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scarce economic resources at both the federal and state levels, funds for monitoring training and education 

 should be provided to the states to improve their monitoring abilities, not used to fund or educate a band 

 of vigilantes who lack the scientific expertise to assess water quality or to properly monitor change. 

 These citizens monitoring provisions do not help the states. In fact, in many cases, the provisions will 

 harm the states abilities to perform their monitoring duties. The House of Representatives recognized that 

 using uneducated volunteers, who may have special interest agendas, is not sound public policy when the 

 body removed volunteer provisions from the National Biological Survey by a vote of 217 to 212. The 

 House realized it should use its own employees rather than empowering a volunteer police force. 



Citizen Lawsuits — For nearly two hundred years, only the U.S. government could sue on behalf of the 

 American people. Since the power to sue and to impose federal fines and sanctions is awesome, 

 regulators empowered to file lawsuits are answerable to and supervised by federal officials appointed by 

 the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate. Moreover, they perform their duties via a 

 carefully constructed chain of command and control. Finally, their conduct is constrained and subject to 

 censure through a myriad of laws to ensure that officials behave legally, ethically, and responsibly. 



However, over the past two decades, in numerous environmental laws, the power to sue has been 

 delegated to private citizens. Unlike their colleagues in the federal government, those who bring citizen 

 suits — mostly powerful environmental groups — are supervised by and answerable to no one. Only they 

 decide who will sue, why, and how. 



The fact that our laws are being applied to private entities and individuals, not by federal officials, but 

 by a handful of lawyers operating in some back room, ought to be of serious concern to all of us. 

 However, if that alone is not enough, consider the drain on the federal treasury. Environmental litigation, 

 using citizen suit provisions, is big business: lawsuits over the Northern Spotted Owl netted 

 environmental groups more than a million dollars. 



Furthermore, citizen lawsuits distort public policy. Such lawsuits aren't undertaken by environmental 

 groups simply to ensure that the law is enforced but to change the law. Legislative defeat can be 

 transformed, over time, and before a variety of federal courts, into a judicially-created victory and 

 expanded legal authority. 



The use of citizen suits to create new law is well-known in the regulatory community. Many federal 

 bureaucrats, constrained by congressional appropriations for enforcement activities, look to citizen lawsuits 

 to extend their authority. For example, EPA, commenting on new regulation, noted that "[t]he final rule 

 establishes ... requirements that are easy for ... citizens to enforce through citizen suits." 



That is exactly what legal scholars, such as Bruce Fein, fear. "The inescapable result [of citizen suits] 

 is a costly and unrestrained growth in litigation against federal agencies, the consequence of which is "to 

 shift policy making from the legislative and executive branches to the judicial branch in a clear 

 circumvention of the political decision-making process." 



Some argue that citizen suits are essential tools to goading reluctant regulators into court. Not so! 

 Congress, with its broad and exacting oversight responsibilities, is capable of putting officials on the hot 

 seat over any alleged failure to enforce environmental laws. The citizen suit provision of the nation's 

 environmental laws is an experiment that has failed. It is costing the American people millions of dollars 

 annually, destroying the competitiveness of American businesses, burdening ours courts, all while badly 

 distorting public policy. The time for these lawsuits, like the time for vigilante "justice," has long since 

 passed. 



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