La prévention des pollutions aux États-Unis

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Aux États-Unis, existent des lois fédérales qui obligent les installations industrielles à prendre des mesures pour protéger l’air, l’eau, le sol… Le cadre législatif est complexe. Il est simplifié, en partie seulement, par les actions de l’Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), entité fédérale. En effet, les compétences en matière de politique environnementale entre l’État fédéral et les États fédérés sont à géométrie variable. La gestion de la délivrance des permis environnementaux prend la forme d’une mosaïque : il n’existe pas de permis unique, ni de permis uniformes. L’articulation foisonnante des textes normatifs rend ardue la navigation au sein des référentiels. Les exigences techniques ou technologiques, entre obligations de résultats ou de moyens, s’inscrivent dans une architecture peu lisible du grand public. Aujourd’hui, les réformes des permis environnementaux attendent une issue au Congrès.

In the United States, federal laws require industrial facilities to take measures in order to protect air, water and soil… The U.S. legislative framework is complex. It began to take shape in the 1970s and then evolved until the mid-1990s. This framework is partly simplified by the actions of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a federal entity of the executive branch.The institutional organization gives Congress primacy at federal level, jurisdiction over environmental matters to the States, and critical importance to the courts. The U.S. environmental legislative and regulatory framework is far from integrated. Political alternation seems to have a strong influence on environmental programs, an area in which no significant legislation has been passed since 1997.Jurisdiction over environmental policy between the federal government and the States varies according a great number of parameters and circumstances. The management of environmental permitting is a mosaic: there is no single permit neither uniform permit throughout the entire country.The plethora of normative texts makes it difficult to navigate within the laws, rules and standards. Technical and technological requirements, ranging from obligation of means to performance obligation, are part of an architecture that is difficult for the general public to understand.Moreover, the alternation in the political leadership of the U.S. federal executive (Clinton-Bush, Bush-Obama, Obama-Trump, Trump-Biden) has an impact on environmental programs. Thus, environmental issues in the United States are subject to frequent reversals. The Supreme Court arbitrates the resulting conflicts. In Congress, incentive-based approaches are favored, as prescriptive approaches seem doomed to failure. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA, 2022), which distributes substantial tax incentives to deploy low-carbon technologies, is the product of such findings.Today, there is a strong desire in the U.S. to regain industrial leadership and sovereignty. Current debates highlight the balance that needs to be reached between industrial and environmental policies. And today, environmental permit reforms are awaiting the outcome of the federal Congress.