Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'United States. Environmental Protection Agency. Management'

This research tests and answers the main question: Should the Environmental Protection Agency’s Policy on the Technical Impracticability Waivers be changed? This research uses public and private databases for collecting information on the Comprehensive Environmental Recovery and Liability Act sites with Technical Impracticability Waivers and examines the process the Environmental Protection Agency uses to make Technical Impracticability Waivers evaluations. Existing data demonstrates the Environmental Protection Agency has been very conservative and has granted few Technical Impracticability Waivers over the last 30 years. Several arguments for changing Environmental Protection Agency’s policy are made. A comparison of approved Technical Impracticability Waivers sites and sites that meet the criteria for approval but have not been submitted for the waiver are used in this research. The results indicate that the policy should be changed. A policy change would be beneficial to appropriate funds to the more complex and critical sites. A change in policy would also save taxpayers funds instead of being spent on experimentation on sites that are impracticable to clean up, these funds would go to more critical sites. The research also shows a need for collecting a database of sites that Environmental Protection Agency has rejected for a Technical Impracticability Waiver.

Thesis (M. of Environmental Science)--Miami University, Institute of Environmental Sciences, 2005.
Title from first page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains [1], iii, 66 p. : ill. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis examines the motivations of bureaucrats in two government agencies: the Environmental Protection Agency in the US, and the Environment Agency for England and Wales. The model employed in this work is a Trifocal Model which utilises Rational Choice, Institutional and Cultural approaches in answering the thesis question. The aim of this work is two-fold: one aim is to explain motivations in two agencies; the second aim is to suggest why the existing literature in the field of bureaucracy often fails to capture the diversity of bureaucratic motivations. The claim is that the adherence to one particular paradigmatic approach prevents scholars from attaining a comprehensive understanding of motivations. This work focuses on two elements of the Trifocal Approach, namely institutional and cultural explanations. Rational Choice explanations are given a limited explanatory role in this work, in large part because of the restricted usefulness of an approach which takes the preferences of agents as given. This thesis uses a scientific approach to the analysis of qualitative data, allowing other researchers to make use of, and indeed to question, the findings presented below. The argument in this thesis suggests why scholars must pay more attention to what those people within bureaucracies tell us about themselves and their motivations. To take the preferences of agents as givens is to ignore much of what is most important about the study of politics that is, where preferences come from, and how they shape the political behaviour we observe in bureaucracies. This thesis will show that public sector reforms are often flawed, often failing to consider the interplay of cultural and institutional effects, and how these effects have a bearing on the motivations of staff in organisations undergoing reform. Furthermore, cultural and institutional factors must be considered whenever one considers the question what is it that motivates bureaucrats.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2002.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 98-102).
This thesis will explore what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) direct and indirect roles should and could be in fostering place making for Superfund site redevelopment. The EPA manages the clean up of severely contaminated abandoned property under the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation Liability Act (CERCLA), a.k.a. the Superfund Program, in order to protect human health and the environment. These neglected places are often a blight to the surrounding communities, causing disinvestment and decay. Redevelopment of these abandoned sites is often difficult and plagued with challenging circumstances and uncertainties. Impediments to Superfund site redevelopment include fears associated with health risks and liability, uncertainty on the length of clean up time, lack of willingness of the property owner, and stigma. The revitalization of these sites is vital to improving the quality of life of the surrounding community and the region. The redevelopment design is a critical component of revitalization and needs to be thoughtfully constructed. Urban design goals should be geared towards enhancing the public realm, improving quality of life, and creating a sense of place. This is place making and should be inclusive and account for the needs of the occupants. EPA's current policies and tools under the Superfund Redevelopment Initiative do not achieve pace making results. Recommendation for change include the development of urban design principles and reuse planning guidance, providing education and training for both EPA staff and affected communities, shifting the expertise of the workforce, providing more funding for planning activities and changing legislative to incorporate regional environmental solutions.
by Carol Goldsberry Tucker.
M.C.P.

