Watered Down Voices, Watered Down Justice: A Demand for Polycentricism, Demosprudence, and Praxis in WOTUS Regulatory Reform

• Author: Martin Mccrory/Inara Scott/Angie Raymond/Paul Levy
• Position: Chief Diversity Officer (CDO), Emeritus, Vice Provost for Educational Inclusion and Diversity, Emeritus, Associate Vice President, Academic Support and Diversity, Emeritus, Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs, Indiana University, Business Law and Ethics, Kelley School of Business/Gomo Family Professor, ...
• Pages: 417-466

Watered Down Voices, Watered Down Justice:

A Demand for Polycentricism, Demosprudence,

and Praxis in WOTUS Regulatory Reform

MARTIN MCCRORY*, INARA SCOTT**, ANGIE RAYMOND***, AND

PAUL LEVY****

ABSTRACT

For decades, science has demonstrated that discrete populations have been

disproportionately forced to suffer the horrors of living in areas contaminated

by toxic and hazardous substances. Communities of color, indigenous commun-

ities, and other marginalized communities continuously endure the effects of

multigenerational water, air, and land pollution. Whether intentionally or not,

the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and regulatory elites have promul-

gated so-called “neutral rules” that have resulted in a systemic and ever-

expanding national environmental caste. For this to end, EPA must stop being a

knowing or unknowing participant in regulatory oppression and become an

active agent of regulatory change.

EPA is required to take environmental justice concerns into account when

promulgating new regulations; amplifying the voices of traditionally subordi-

nated affected communities is an essential element of this goal. Nevertheless,

EPA lacks a systematic method to incorporate direct outreach to and engage-

ment with impacted communities and has no detailed outline nor specific strat-

egy to ensure that the voices of impacted communities are heard. Thus, the

Trump Administration was able to promulgate new regulations related to the

* Martin A. McCrory, Chief Diversity Officer (CDO), Emeritus, Vice Provost for Educational

Inclusion and Diversity, Emeritus, Associate Vice President, Academic Support and Diversity,

Emeritus, Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs, Indiana

University, Business Law and Ethics, Kelley School of Business. © 2023, Martin A. McCrory, Inara

Scott, Anjanette H. Raymond, Paul Levy.

The authors would like to thank Jackie MacDonald Gibson and the Center for Research and Race and

Ethnicity in Society (CRRES). The authors would also like to give special thanks to Arianna Wright

(Maurer Law School 2021); Erin M. Deckard (Maurer Law School 2022); Brendan Shemer (Kelley

School of Business 2021); and Beverley C. Thompson (O’Neill School of Public Health and

Environmental Affairs, Lugar School of Global and International Studies 2021) for the outstanding

research assistance.

** Inara Scott, Gomo Family Professor, Assistant Dean for Teaching and Learning Excellence,

College of Business, Oregon State University.

*** Anjanette H. Raymond, Director, Data Management and Information Governance, Ostrom

Workshop; Business Law and Ethics, Kelley School of Business.

**** Paul Levy, Contributor at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society (CRRES)

and Indiana University’s Department of Environmental Health.

417

definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) that are likely to have sig-

nificant negative impacts on water quality, much of which will be borne by dis-

enfranchised communities, while affording those communities little to no voice

in the regulatory process.

This Article maintains that the Biden EPA should adopt a sociolegal

approach, informed by the theoretical principles of polycentrism and demospru-

dence, to address systematic and decades-long environmental injustices. This

approach would help shift and redistribute power from environmental regula-

tory elites to the people most affected by environmental harms. Using the case

study of WOTUS regulatory reform, we argue that the Biden EPA has a perfect

opportunity to create a more inclusive regulatory process that expands the

power of historically disenfranchised people, while addressing known harms

that will result from the current regulations. The Biden EPA could use WOTUS

reform to establish a new paradigm for expanding the power of non-elites and

to create a model for a more equitable form of regulatory decision making and

a more democratic form of governance.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419

I. Environmental Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420

A. Inception and Mobilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422

B. Results of Inaction: Health Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424

C. Water Safety Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426

1. Water Case Study: Navajo Nation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427

2. Water Case Study: West Virginia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429

3. Water Case Studies: Lessons Learned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431

II. Polycentric Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431

A. The Governance of the Commons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432

B. Environmental Water Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434

III. Demosprudence and Praxis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437

A. Demosprudence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438

B. Praxis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442

1. Antiracism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444

2. Antisubordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446

IV. The Clean Water Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

A. CWA Jurisdiction (WOTUS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451

1. Rapanos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453

2. President Obama: WOTUS Rules (2015) .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453

3. President Trump: WOTUS Rules (2020) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455

a. Minimal Outreach and Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456

b. The Aftermath of the 2020 Regulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457

c. President Biden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458

B. A WOTUS Regulatory Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460

418 THE GEORGETOWN ENVTL. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 34:417

1. Environmental Justice Executive Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460

2. The 2020 WOTUS Regulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460

3. Demosprudential Collaborations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461

a. Determining the Affected Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461

b. Establishing a Framework for Inclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464

INTRODUCTION

I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give them

up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.

—Sojourner Truth

1

Communities of color and marginalized, disadvantaged communities have

been plagued for decades by environmental harm. This harm has included the sit-

ing of massive hazardous waste sites, highly polluting factories, and highways

and transportation infrastructure built near or directly through certain residen-

tial neighborhoods. The result is that these communities disproportionately

suffer the effects of decades of water, air, and land pollution. The attempt to

actively consider and address these harms is at the basis of the environmental

justice movement.

One challenge of the environmental justice movement is that marginalized

communities are less likely and less able to marshal extensive resources to

lobby government agencies to take their interests into account. Although the

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is required to take environmental jus-

tice concerns into consideration when promulgating new regulations,

2

it lacks

a systematic process for doing so and has no specific strategies in place to

ensure that the voices of those communities most impacted by the legacy of

environmental harm are heard. As a result, it is often the voices of wealthy cor-

porations or industry groups that are heard most clearly in the regulatory process.

Even when well-meaning, large, environmental advocacy groups participate,

they may lack direct grassroots connections to the communities they seek to rep-

resent. Consequently, environmental policy and regulations have resulted in a

multigenerational state of environmental injustice for discrete groups of voice-

less and powerless Americans.

Using the example of the Clean Water Act (CWA)

3

and the recent turmoil over

the definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS), we demonstrate how

the lack of a system for engaging communities and impacted people’s voices at

EPA has resulted in two different rulemaking processes: one, completed by the

1. Sojourner Truth, Address to the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association

(May 9, 1867).

2. Exec. Order No. 12,898, 59 Fed. Reg. 7629 (Feb. 11, 1994).

3. 33 U.S.C. §§ 1251–1388 (2018).

2022] WATERED DOWN VOICES, WATERED DOWN JUSTICE 419