Encyclopedia of Global Resources part 43 pps

Environment and Natural ResourcesDivision Category: Organizations, agencies, and programs Date: Established 1909 as Public Lands Division The Environment and Natural Resources Division o

Global Resources

Environment and Natural Resources

Division

Category: Organizations, agencies, and programs

Date: Established 1909 as Public Lands Division

The Environment and Natural Resources Division

of the U.S Department of Justice represents the U.S.

government in a wide variety of litigation, both civil

and criminal, involving the environment, natural

re-sources, and public lands It litigates cases for the

En-vironmental Protection Agency.

Definition

The Environment and Natural Resources Division of

the U.S Department of Justice litigates cases

rang-ing from the protection of endangered species to

the cleaning up of hazardous waste sites In other

words, it serves as the nation’s environmental lawyer

It enforces civil and criminal environmental laws to

protect human health and the environment It also

defends the government against legal challenges to

its environmental programs and attempts to ensure

that the laws are applied fairly The division represents

the U.S government in matters concerning the

pro-tection, use, and development of natural resources

and public lands, wildlife protection, Indian rights

and claims, and the acquisition of property by the

government The division, formerly known as the

Land and Natural Resources Division, and before

that as the Public Lands Division, is organized into

nine sections

Overview

The Environmental Crimes Section prosecutes

indi-viduals and corporations who violate environmental

protection laws; it works with the Federal Bureau of

Investigation and with investigators from the

Environ-mental Protection Agency (EPA) Among the statutes

it enforces are the Clean Air Act, the Resource

Con-servation and Recovery Act, and the Comprehensive

Environmental Response, Compensation, and

Liabil-ity Act (CERCLA, or “Superfund”) The

Environmen-tal Enforcement Section is responsible for bringing

civil litigation on behalf of the EPA, for claims for

nat-ural resource damage filed by government agencies,

for claims regarding contamination of public land,

and for the recoupment of money spent to clean up

oil spills on behalf of the U.S Coast Guard Its role is

to provide a credible deterrent against violation of en-vironmental statutes

The Environmental Defense Section represents the government—primarily the EPA—in suits chal-lenging its administration of federal environmental laws These suits include claims by industries that reg-ulations are too strict and, conversely, by environmen-tal groups claiming they are too lax Suits are also sometimes brought by states or individuals alleging that federal agencies themselves are not complying with environmental regulations The Wildlife and Marines Resources Section tries civil and criminal cases involving federal wildlife laws and laws protect-ing marine life Smugglers and black-market dealers

in protected wildlife are prosecuted Civil litigation in-volving the Endangered Species Act may pit the re-quirements of species protection against the interests

of either private concerns or government agencies The Policy, Legislation, and Special Litigation Sec-tion advises and assists the U.S assistant attorney general regarding policy issues It also directs the divi-sion’s legislative program—testimony before congres-sional committees and representation of the division

in congressional and interagency policy meetings The division undertakes specially assigned projects and serves as the division’s ethics office The Appel-late Section handles appeals of cases tried in lower courts by any of the division’s other sections It drafts briefs for any division cases that reach the U.S Su-preme Court The Executive Office is the administra-tor of the division, providing financial management, personnel, planning, and litigation support services The division’s General Litigation Section is respon-sible for litigation involving federally owned public lands and natural resources Cases may arise regard-ing more than eighty laws coverregard-ing land management and natural resources Issues include water rights, use plans, timber and mineral production, land-owner compensation, and trust obligations to Indian tribes The Indian Resources Section represents the United States in its trust capacity regarding Indian tribes Suits include such issues as water rights, hunt-ing and fishhunt-ing rights, damages for trespasshunt-ing on American Indian lands, and reservation boundaries and land rights The Land Acquisition Section ac-quires land for the government through purchase or condemnation proceedings Land is acquired for a va-riety of purposes, ranging from parks to missile sites A number of issues may be raised in such cases, includ-ing balancinclud-ing the rights of individual property owners

against the needs of the government, ascertaining the

fair market value of property, and determining the

ap-plicability of local zoning regulations

Vincent M D Lopez

Web Site

U.S Department of Justice

Environment and Natural Resources Division

http://www.usdoj.gov/enrd/

See also: Clean Air Act; Clean Water Act;

Endan-gered Species Act; Environmental law in the United

States; Environmental Protection Agency; Public

lands; Superfund legislation and cleanup activities

Environmental biotechnology

Categories: Plant and animal resources; scientific

disciplines; social, economic, and political issues

Environmental, or “white,” biotechnology, seeks to

ac-complish three major goals: bioremediation, pollution

abatement, and the generation of renewable resources.