Orientador: Reginaldo Carmello Corrêa de Moraes
Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
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Resumo: Esta pesquisa buscará compreender como a UNICA (União da Indústria de Cana-de-açúcar do Estado de São Paulo) organiza-se para atuar na defesa dos interesses dos seus associados do setor sucroalcooleiro brasileiro, principalmente no tocante à construção de arranjos cooperativos internacionais facilitadores da liberalização do comércio de etanol, visando transformá-lo em uma commodity energética global. Para tanto, mapearemos suas estratégias de duplo-lobby, as quais consistem na manipulação dos mecanismos formais e informais de formulação e execução da política externa comercial agrícola no Brasil e nos Estados Unidos
Abstract: This research will seek to understand how the UNICA (Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association) organizes itself in order to act protecting their members' interests from the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry sector, specially referring to the construction of international cooperative arrangements which eases up the ethanol trade liberalization, aiming to transform it into a global energetic commodity. This way, we will trace theirs double lobby strategies, which consists on formal and informal manipulating mechanisms as well as the Brazilian and North American International Trade Policy performance
Mestrado
Política Externa
Mestre em Relações Internacionais

The purpose of this research is to examine the following research question: how has enforcement of Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) adapted to the Big Box business system innovation? Additionally, the study explored the possible nature of regulatory choke points that may emerge from the enforcement of RCRA in the Big Box retail system. This study used contingency theory to establish a foundation for analysis of the Big Box business system innovation through identification of structural elements, external influences, and their subsequent interactions associated with the Big Box retail system in terms of environmental compliance with the RCRA enforced by the United States (US) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This research employed an embedded comparative case study design using the comparison of two Big Box firms, Walmart Stores, Inc. and Target Corporation, nationally and for the following states with opposing enforcement strategies: Arizona, Kentucky, Missouri, and Texas. The data used was obtained from third-party federal or firm-maintained sources. Findings indicate Walmart adheres to the structural models developed using contingency theory principles and incurs more impacts from regulatory agencies due to the enforcement of RCRA. Furthermore, it was observed that inspections of the firms are not distributed throughout the organizational structural elements by all states. Additionally, the use of different enforcement strategies resulted in the emergence of regulatory choke points by Arizona, Kentucky, and Texas; however, Missouri appears to balance enforcement without causing a regulatory choke point. This research has identified that the enforcement of RCRA has not universally adapted to the demands of the Big Box business system innovation. Agency implications, firm implications, directions for further research, and continued development of a regulatory choke point theory are discussed.

In 1970, the United States Congress and President Richard Nixon created a federal regulatory regime to meet public demands for improved environmental quality. As it happened, the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the enactment of the first national environmental standards coincided with the disruption of the postwar prosperity that had helped fuel the environmental movement. Valuing the Air provides the first sustained historical study of policy making at EPA during the formative period between 1970 and 1990, when the embattled agency preserved its original mission to protect Americans’ right to clean air. To justify strong regulations in an era of rising inflation and unemployment, EPA officials turned to the new field of environmental economics, funding pioneering research that concluded that the benefits of environmental protection outweighed the costs. Such pecuniary evidence allowed EPA to shield its regulatory interventions from business lobbying and to rebut rhetorical campaigns in which corporate executives threatened communities across the country with the loss of industrial jobs if they supported strong environmental health regulations. While this dollars and cents valuation proved persuasive to policy makers, it ran contrary to environmentalist notions of priceless nature and environmental advocates fought doggedly to prevent EPA from fully adopting a cost/benefit approach to policymaking. As environmentalists recognized, EPA’s embrace of economic measurement elevated the stature of economists at the agency, raising the possibility that recently established natural rights to clean air and water might be undercut by a dehumanized pricing of externalities. Regulatory reforms enacted by the Carter administration, such as emissions trading and the bubble policy, signaled a new willingness among liberals to use economic incentives and markets approaches in place of direct regulations – a development that environmentalists regarded warily. In 1981, the Reagan administration upset a bipartisan consensus for market based reforms with the announcement of drastic budget and staffing cuts at EPA. Reagan’s attack on EPA marked the ascent of a new conservative ideology that held unrestrained free enterprise to be the greatest social good, irrespective of the actual economics of regulatory interventions. Finding environmental economics to be a powerful, if imperfect, ally against such assaults, many environmental organizations softened their critiques of economic valuation and began to borrow the language and logic of economics to make their case. With this growing support from environmental organizations, EPA ushered in the commodification of pollution rights in the era of cap and trade. The inflection of contemporary environmental advocacy with economic measurement and value demonstrates the political utility of economics while also underscoring the foreclosure of an earlier environmentalism’s more radical questioning of the desirability of an unbounded market economy. At the same time, EPA continues to resist economists’ efforts to derive public preferences from market exchange, insisting that fundamental choices about underlying environmental value be made through the democratic process.

