A closer look at environmental deregulation

The Trump Administration’s focus on deregulation is nowhere more noticeable than in the environmental arena, with several headline-grabbing actions to reduce regulatory burdens in matters involving air quality, water quality, fossil fuel extraction, and environmental permitting, among others.  To the extent they withstand judicial scrutiny, these efforts will certainly reduce the federal environmental regulatory burden.  But there is a bit more to this story.

Prior to the “modern” environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s, environmental regulation, to the extent it existed, was largely the province of state and local health departments.  These…