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Interview with Alan Williams

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Assistant Attorney General of Minnesota

Mosaiko.gr had the opportunity to meet with Alan Williams, Assistant Attorney General of Minnesota during his visit to Greece and discuss environmental issues, laws and challenges for the future.

What are some of the hot environmental topics you are working on right now as Assistant Attorney General of Minnesota?

Well I work on a variety of areas, I’m doing some enforcement work, I have a fairly major penalty matter involving water pollution where I’m working with the polluter to resolve that problem. I’m working on a permit the issuance of a permit for a municipal treatment plant, which is a very interesting little project because the plant is proposing to being a new discharge into a highly protected river in Minnesota –  and so the standards for pollution control have to be much stricter for that plant than normally would be the case. In Minnesota we have a very strong environmental organization that watches how well the state implements its regulations, and they bring lawsuits against the state when they don’t think the state is doing the kind of job they should be. This is one project that that organization is watching closely so that’s an interesting project.  I also work on recovering money for the state to help the state pay for taking care of old closed land fields.  We have a hundred old municipal waste land fields in the state that the state government is responsible for and we recover money from insurance companies who insured people who disposed waste at those sites to help relieve the cost to the tax payer.

What U.S. States have the toughest environmental laws?
The states with the best reputations in environmental law would be California, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and some New England states like Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

What (if any) environmental laws have been passed recently by the state legislature?
The most important law that has been passed by the Minnesota legislature in recent years is called the Clean Water Legacy Act.  The purpose of that law is to clean up our waters. The way water quality regulations work in the U.S. is that the first wave of regulation is to make sure that all of the industries and places like the municipal plants treat their discharges according to standards. The problem is that, even after all of the permitted discharges reach those standards, you still have a certain amount of pollution in the water.  Now we’ve reached that the stage where we are identifying those waters that are still polluted even after the permits have been issued.  The permits are generally complied with, but you still have a certain amount of pollution, and a lot of it comes from what we call Non Point sources.  Agriculture is a major source and agriculture is generally not regulated for its runoff, so now were working on that second stage. The Clean Water Legacy Act was a law that provided money to both indentify those waters that need further clean up and then to develop plans for that clean up and eventually to restore those waters.

What has been the biggest challenge in your job?
The biggest challenge, I think, has been to continually learn new areas, to continually learn about the areas of regulations that I’m working with. For a long time I worked with cleanup projects and I became an expert in that field, and I helped write the state law on how to do clean ups. More recently, I’ve been involved with water quality issues and it’s an area of the law I’ve had to learn.  So really I think that to constantly learn new things is a real challenge.

How do Minnesotans care about the environment?
Well, I think they care about it a lot.   Minnesota has really abundant water resources, we have lakes and rivers.   Minnesota is the head waters of three major river systems:  the Mississippi flows to the Gulf of Mexico, the Saint Louis River which flows into Lake Superior, we have Lake Superior which is the largest freshwater lake in the world, the Red River flows to the Arctic Circle, so we have water everywhere.  It is traditional in Minnesota for families to have a second home on a lake. So people care about the lakes, the health of the lakes, and a lot of people are interested in fishing, hunting as well as community events.

What projects have been organized in Minnesota for the purpose of protecting the environment? Have there been any specific initiatives?
Well, there have been many initiatives.  I mentioned the Clean Water Legacy Act, we’ve been I think at the forefront of trying to work on acid rain and mercury pollution in waters.  These are very difficult problems because they are really regional or even worldwide problems – the mercury problem in particular..   Mercury gets in the air from burning coal to a great extent and it travels through the atmosphere around the world. In Minnesota we’ve been quiet strict on our gas-fired power plants to reduce their mercury so we can go to the national Congress and say, we’ve done a good job — now you do your job–  and we’ve done that with acid rain. I think we’ve been a leader in waste management, trying to do more with recycling, reducing the amount of waste going to landfills, reducing the number of landfills, creating Waste Energy Plants, where the waste is burned for electrical energy.  So there have been many, many things.

Do you have any advice for students who are interested in practicing environmental law, energy law, basically doing your job?
I think it could be very important to know something about the science of environmental law as well as policy.  I think the people who are the most effective know both sides, who know something about biology, chemistry, but who also understand how public policy is developed and implemented, who can bridge that gap.  Who can talk to the engineers as well as the lawyers?  So that’s what I would recommend:  a broad education.

One last question, what is your forecast for the future of environmental protection in the U.S.?
I think we’re going to see some new initiatives in the next few years. Partly because we now have a leadership at the national level that’s much more interested in protecting the environment and working on issues that have been left unaddressed in previous years. What I worry about is that at the states level where a lot of the implementation takes place is that the states are having great financial difficulties right now so there are going to be pluses and minuses I think.