ABSTRACT
An emerging national agenda in the United States of interrelated economic and social development issues such as growth, poverty, environment, and political pluralism has become the central focus for national cooperation for the past four decades. In the last thirty years the United States has operated an all-inclusive environmental legislation in addition to several environmental policies. Despite this exclusive environmental legislature, more than 60 percent of the population of the United States (approximately 186 million Americans) live in 186 counties where healthful levels of either ozone or particulate pollution still prevails (Rosenbaum, 2014). In addition, more than half the total area of the nation’s biologically essential estuaries and almost half the nation’s rivers miles are considered unacceptably polluted (Baumer & Van Horn 2014; Rosenbaum, 2014).
