Learning From The National Strategic Goals Program

Anna Brown
Bachelor's of Arts in Environmental Studies
May 2001

After three decades of top-down command-and-control environmental regulations, the EPA has started to spin out a number of new and innovative approaches to environmental regulation. Most of these non-regulatory "voluntary" initiatives are relatively new. As a result, there have not been very many systematic careful evaluations of whether these programs have "succeeded" in terms of reducing discharges/ releases to the environment, improving environmental quality, improving cost efficiency for governing agencies or for companies. Of the evaluations that have been conducted, some tend to overstate program successes.

This study profiles the National Strategic Goals Program, a voluntary compliance initiative that targets metal finishing companies, in order to assess what effects, if any, it has had on improving the environmental performance of participants. In order to examine the effectiveness of Strategic Goals Program on the ground, this study looks specifically at its implementation through the Narragansett Bay Commission (NBC), a Rhode Island Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW).
Given limitations to this study, it appears that the Strategic Goals Program, as played out with Rhode Island metal finishing companies, does not point strongly to improved environmental behavior among participating companies. This study does, however, offer a number of lessons that could be useful in future voluntary programs. For example, the partnership between the Narragansett Bay Commission and a local metal finishing trade association helped garner support for the program. The findings in this study also support the body of literature that indicates that regulatory flexibility and building relations with is an important incentive to participation. While companies feel only slightly satisfied with the Strategic Goals Program, it is possible that with greater incentives, such as reduced reporting requirements, participants would be more inclined to work toward the predefined goals laid out in the program.