These goals are typically achieved using either

natu-rally occurring or genetically engineered plants and

microorganisms as well as specific chemical substances

that have been obtained from these organisms.

Background

Biotechnology has been defined as the use of living

organisms to achieve human goals Because these

goals cover such a broad range of possibilities,

bio-technology is often subdivided into three major

cate-gories, namely those with medical, agricultural, and

environmental applications Some have even gone

as far as to color-code these categories, referring to

them as red, green, and white biotechnology,

respec-tively Historically, the former category has received

the most attention Measured in terms of capital

in-vestments, it has overshadowed the other two by a

factor of nearly 20 to 1 since the use of modern

bio-technology began in earnest in the 1980’s The latter

categories, however, have seen steady growth in the

twenty-first century and may someday be able to close

this gap Each of these categories of biotechnology

can, in turn, be further subdivided according to its

specific goals Environmental biotechnology, for

in-stance, can be thought of as encompassing

bioreme-diation (cleaning up contaminated environments), pollution abatement (preventing the discharge of pollutants from currently existing industries), and the production of renewable chemicals and biofuels Bioremediation has garnered the most interest over time, while the latter two categories, although less developed, appear to be gaining in popularity over time

Bioremediation Environmental biotechnology has become increas-ingly popular in waste treatment and remediation be-cause it has several desirable characteristics It is a

“green” technology: It uses natural systems and natu-rally occurring organisms to detoxify environmental pollutants The final products (usually carbon diox-ide and inorganic elements) are harmless It is not a particularly new and, therefore, uncertain technol-ogy, so there are few unintended consequences of its use Natural bioremediation of pollution is constantly occurring in the environment; otherwise, past pollu-tion would never have gone away Bioremediapollu-tion is inexpensive compared with other treatment technol-ogies If one can provide the proper environment and nutrients for the remediating organisms, relatively lit-tle other infrastructure is involved It can be done on-site without having to move hundreds of cubic meters

of contaminated material It can even be done in con-taminated aquifers and soils that cannot be moved Environmental biotechnology typically involves us-ing either plants or microorganisms to achieve its stated aims Using plants to bioremediate an environ-ment is referred to as “phytoremediation.” Phytore-mediation is typically used when the environment is contaminated by heavy metals such as lead, mercury,

or selenium Certain plants (astragalus, for example)

are able to accumulate high concentrations of met-als such as selenium in their tissue The plants can be harvested, the tissue can be burned, and the metal-contaminated ash can be stored in a hazardous-waste facility

Bioremediation most commonly refers to the use of soil microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) to degrade

or immobilize pollutants It can be used with a wide va-riety of wastes, including some nuclear wastes such as uranium In bioremediation one generally has two options First, the environmental engineer can simply make the contaminated site as favorable for microbial growth as possible by adding nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus, for example), keeping the area moist,

and mixing the contaminated site periodically (if it is

soil) to make sure it has sufficient air (or pumping air

into the system if it is an aquifer) Then, the engineer

waits for microbes already present on the site to start

growing and use the waste as a food source

Frequently there are wastes that cannot be used

as a food source by microorganisms However, they

can still be biodegraded by a process called

cometab-olism In cometabolism, wastes are

biodegraded during the growth of

the microbes on some other

com-pound For example,

trichloroethyl-ene (TCE), one of the most common

groundwater contaminants, is

come-tabolized during the growth of

bac-teria that use methane for their food

source Many other wastes, such as

dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane

(DDT), atrazine, and

polychlori-nated biphenyls (PCBs), are

come-tabolized by microbes in the

envi-ronment

Waiting for organisms to grow can

take a long time (especially in

win-ter), so environmental engineers

of-ten try to speed the process by

add-ing microorganisms they have grown

in the laboratory These

microorgan-isms are special because they have

al-ready been grown on various

pollut-ants Therefore, when they are added

to the environment in high

num-bers, they start bioremediating the

pollutants immediately This process

is called “seeding.”

