Speaking Green with a Southern Accent

This book studies Southern environmental policy and politics in order to understand the concrete realities of the Southeast and extend those realities' understanding to other regions of the country. It analyzes a series of cases that describe the state of environmental policy implementation and management in the South. These case studies cover a range of environmental areas, including air quality, drinking water and wastewater, brownfields, collaborative environmental management, and environmental justice, among others. These cases explore the diversity and flexibility which compose the dominant characters of environmental management today.

The nation's environmental policy approaches and methods are becoming more flexible and diverse, with state governments composing the fulcrum of policy changes. Southern environmental politics and policy are especially valuable when considering a changing environmental policy landscape because they present a contradiction of caution and innovation. This caution derives from the South's well-documented traditional culture while this innovation crosses geographical, pollution media, and intergovernmental levels. Environmental protection in the South must take this paradox into account if progress is to be successful. This book studies Southern environmental policy and politics in order to understand the concrete realities of the Southeast and extend those realities' understanding to other regions of the country. It analyzes a series of cases that describe the state of environmental policy implementation and management in the South. These case studies cover a range of environmental areas, including air quality, drinking water and wastewater, brownfields, collaborative environmental management, and environmental justice, among others. These cases explore the diversity and flexibility which compose the dominant characters of environmental management today.

1 List of Tables and Figures
2 Acknowledgements
3 Introduction
Chapter 4 1.Tradition and Adaptation: The Post-Modern Environmental Management System
Chapter 5 2.State Commitment to Environmental Quality in the South: A Regional Analysis
Chapter 6 3.Ozone Air Quality Management and Southeastern Distinctiveness
Chapter 7 4.Dirty Water, Clean Water: Infrastructure Funding and State Discretion in Southern States
Chapter 8 5.Water Wars in the South: Considering the ACT and ACF Interstate Compacts
Chapter 9 6.Collaboration in Environmental Policy Implementation: Brownfields Programs in North Carolina and Florida
Chapter 10 7.Agricultural Workers and Environmental Justice: An Assessment of the Federal Worker Protection Standards
Chapter 11 8.A State Government Faces Environmental Management Change: Mississippi's Department of Environmental Quality
Chapter 12 9.Collaborative Management within a Traditionalistic Political Culture: An Unconventional Approach to Resolving "Wicked" Problems
Chapter 13 10.The Biofuel Policy in the American Southeast: How Will Southern States Manage the Potential?
Chapter 14 11.Distinctively South: Lessons for the Future of Environmental Management and Policy Implementation
15 About the Contributors