When the polluted Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969 and burned out of control for days on end, an outraged public demanded environmental accountability and eventually spurred passage of the Clean Water Act. Today, as Americans witness the abrupt demise of Enron, they are similarly alarmed by an abdication of government oversight, and rightly ask: just who is looking out for the public interest?

Although members of the U.S. Senate and House are now elbowing each other aside to conduct nationally-televised hearings, they conveniently ignore the broader truth for which they bear ultimate responsibility-their readiness over the past two decades to cede government's role as watchdog of the public good, trading campaign contributions for assurances that industry will police itself.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the civil rights movement, Vietnam War, environmental disasters and the Watergate scandal inspired a host of regulatory reforms. In each of them, government was charged with protecting and policing the public interest. Transparency was an elemental component of every reform, as government and private sector interests alike were required to disclose information about potential public harm.

However, the Reagan revolution of the 1980s brought back a "too respectable to be regulated" mentality, allowing industry to withhold environmental and financial data and shifting enforcement responsibility from government agencies to private sector players. As campaign financing spun out of control under Democratic and Republican Congresses and presidencies, regulatory checks and balances devolved into a full-blown charade of self-reporting for both financial managers and polluters. This pitiable substitute for public oversight has now exploded in the Enron/Arthur Andersen debacle, but its full dimensions are manifest in repeated violations of both environmental and financial management laws.

For those of us in environmental advocacy, the Enron/Arthur Andersen scandal is not surprising. The debacle has many of the hallmarks that have characterized our 12-year battle for better environmental policing and polluter accountability. Through assiduous observation, persistent use of the Freedom of Information Act and help from anonymous staff and whistle blowers, MEC and our member organizations have tracked and documented a system that too often lets the worst players get away with environmental murder.

In Michigan, we saw the Polluter Pay Law gutted and costs of cleanup shifted to taxpayers-if cleanups were required at all. This was followed by passage of a law allowing private sector and municipal waste managers alike to audit their own pollution and giving them the privilege of withholding critical information from the public. State government eliminated many professional enforcement staff and busied the DEQ's criminal enforcement division with security duty for the department director while wetlands were lost and industrial farms allowed to pollute rivers and streams with tons of manure.

Recognizing that those with larceny in their hearts will not hesitate to take advantage of the public trust, we've protested the overreliance on self-policing. Although we've cut short many of their worst excesses, too often the response of the polluters-and press, public and politicians-has been underwhelming. In response to the abdication of governmental oversight, nonprofit environmental advocacy organizations have grown bigger and smarter. But in fully protecting the public interest, we'll never be a substitute for government-and neither will the private sector.