State and green crimes related to water pollution and ecological disorganization: water pollution from publicly owned treatment works (POTW) facilities across US states

Abstract

Green criminologists often refer to water pollution as an example of a green crime, but have yet to produce much research on this subject. The current article addresses the need for green criminological analyses of water pollution problems, and draws attention to an overlooked issue: water pollution emissions from state owned public water treatment facilities or POTWs. Legally, POTWs may emit certain quantities and kinds of pollutants to waterways following treatment. This does not mean, however, that those emissions have no adverse ecological or public health impacts, or that those emissions cannot also be employed as examples of green crimes or green-state crimes. Indeed, from the perspective of environmental sociology and ecological Marxism, those emissions generate ecological disorganization. Moreover, POTW emissions contain numerous pollutants that generate different forms of ecological disorganization. The current study uses POTW emissions data drawn from the US EPA's Discharge Monitoring Report system for 2014 to illustrate the extent of pollution emitted by POTWs in and across US states as one dimension of ecological disorganization. To contextualize the meaning of those data, we review US water pollution regulations, review the health and ecological impacts of chemicals emitted by POTWs, and situate those emissions within green criminological discussions of green crime and greenstate crimes.

Green Criminology

“…That problem involves constructing a definition that has some objective basis that can be applied consistently in order to avoid the problem of constantly needing to define/redefine the concept of green crime using what we call a "catalog" approach-that is, identifying and adding each new form of green crime as they are "discovered" to a list of green crimes. Here, it is not our intention to review the many different definitions of green crime that have appeared in the literature (see, Lynch et al, 2017aLynch et al, , 2017bLynch et al, , 2017c, but rather to provide an idea of the kinds of definitions of green crime that exist, and more specifically to review how we have attempted to address the problem of multiple (and sometimes contradictory) definitions of green crime through the unification of definitions of environmental harms in environmental sociology, ecological Marxism and physical science literatures.…”

Systematic Review Study: A Comparative Analysis of the State of the Art of Green Criminology

“…Water pollution provides an example of green victimization and how green crimes occur routinely in societies. For instance, several studies examined how states and corporations have turned water sources into commodities something that can be owned or leased and subsequently exploited (Lynch, Long, Barrett, & Stretesky, 2013;Lynch & Stretesky, 2014;Johnson;South & Walters, 2016;Stretesky & Long, 2017;Nurse, 2017). Based on this idea, Johnson, South & Walters (2016) identified how the privatization of water in some jurisdictions allowed corrupt companies and states to exploit a fundamental human right.…”

A System for Standardizing and Combining U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Emissions and Waste Inventory Data

“…These inventories provide critical information that helps to paint a national picture of environmental health and identify sources of potential environmental and human health issues related to pollution in the United States. They are widely used for modeling environmental conditions to assess environmental compliance (e.g., air quality modeling for meeting air quality standards) [ 5 ], determining needed capacity [ 6 ], developing bench-marks [ 7 - 10 ], evaluating time trends [ 11 ], and many other purposes [ 12 , 13 ]. Making these inventories easily usable may facilitate data compilation and modeling efforts.…”