For many in the Philadelphia region, summer means spending weekends “down the shore.” When families decide to head to and from the beach is often based on a balancing test of one’s tolerance for sitting in traffic and a desire to make the most of the time away. Leaving Friday after work and returning Sunday evening will theoretically maximize sunbathing time, though such enthusiasts recognize doing so will likely mean sitting on the Atlantic City Expressway for hours on end.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approaches regulatory analysis in much the same way, by balancing costs and benefits of proposed regulations. Once the EPA identifies a source of potential environmental harm, it then decides whether and how to regulate, and certain statutes also require the EPA to perform a cost-benefit analysis. By way of background, the risk management framework for federal agencies started to change in the early 1980s. During his first month in office, President Ronald Reagan issued executive order 12,291, which included an instruction to agencies that “regulatory action shall not be undertaken unless the potential benefits to society for the regulation outweigh the potential costs to society,” and “regulatory objectives shall be chosen to maximize the net benefits to society,” Exec. Order No. 12,291, 3 C.F.R. 127 (Feb. 17, 1981). This policy remained effective until President Bill Clinton replaced it with executive order 12,866. Building on the foundation of executive order 12,291, executive order 12,866 instructed that “in choosing among alternative regulatory approaches, agencies should select those approaches that maximize net benefits (including potential economic, environmental, public health and safety, and other advantages; distributive impacts; and equity), unless a statute requires another regulatory approach.”