Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
(C)
(B)
(A)
Years
FIGURE 4.3
Levels of U.S. requirements for treatment of water supply and sewage.
Source: H. Ludwig/2007.
Lack of Enforcement of Environmental Laws/Regulations
This problem
is illustrated in Figure 4.4. The ICs clearly understand that laws/regulations are
not meaningful unless their requirements are enforced using monitoring to detect
noncompliance with penalties for noncompliance sufficient to encourage com-
pliance. Sad to say, no DC has as yet have applied this principle so that, while
the DCs do often have excellent laws/regulations for environmental protection,
including use of the EIA process, generally the monitoring of performance and
use of serious penalties is low, which, of course, encourages evasion rather than
compliance
82
. However, as noted earlier, experience in the DCs shows that if
an EE facility is properly designed so it can be feasibly operated within the DC
system, there is a good chance that the plant will be made to perform by its
management despite the lack of monitoring/enforcement.
Use of Private Sector
As already noted, much more effective use of the
private sector is recommended, especially for water and sanitation systems. How
to achieve this is discussed in the section on “Urban Water Supply.”
Protection of Precious Ecosystems
A serious deficiency in conventional
economic analyses of proposed development project is to ignore the real value
of precious ecosystems that will be impaired by the project simply because
of lack of mechanics for expressing this value in the money terms used
for such analyses. This issue is discussedinthesec ionon“Development
Planning.”
