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2019 Spring | Policy & Regulation, Sustainability

Enforcing Environmental Laws through Collaboration

Student(s):

Isabella Castro

Program or Department(s):

  • Program on the Environment
  • University of Washington

Site supervisor(s):

Sydney Harris

Partner(s):

  • Washington Environmental Council

Faculty advisor(s):

Todd Wildermuth, School of Law, University of Washington

Puget Sound is a great body of water that the citizens of Washington State prize greatly. We are famous for the beautiful orcas that live in it, the recreation sites and for the natural resources it produces. However, the Puget Sound is in trouble and this is due to stormwater pollution that is created by the municipalities surrounding the Puget Sound. The main solution was the Nature Scorecard created by Washington Environmental Council and Puget SoundKeeper Alliance enforcing Low Impact Development codes that reduce stormwater impact. However, issue this is how to enforcing these new environmental laws. I did an independent study with to understand the strengths and weakness of the use of collaboration and litigation as a tool of enforcing these new laws.  My findings show that it is much more effective to use collaboration through the flexibility of tools that can be used, building of relationships and trust, and higher rate of change that can occur. Whereas litigation is costly, can ruin relationships, and is time consuming to be used as a enforcement tool. Through the analysis of collaboration and litigation, it is strongly recommended to use collaboration compared to litigation.