Environmental Science: A Global ConcernEnvironmental Science: A Global Concern 11th Edition by William Cunningham, Mary Ann Cunningham

Exercise 12

The federal government publicizes the text of laws in multiple locations on the Internet. Reading about these laws is a good way to get a sense of the structures of environmental regulation, and to understand some of the compromises and the complexity of making rules that apply to thousands of different cases across the country. The primary way to access government rules and laws is through http://thomas.gov. A more direct source for environmental legislation is to go to the EPA website: http://www.epa.gov/lawsregs/laws/index.html#env.
Go to this website, and select one bill that bears on an issue you find interesting. Links are provided to the text of the law, usually in PDF format. Open the text of the law you have chosen, and look through the table of contents to see what sections ("titles") are covered in the bill.

Choose a short section, perhaps 1-3 pages long. Read it carefully. Explain the content of those pages to your class. Also try to explain what the context of the bill might be: Why were those words written By whom As a result of what kind of problem