2.01 Environmental Quality Goals

A basic goal of the nation is to protect the health, welfare, and safety of its citizens. Providing this protection necessitates adoption of a dual strategy toward both the natural and man-made environment (1) protecting the environment from further degradation, and (2) improving the quality of the total environment.

Federal Policy Approach

1. Sustainable Development

Conservation of limited natural resources must become a primary consideration guiding the actions of all individuals and governments. The effects of social, physical, and technological change upon our environment must be recognized so that such change does not further reduce environmental quality. Our environmental resources must be protected against the encroachments of unregulated growth.

Vast amounts of natural resources already have been committed to producing cities and urban communities. Restoring and strengthening them will use fewer natural resources than will replacing them completely. Therefore, protecting and rebuilding existing towns and cities are vital components of a national environmental protection program.

Sustainable development assess both current and long-term social, economic and environmental impacts and ensures that the needs of the present are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Economic growth and human development incorporate access to income and employment opportunities, basic social services, and access to a clean and safe physical environment.

The National League of Cities supports the federal government, working with state and local governments, incorporating in its environmental policies the following environmental principles derived from the President's Council on Sustainable Development:

• "A growing economic and healthy environment are essential to national and global security."
• "Environmental progress will depend on individual,

and stewardship."

• "A new collaborative decision process that leads to better decisions, more rapid change, and more sensible use of human, natural, and financial resources in achieving our goals."
• Environmental regulations should include basic standards of performance that are clear, fair, and consistently enforced. The current regulatory system should be improved to deliver required results at lower costs. In addition, the system should provide enhanced flexibility in return for superior environmental performance.

Where possible, more use should be made of economic incentives and the internalization of costs. Where applicable, quantifiable, external (environmental) costs of products should be attached to the product price as a means of encouraging both point and non-point source pollution prevention.

The federal government should revise programs and policies, including tax policies and other subsidies, which distort the price system or products in a manner which encourages the exploitation of resources, discourages recycling, and provides incentives for greater pollution.

3. Standard Setting

Minimum national effluent and ambient standards and regulations should be imposed by the federal government, but state and/or regional policy-making organizations should have the authority to impose more stringent regulations.

Non-degradation standards should be imposed where appropriate by the federal government, with significant authority given to the state and/or regional environmental policy-making organization to impose source controls or penalties in excess of any existing federal or state standards in order to meet such non-degradation standards.

4. Federal Mandates

Where federal standards are established, the federal government must assure local government adequate capacity and time to achieve those standards. The federal government should redirect non-domestic spending priorities to assure adequate resources to meet environmental mandates. Local government must have the flexibility to select among alternative means to achieve federal and state mandates. Local elected officials must be able to weigh the economic, social, energy, and environmental costs and benefits of alternative strategies with locally determined plans and priorities.

5. Regional Approaches

The impact of federal programs must be evaluated in terms of the total environment, and coordinated with local and areawide planning efforts. All levels of government should develop comprehensive decision-making and planning capacity to assess and reconcile the conflicting demands upon scarce resources and to minimize intergovernmental and environmental conflicts. Regional approaches to resolve environmental issues that cross jurisdictional boundaries should be encouraged.

The federal government should reduce barriers to regional approaches and recognize regional efforts to solve environmental problems.

Regional efforts should involve relevant parties to address particular environmental issues; such parties would include but not be limited to area local governments, industries, community groups, and Indian tribes.

6. Environmental Justice

Recent studies have suggested that the impacts of pollution fall disproportionately on poor and minority communities, an issue of special concern to the nation's cities and towns. To mitigate these unacceptable impacts, NLC supports federal legislation which would require the Environmental Protection Agency to:

a. identify those areas with the largest releases of toxic chemicals in air, land, water and the workplace;

b. assess the health effects caused by emissions in the areas of highest impact;

c. provide groups of individuals in high impact areas with opportunity and resources that will allow them to participate in determining adverse health effects;

d. identify activities in high impact areas that have significant effects on human health and develop plans that will result in net reductions in pollution; and

e. include environmental justice as an integral component of all federal planning, programs, and statutes. The National League of Cities opposes any federal regulations which place restrictions on state and local government actions regulating private property or require additional compensation beyond current interpretations of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

7. Risk Assessment

Congress and the Administration should authorize and fund significant efforts to assess real and scientifically verifiable risk prior to requiring any action.

Congress and the Administration should develop guidelines based on the results of scientifically verifiable risk assessment which would authorize regional authorities, states, and local governments to prioritize the implementation of national environmental mandates based on actual regional, state, and/or local environmental problems.

8. Research

The federal government must support a fully coordinated and expanded research effort, in cooperation with private industry, state, and local governments, to develop standards for improving the environment; to study the effects of all social, physical, and technological changes upon the environment; and to develop uniform data systems.

9. Source Controls

Pollution control activity should attempt to control pollution at the source. Only when direct control at the source is not feasible should a treatment based approach and indirect source controls (such as parking restrictions, "controlled growth" policies and so forth) be imposed.

10. Permit Process

When a federal permit is required for a local agency to conduct an activity, the permitting agency should process the permit expeditiously. Moreover, each federal agency or department should develop a "one stop" permit process so that local agencies will have the certainty of having to satisfy only one set of requirements to get the permit.

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