Local government capacity--its ability to do what it wants to do--is often inadequate to protect groundwater from contamination. Yet many of the steps in the conventional prescription for groundwater protection call for activities that are virtually the exclusive province of local governments....

Local land use controls seek to limit the impact of one neighbor on another sometimes protecting natural resource environmental values. Federal and State programs to protect environmental values cannot do everything. They leave a residual risk of environmental loss that local people may want to...

The management of transboundary water resources between the united states, Mexico and Canada is changing. For about 100 years the governments have depended on two institutions --the International Joint Commission (U.S.-Canada) and the International Boundary and Water Commission (U.S.-Mexico)....