''Federal policies have made great progress protecting the environment. But those policies sometimes have imposed inordinate costs on local governments.'' Managing Green Mandates describes various federal environmental directives that are ill-suited to conditions at the local level and that compel communities to spend their revenues on reducing relatively minor risks to public health. While the federal government has imposed far-reaching requirements on local authorities, it is offering them less aid to comply with its increasingly stringent standards. The burden of those underfunded mandates can create further economic hardships for many fiscally overextended municipalities.