ABSTRACT
Environmental problems mingle with natural beauty in rural America; global, national, and regional environmental degradation affects many rural places. Some of the problems cross state lines and must be addressed by interstate and federal action. But even on the local level, rural governments are increasingly involved in environmental problems and issues that only recently have come onto their agendas. Local officials and staff devote considerable time, attention, and paperwork to assessing and controlling environmental impacts of existing, proposed, and future activities. The problems with which they deal, the "threats to our beautiful rural environment," come not only from the outside and from the future, however: They are also homegrown and from the past. For example, many rural governments are presently involved, and more soon will be, in addressing and mitigating the problem of chemical contamination of groundwater. Leaking underground storage tanks for gasoline and for agricultural and industrial chemicals have become a serious problem.
