Industry and, indirectly, the consumer, have failed to pay for ait and water resources, treating them as "externalities” Thus, in one respect, the essential problem of environmental enforcement is to find methods and ways to compel industry and t consumer to assume the costs they have treated as external. This challenge entails giving a renewed attention to the subject of the role of sanctions in environmental enforcement. It is argued in this paper that regulatory activities in the field of environment ought not to rely wholly on essentially negative sanctions, whether civil or criminal. Rather, such activities ought to place some emphasis on economic inducements of sufficiently persuasive nature to compel the assumption by industry of the costs it has hithertofore treated as external. For instance, there is more to taxation than mere revenue generation. Taxation can play a crucial regulatory role with a view to bringing about an internalizing of environmental (pollution) externalities.