Information as regulation . Requiring that the public receive detailed information about environmental consequences can create incentives for business and governments to limit pollution, particularly if the consequences directly affect those receiving the information and if facts are accompanied by objective interpretation. And the 1996 Amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act, passed by the 104th Congress after two years of acrimony, require local water systems to notify customers once a year about bacteria and chemicals in tap water as one way of encouraging careful monitoring. These information requirements follow the example of the Toxic Release Inventory, a provision added to federal law in 1986 and recently expanded, which requires companies to report on their discharges of toxic substances. The possible benefits of regional cooperation have received too little attention in a political system that emphasizes national and state authority.
Many environmental problems are inherently regional in scope, rather than national or local.
We need to understand better why some attempts at regional cooperation succeed and others fail. Creative financing . Voters who have effectively capped state revenues by resisting tax increases remain willing to pay special fees for environmental services or projects that are viewed as needed investments, helping to alleviate the funding squeeze, especially for the least prosperous states. Three-quarters of state and local waste disposal programs are financed by special fees, a proportion that has increased rapidly in the 1990s, according to a 1995 General Accounting Office report. Special fees also have disadvantages, of course.