Although pollution control laws have been in use in the United States for a century, it was not until the 1970s, the "Environmental Decade," that modern pollution-control laws began to take shape. The American public was awakened to the need for better pollution control through the 1967 publication of Rachel Carson's groundbreaking Silent Spring and environmental disasters such as Love Canal, New York; the Donora, Pennsylvania, inversion; and the Cuyahoga River fire in Ohio. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, citizens began to demand comprehensive environmental protection laws. In the thirty years since, those early environmental laws have been used as the broad framework on which national pollution control are based laws in the twenty-first century.

Overview of U.s. Pollution-Control Laws and Regulations

Pollution-control laws in the United States can take several different forms. Federal pollution-control statutes are enacted...