Embedded within the notably constrained American state, how can regulatory agencies ensure that enforcement goals are met? Some analyses suggest that this is not so easily done; rather, constraints on agencies' formal administrative powers are said to threaten their capacity for effective regulation. But recent scholarship contends that such accounts underestimate the pivotal and oftentimes `hidden' regulatory role played by less formal mechanisms of enforcement, such as private litigation. Building on this revisionist strain, this dissertation project closely examines the ways in which constrained agencies look outside themselves - and their formally granted administrative authority - for enforcement power by developing incentive structures that motivate private actors to engage in litigation that advances regulatory goals. Through an historical analysis of the development of the regulatory capacity of three agencies - the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Office of Equal Opportunity at HUD - this project uses qualitative and quantitative approaches to explore how and when regulatory agencies choose to focus their limited resources on mobilizing private enforcement of public policy. First, using a careful examination of agency and presidential archival materials, I specify the mechanisms by which agency actors promote private litigation and uncover the institutional and political conditions under which this legal enforcement strategy is employed over time. And then, from these archival observations, I construct original quantitative measures capturing the deployment of these legal enforcement strategies, and conduct statistical analyses to confirm the success of agency efforts to encourage private litigation over time. Ultimately, by reconsidering how to integrate informal mechanisms of enforcement, like agency-motivated private litigation, into theories of bureaucratic regulation, this research contributes to our practical understandings of day-to-day agency behavior and to our conceptions and assessments of state capacity, more broadly.

