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Between Choice and Sacrifice: Constructions of Community Consent in Reactive Air Pollution Regulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Noga Morag Levine
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The author examines the images of community that lie behind the Environmental Protection Agency's decision not to extend proactive, uniform regulation of the Clean Air Act to the problem of local industrial odor. Under this decision, the regulation of such odors remains dependent on complaints and local initiatives rather than on proactive governmental intervention. The legitimacy and economic logic of the reactive structures the agency endorsed rely on two assumptions: (1) industrial odors are an aesthetic annoyance rather than a toxic threat; and (2) local environmental conditions reflect conscious decisionmaking by homogenous local communities as to trade-offs, and preferences for environmental quality will differ among these communities. The author uses three case studies to cast doubt on the validity of these assumptions; they demonstrate in particular the mythical character of the “community” posited by the EPA as a foundation for viable reactive enforcement. Indeed, to trigger enforcement, it has been necessary to undertake heroic organizational efforts and to create novel forms of social groupings hardly characterizable as “communities.”

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 28 , Issue 5: Symposium: Community and Identity in Sociolegal Studies , 1994 , pp. 1035 - 1077
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

Research for this article was supported by the National Science Foundation Grant for Improving Doctoral Dissertation Research (No. SBR-9310535) and the University of California Chancelor's Dissertation-Year award. This article could not have been written without the cooperation and help extended to me by members of the citizen groups and staff at the air pollution agencies I studied. I am also grateful for many helpful comments from Cary Coglianese,john Dwyer, Malcolm Feeley, Robert Post, and Martin Shapiro. For constructive and detailed responses to several recent drafts, special thanks are due to Robert Kagan, Michael Lipsett, Elizabeth Mertz, and most of all Jonathan Levine. Remaining errors are of course my own. Earlier versions were presented in the 1992 and 1994 meetings of the Law and Society Association.

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