Sometimes a waste is so toxic or is

present in such high concentration

that neither plants nor

microorgan-isms can survive in its presence In

this case, enzymes are sometimes

used to try to degrade the waste

En-zymes are proteins with catalytic

ac-tivity—that is, they make chemical

reactions occur faster than they

nor-mally would Enzymes are not alive

in a strict sense, but they come only

from living organisms They have an

advantage over living organisms in

that they can retain their catalytic

ac-tivity in environments that are

other-wise lethal For example, horseradish peroxidase is a plant enzyme that has been used to treat chlorinated compounds The peroxidase causes the chlorinated compounds to bind together When they do that, they become less soluble, and if they become less soluble and precipitate, then they are much less likely to enter the food chain of an ecosystem

Bioremediation has been used on a large scale

Scientists examine contaminated mud samples at a Superfund site in Texas Bioremedia-tion is one aspect of environmental biotechnology (Getty Images)

mostly to treat oil spills The best example of this was

during the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989.

Rather than try to remove oil from beaches physically

(by steam spraying or absorbing it into other

materi-als), engineers had several beaches sprayed with a

nutrient solution that helped naturally occurring

oil-degrading microbes in the environment to multiply

and begin decomposing the pollutant The experiment

was so successful that the U.S Environmental

Protec-tion Agency recommended that Exxon expand its

bio-remediation efforts to more of the affected beaches

Environmental biotechnology is a growing industry,

and numerous venture capital firms have started to

supply remediation technology for various types of

wastes One application of this technology is “designer

microbes” for sewage treatment facilities receiving

in-dustrial pollutants Another activity involves creating

unique microorganisms, using genetic engineering

techniques, that have the ability to degrade new types

of pollutants completely The first living thing to be

patented in the United States, a bacterium that was

ge-netically engineered at General Electric, was created

specifically to degrade petroleum from oil spills

Pollution Abatement

Preventing pollution from occurring in the first place

is much more desirable than allowing it to happen

with the hopes of using biotechnology to clean it up

afterward Microorganisms, for instance, have been

used to remove a portion of the carbon dioxide (CO2)

found in the emissions resulting from the burning of

fossil fuels One example of an organism being used

for pollution control is the microscopic aquatic algae

called phytoplankton In nature, the phytoplankton

make up a large portion of the carbon fixation cycle

by converting CO2to sugars during photosynthesis,

then sinking to the bottom of the ocean upon their

death, effectively removing this carbon from global

circulation Scientists have passed effluents from

power plants that burn fossil fuels through columns

filled with algae in order to reduce their CO2

emis-sions While the subsequent deposition of these algae

to the bottom of the ocean is not entirely practical,

burning the dried algal pellets for fuel effectively

re-sults in more energy being obtained while ultimately

releasing the same amount of CO2emissions as the

untreated effluent

These same abatement principles apply to the

treat-ment of water effluents as well Some factories have

in-stalled anaerobic bioreactors, vessels where microbial

digestion of wastes is allowed to take place in the ab-sence of O2 Under these conditions, particular mi-crobes that are present in the bioreactor release meth-ane, which can then be captured and used to run the boilers in the factory and/or provide electricity for the plant In this case, the treated water is usually pure enough to release directly into a nearby water source Both aerobic and anaerobic bioreactors have been used to treat sewage, agricultural, and industrial waste Production of Renewable Resources

It is not always the organisms themselves which are of interest to biotechnologists, but certain metabolic by-products that are given off by, or at least easily purified from, the organism in question The specific enzymes

in bioremediation as well as other enzymes can often

be purified from the organism that produced them and used in industrial processes involving green chemistry, the practice of chemistry with the aim of reducing the use and generation of hazardous sub-stances In addition to enzymes, certain organisms are also known to produce small organic compounds known as secondary metabolites, so named because they do not play central roles in the growth or devel-opment of the organism in question These com-pounds, which often possess pharmaceutical proper-ties, are instead hypothesized to play signaling or defensive roles in the cells that produce them The production of secondary metabolites and their deriv-atives form much of the foundation for medical bio-technology based on natural products Compounds that can be used as a renewable source of fuel repre-sent another class of materials that is produced by liv-ing organisms that holds great promise for environ-mental biotechnology The direct use of biomass for fuel in the case of dried algal pellets is not practical for use in machinery such as automobiles Therefore, or-ganisms are typically treated to produce alcohols, oils,

or gases that can more easily be used for such pur-poses The widespread use of nonfossil fuels to power automobiles dates from the 1970’s, when fuel-grade ethanol was first mass-produced in the United States and Brazil The former purified the ethanol from the fermentation of corn by microbes and used it as an ad-ditive to petroleum-based fuels, while the latter used sugarcane in the fermentation process and used the ethanol as a complete replacement for fossil fuels Re-search is ongoing into the use of plant waste for etha-nol production so that fuel production does not di-rectly compete with the use of crops for food

