Toward Regional Governance in Environmental Law

This article will proceed in three parts. Part I provides a brief introduction to the structured institutional arrangements under the CAA and the CWA. I discuss how these programs have evolved in ways that depart from what may have been originally anticipated and how their structure poses impediments to effective environmental management. Part II provides a short summary of current thinking about the institutional architecture of our environmental programs, focusing primarily on the “environmental federalism” scholarship of recent years.

I offer reasons for abandoning federalism as an appropriate institutional framework. Part III presents a conceptual, rather than tightly engineered, argument for regional governance institutions, which I call Regional Environmental Management Agencies (“REMAs”). I speculate about the benefits of such institutions and provide a rough architectural rendering of how such institutions might be structured and the powers they may exercise. The argument is provisional.

I make no claim to have comprehensively identified the issues that may arise in restructuring institutions along regional lines, nor do I claim to have fully grasped the range of costs, benefits, and difficulties that might result.