Ronald Keith Gaddie is Associate Professor of Political Science at The University of Oklahoma. James L. Regens is Freeport-McMoRan Professor of Environmental Policy and Director of Entergy Spatial Analysis Research Laboratory at Tulane University Medical Center. They are coauthors of The Economic Realities of Political Reform: Elections and the U.S. Senate.

"…a comprehensive treatment to an important subject and provides an analysis that is both insightful and useful. This book is unquestionably a positive addition to the literature on environmental policy." — Reviewed by Stanley M. Caress, State University of West Georgia"The authors have taken two important topics that are very much in the scholarly and environmental literature—wetlands protection and regulatory federalism—and combined them in a fresh approach. I enjoyed reading their descriptions of the cases, and I gained a new appreciation for the state-level view of wetlands protection and the politics of implementing the Section 404 permitting program." — Denise Scheberle, University of Wisconsin–Green Bay"This book serves to emphasize the inherent complexity of environmental policy implementation and the potential difficulties of attempting to devolve regulatory functions from federal to state authorities. Indeed, the reluctance of many states to take the 'assumption' option offered by the federal government in this program area is one of the most interesting components of the analysis." — Barry Rabe, University of Michigan

• Preface Abbreviations Chapter 1: Wetlands, Federalism, and the Implementation Problem Chapter 2: Wetlands in the United States Chapter 3: Wetlands Protection and Section 404 Chapter 4: Two Tales of Assumption: Michigan and New Jersey Chapter 5: Two Divergent Paths: Florida and Maryland Chapter 6: Other Perspectives on State Assumption Chapter 7: Wetlands Regulation and Implementation Problems References Index