ABSTRACT
At the heart of any statute is something beyond the scope of either the legislature that passed it or the executive who signed it into law with a well-photographed flourish: its enforcement. The growth in the number of environmental statutes during the twenty-five years since 1970 has led to the need to interpret these statutes as they apply to specific situations. Gaps in statutory coverage, use of vague terms, conflicting provisions, and unanticipated circumstances following a statute’s adoption are only a few of the reasons that courts and administrative agencies must interpret and reinterpret statutes long after they have been passed. The court before which an alleged violation comes for the first time can construe even the most closely worded and tightly drawn statute so loosely that it is rendered almost frivolous, an empty husk safely ignored by an already underfunded and overburdened agency.