An alternative to the production of ethanol via

fer-mentation of a particular biomass is the direct use of

plant oils, sometimes called biodiesel, in specifically

designed engines While the adoption of biodiesel as

fuel has been relatively slow, the use of soybean oil

and rapeseed oil in conjunction with certain public

transportation fleets in the United States and Europe,

respectively, has steadily increased Another

alterna-tive biofuel that could be adapted for use in

automo-biles is hydrogen This biofuel has the added

advan-tage of producing no carbon emissions whatsoever,

but it is in the early stages of development, in terms

of both its efficient production by microorganisms

and the development of engines designed to burn

this fuel

Mark S Coyne, updated by James S Godde

Further Reading

Alexander, Martin Biodegradation and Bioremediation.

San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press, 1994

Bhattacharyya, Bimal C., and Rintu Banerjee

Environ-mental Biotechnology New York: Oxford University

Press, 2007

Clark, David P., and Nanette J Pazdernik

“Environ-mental Biotechnology.” In Biotechnology: Applying

the Genetic Revolution Burlington, Mass.: Academic

Press/Elsevier, 2009

Jordening, Hans-Joachim, and Josef Winter, eds

Envi-ronmental Biotechnology: Concepts and Applications.

Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH, 2005

Scragg, Alan Environmental Biotechnology 2d ed New

York: Oxford University Press, 2004

Singh, Ajay, and Owen P Ward, eds Biodegradation and

Bioremediation New York: Springer, 2004.

Singh, Shree N., and Rudra D Tripathi, eds

Envi-ronmental Bioremediation Technologies New York:

Springer, 2007

Skipper, H D., and R F Turco, eds Bioremediation:

Sci-ence and Applications Madison, Wis.: Soil SciSci-ence

Society of America, 1995

Wainwright, Milton An Introduction to Environmental

Biotechnology Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1999.

Web Sites

U.S Environmental Protection Agency

Treatment/Control: Treatment Technologies,

Bioremediation

http://www.epa.gov/ebtpages/

treatreatmenttechnbioremediation.html

U.S Geological Survey Bioremediation: Nature’s Way to a Cleaner Environment

http://water.usgs.gov/wid/html/bioremed.html See also: Biofuels; Biotechnology; Environmental Protection Agency; Hazardous waste disposal; Oil spills; Superfund legislation and cleanup activities

Environmental degradation, resource exploitation and

Categories: Environment, conservation, and resource management; pollution and waste disposal

The needs of human beings for food, shelter, clothing, and other material goods are most often met by extract-ing raw materials from the natural physical environ-ment In the process of undertaking this extraction, the quality of the environment is often degraded Through gaining an understanding of the nature of this degra-dation and the ability of the environment to regenerate, laws and regulations may be developed to satisfy the human needs in environmentally compatible ways.

Background The satisfaction of human resource needs and desires often involves intense interaction with the natural physical environment Such interaction may involve resource extraction, transportation, and processing Each of these events has the potential to degrade the environment while meeting human resource needs Yet instances of environmental degradation also carry with them the potential for solving the problems in ways that may provide long-term satisfaction of re-source needs in an environmentally compatible man-ner Four examples—damage to wildlife, forests, and soil, and the degradation caused by surface mining— illustrate the circumstances under which such prob-lems have developed and the methods by which envi-ronmental restoration has been undertaken

Surface Mining Surface mining for resource extraction has a long history The primary modern procedure is to use large-scale machinery to remove the overlying earth material to expose the economically valuable mineral

resource beneath Once the mineral is exposed, it can

be removed, transported, and refined for use The

most widespread application of surface mining has

been in the mining of bituminous coal During the

mining process, numerous undesirable disruptions

in land use, water quality, and a community’s social

fabric can occur Generally, surface mining is seen as

aesthetically undesirable, as large areas of exposed

earth material degrade the landscape The premining

land uses are also disrupted, and once-productive

lands (farms, forests) are taken out of production

The exposed earth material, if left unprotected, is

subject to erosion by both water and wind If the land

is left in an unreclaimed state, the mined land is slow

to revegetate and remains an unproductive source of

eroded materials and an eyesore

Water pollution problems may also result from

such mining Most commonly, the removal of coal

may expose iron pyrites, which, when exposed to air and water, contribute acid mine drainage to the re-gional water supply This acid drainage, along with silt washed from the eroding surface, clogs stream chan-nels, kills aquatic life, and lowers the overall water quality In cases in which streams are large enough for dams and navigation, the silt fills in reservoirs and clogs the machinery to operate navigation locks Structural features such as bridge piers, dams, and locks may be damaged from extreme stream acidity

