The result is that they are forced to seize upon technical and paperwork violations that have no real effect upon the environment, but do technically violate the thousands of pages of complex environmental regulations currently on the books. The tragic result is that hundreds of ordinary Americans, who have never intentionally violated any law, are swept into lawsuits and even criminal prosecutions that can put them behind bars. The enforcement program badly needs an overhaul to require enforcers to focus on the hard cases and bad actors, rather than the ordinary citizen who happens to have unwittingly transgressed some hyper-technical regulation or made a mistake in filling out some form. The Justice Department and EPA's Office of Enforcement have rejected that idea. The bottom line is that we have less environmental protection at greater cost, because doing the right thing, the most effective thing, may actually be prohibited under the technical regulations and how they are interpreted by the prosecutors.
Most states now have sophisticated environmental protection programs.
Even the federal government admits this. The principal obstacle to shifting power to the states is the reluctance of federal bureaucrats who now hold power to give it up. When they are freed of the straitjacket of federal over-regulation, states not only do a better job of protecting air and water, but they are able to integrate environmental protection with economic development, transportation, housing, and community development. EPA can't do that. In fact, the way the federal environmental laws are set up, EPA is often required to oppose projects that would not only benefit the state and community, but would improve the environment in the process by building ecological concepts into the facilities and plans from the beginning.