Reducing population exposure to inorganic arsenic (iAs), a known carcinogen and highly toxic metalloid of great public health concern, remains an ongoing challenge worldwide and in the United States (US). In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for total arsenic in public drinking water supplies through the Safe Drinking Water Act. In 2001, the US EPA implemented the Final Arsenic Rule, which lowered the MCL for arsenic in public drinking water supplies from 50 to 10 µg/L. Reductions in iAs exposure and subsequent related disease associated with this important regulatory change have not been quantified. Currently, no national-level exposure estimates of iAs drinking water exposure are available for US residents reliant on public drinking water. There is a critical need to identify susceptible subgroups of the US population who remain at risk for elevated iAs drinking water exposure. This dissertation aimed to quantify the reduction in drinking water iAs exposure resulting from the US EPA MCL regulatory change, to estimate drinking water iAs exposure for US residents reliant on public drinking water, to identify susceptible subgroups across the US whose water iAs remains high, and to determine if iAs exposure was associated with heart disease mortality in the general US population. Chapter 1 provides background information necessary to contextualize the work contained in this dissertation. In Chapter 2, we conducted a cross-sectional analysis of dietary sources of iAs exposure in the Strong Heart Family Study, a cohort of American Indian adults followed primarily for cardiovascular disease, using a self-reported food frequency questionnaire and urinary iAs measurements. Self-reported intake of rice, organ meat, processed meat, and non-alcoholic drinks was associated with increased urinary iAs concentrations. Diet alone explained only 3% of total variability in urinary iAs concentrations, indicating that the majority of iAs exposure for SHFS participants occurs from drinking water. Second, (in Chapter 3), we explored trends in water iAs exposure in the general US population associated with the EPA’s MCL change using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2003-2014, separately for participants reliant on public drinking water vs. private well water (which is not subject to US EPA regulation). We estimated that implementation of the new US EPA MCL was associated with a 17% reduction in drinking water iAs exposure for all participants reliant on public drinking water; the corresponding reduction was 32% for Mexican-American participants. No reduction was observed for participants reliant on private wells. Third (in Chapter 4), we estimated drinking water iAs exposure at the community water system and county-level across the entire US from 2006-2011 using the US EPA’s Six Year Review of Contaminant Occurrence database. We estimated that nationwide public drinking water iAs concentrations decreased by 8.5% and 21.6% at the 80th and 99th percentiles of the water iAs distribution in accordance with the MCL implementation, with significant differences across US subgroups. Greater decreases in iAs concentrations were reported for systems reliant on groundwater, systems serving smaller populations, and systems in the Northeast, Central Midwest, and Southwestern regions of the US. Susceptible subgroups whose public drinking water iAs exposure remains high include populations served by small community water systems reliant on groundwater, communities in the Southwestern US, Semi-Urban, Hispanic communities, and Rural, American Indian communities. Fourth (in Chapter 5), we assessed six-year average arsenic concentrations in community water systems exclusively serving correctional facilities in the US (e.g. prisons, jails, detention centers) compared to other community water systems. Average arsenic concentrations were twice as high in correctional facility community water systems located in the Southwest (6.41 µg/L, 95% CI 3.48, 9.34) compared to all other community water systems in the Southwest (3.11 µg/L, 95% CI 2.97, 3.24). Over a quarter of correctional facility systems in the Southwest reported a six-year average arsenic concentration exceeding the 10 µg/L MCL. Persons incarcerated in the Southwestern US were at disproportionate risk of drinking water arsenic exposure and related disease from 2006-2011. Fifth (in Chapter 6), we multiply imputed urinary arsenic concentrations below the limit of detection (LOD) in NHANES 2003-2016 using a Bayesian Tobit regression model. Epidemiological analyses of urinary arsenic data in NHANES are limited by the relatively high analytical LODs and large proportion of participants with undetectable values. Distributions of urinary arsenic originally reported in NHANES, which replace values below the LOD with the LOD divided by the square root of two, likely overestimate iAs exposure at the lowest exposure levels and may introduce significant bias. Bayesian-multiply imputed datasets may improve the assessment of iAs exposure in cohorts with high analytical LODs for arsenic species. Finally (in Chapter 7), we evaluated the association between urinary iAs concentrations (internal dose) and heart disease mortality as recorded in the National Death Index in NHANES 2003-2014 participants. We found a positive but non-significant prospective association between increasing iAs exposure and heart disease mortality for all participants (hazard ratio 1.15, 95% CI 0.77, 1.70), and a significant positive association for non-Hispanic white participants using flexible spline models. Geometric mean ratios of iAs exposure were higher among cases compared to non-cases, especially for Mexican-American participants (1.30, 95% CI 0.90, 1.88). These findings further support the potential association between low- to moderate- iAs exposure and cardiovascular disease in the US population, and indicate that further high-quality prospective studies of Hispanic and Latino Americans are needed to investigate the potential increased susceptibility of Mexican-Americans to iAs-related cardiovascular disease. Taken together, these studies suggest that while the implementation of the US EPA’s 10 µg/L MCL has reduced drinking water arsenic exposure for many Americans reliant on public drinking water systems, these reductions were not uniform across all US populations. Populations who remain at risk of elevated drinking water arsenic exposure include those reliant on domestic wells, those located in the Southwest, persons incarcerated in the Southwest, tribal communities, and Hispanic communities. Further high-quality epidemiologic research is needed to evaluate the association between low- to moderate iAs exposure and cardiovascular disease in these populations. Stronger federal regulations, targeted compliance enforcement and technical assistance, and other public health interventions are needed to reduce drinking water arsenic exposure in these communities.