In the areas where mining occurs, the social orga-nization may also be disrupted Roads are relocated, farms and houses removed, and, in some cases, entire villages may be removed for mining to take place The surface mining of coal, therefore, may contribute to many social and environmental problems in the areas where it takes place

Because of these many disruptive qualities, states

Two State Natural Resources employees stand atop a pile of waste coal in Ohio in 2006 Landscapes in coal districts have been severely de-graded through mining (AP/Wide World Photos)

where mining occurs and the federal government

have taken steps to remedy the problems and provide

a framework for mining the coal needed to meet U.S

energy needs in a more environmentally compatible

way During the 1940’s, 1950’s, and 1960’s, such states

as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois began to pass

legis-lation to curtail surface-mining-related problems by

requiring mined land reclamation The success of

these efforts coupled with the need for a national

ef-fort to establish a consistent reclamation program led

to the passage of the federal Surface Mining Control

and Reclamation Act of 1977 The Office of Surface

Mining Reclamation and Enforcement in the

Depart-ment of the Interior is responsible for administering

the programs of the act, reviewing state programs for

reclamation, and enforcing the act’s provisions

Current mining operations are subject to the

provi-sions of the act, and money is provided to reclaim

those lands left unreclaimed and abandoned in the

past Through a series of standards, requirements,

and enforcement policies, this act, in conjunction

with state laws, has directed the once environmentally

destructive process of surface mining into a pattern of

energy resource acquisition, mined land reclamation,

productive land creation, and post-mining

environ-mental restoration

Wildlife

A second example in which resource exploitation has

led to environmental degradation is wildlife Wildlife

populations depend on a complex set of interacting

factors such as food, water, protective habitat,

migra-tion routes, and breeding areas As human

popula-tions have grown and expanded on the land surface of

the Earth, wildlife populations have been displaced

This displacement has been the result of habitat

re-moval, water pollution, air pollution, the

introduc-tion of alien species, hunting, and changing land

uses All these activities have led to declining wildlife

populations while meeting human needs for food,

shelter, and living space The declines have led to the

extinction of some species and declines in the

popula-tion of others to the point at which they are

consid-ered endangconsid-ered At the same time that these

de-clines have occurred, recognition of the problems

confronting wildlife populations has led to human

re-sponses in areas of habitat preservation and

restora-tion, wildlife management, and the development of a

legal framework for wildlife protection

Perhaps best known of the organizations

con-cerned with wildlife is the National Audubon Society, but it is only one of a large number of national, state, and local wildlife organizations Such groups under-take a variety of wildlife-related projects such as main-taining preserves and refuges, stocking streams and habitat areas, cleaning waterways, and educating the public Such activities promote citizen participation and establish a grassroots base for wildlife preserva-tion

As a complement to these activities there are those functions and programs that result from governmen-tal actions Federal, state, and local governments are all involved in wildlife activities While it would be im-possible to list all activities, the broad categories of habitat protection, species protection and restora-tion, and wildlife management are all part of govern-mental concern Much of the early concern of the fed-eral government for wildlife was voiced as part of action on other issues such as forest protection, soil erosion, and water pollution control A federal tax on sporting guns and ammunition passed in the 1930’s devoted resources to the purchase of land for wildlife conservation In 1960, the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act specified that wildlife and fish be part of the overall administrative concern The Endangered Species Act of 1973 gave the federal government di-rect involvement in dealing with the problems of en-dangered species through the Office of Enen-dangered Species in the Department of the Interior The expan-sion of habitat areas by various agencies of the govern-ment has also been a positive move toward preserving and restoring wildlife At the international level, a variety of laws, treaties, and agreements to protect wildlife are in place There are also numerous inter-national wildlife organizations

The 1946 formation of the International Whaling Commission is a good example of such an interna-tional organization It was formed to regulate whale harvesting so that overkilling did not result in species elimination Such regulation, however, is not binding

by law, and countries can withdraw from the commis-sion More specific regulations are found in the Mi-gratory Bird Treaty This treaty involves the United States, Canada, and several other countries in habitat protection, wildlife hunting regulation, and interna-tional cooperation Globally, there is a wide variety of laws, treaties, agencies, and organizations aimed at wildlife protection, habitat preservation, and achieve-ment of a balance between the human use of the world’s resources and wildlife needs