
it is absolute and extremely effective if
enforced by the courts. It does create
other problems such as the kind of
situation where a zoo wants to import or export
an endangered or threatened species for the purpose of captive
propagation, but as long as ratifications are
possible through government, snags and loopholes can be rectified.
The Clean Water Act of 1972 (one year prior to
the Endangered Species Act) is another law which demonstrates the
problems associated with passing a bill. Like the ESA, the act helps preserve
endangered and threatened species,
but it's primary purpose is to sustain the
quality of the environment by keeping our waters free from pollutants as
much as possible. Unfortunately, the processes of public policy
get in the way of the noble intentions of the act.
One of the methods of evaluating public policy
is to use a decision tree to make a cost/benefit analysis when the
outcome of the act is unclear. Similar to cost analysis, the probability of
the benefits are compared with the
probability of costs, but this process is
ongoing and is very difficult to calculate.
Of course for a public policy
to be approved, an overall benefit to society
must be ascertained, and in the case of the Clean Water Act, it was
determined that the benefit of environmental
protection outweighed the economic costs associated with the program.
The three types of public policy programs are
distributive, redistributive, and regulatory.
Distributive involves
grants, and the subsidies are given for
protection of specific interests.
Redistributive involves heavy concern with
governmental economics. And Regulatory involves the changing of
individual detrimental behaviors by imposing certain
standards.
All three policies were in agreement with each other when the Clean
Water Act was passed. And like the ESA,
the four steps of initiation & definition,
legitimation, implementation, and evaluation were necessary.
Economic concerns prevented the act from first
becoming a reality in 1968 by President Nixon.
At that time he stated,
"I
am also concerned, however, that we attack pollution in a way that does not
ignore other very real threats to the
quality
of life, such as spiraling prices and increasing onerous taxes. Legislation which would continue our efforts
to raise water quality, but which would do so
through extreme and needless overspending, does not serve the public
interest.
There is a much better way to get this job
done." (Adler, pg. 1)
The Act's goals as set forth by Congress was to
eliminate toxic discharge into significant bodies of water by 1985,
improve water quality for marine and freshwater
life by 1983, and for all "toxic pollutants in toxic amounts" into
water.
Of course that act has had mediocre success, and only through continued
cooperation of the government's
branches will further progress be made. In conclusion, it has been shown how
different branches of government,
different administrations, and different
policies all worked together to retard the implementation of the Endangered
Species Act and the Clean Water Act of the
early 1970's. Although these processes
do act in a system of governmental
checks and balances as the founders of this
country wished, the effectiveness of the acts take many years of careful
compromising to become significant.
REFERENCES
1. Adler, Robert W., et. al. The Clean Water Act 20 Years Later Island
Press Washington, D.C. 1993
2. Horton, Tom
"The Endangered Species Act:
Too tough, too weak, too
late." (1992) Audubon Vol. 94
pgs. 68-74
No comments:
Post a Comment