ABSTRACT
Environmental statutes are more simply called environmental laws. The early origins of such laws can be traced to government control over coal burning in the 16th century and regulation of sewage disposal in the 19th century.3 By the early 1900s, legislation set aside national parks and governed mining and timber activities. The current era of environmental statutes began at the end of the 1960s. By the early 1970s, it was clear that a law here and a law there would not be adequate to protect the environment. The public awareness of the damage to the environment by the immense industrial mammoth created by man led to an environmental statute of deceptive simplicity, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (Public Law No. 91-190, approved January 1, 1970).
