Any analysis of U.S. progress toward meeting the goals of Agenda 21 must include a hard look at the political will and actions toward reforming our system of land use controls. Land development policies and decisions are inextricably intertwined with a significant number of items contained in Agenda 21, creating a perhaps unusual scenario requiring cross-disciplinary and interjurisdictional approaches to effectively implement strategies that will both promote and yield sustainable land development.

In discussions of the economies of the Mountain West, natural landscapes tend to be looked upon from either of two perspectives. The first is tied to the history of European settlement of the region. Natural landscapes are looked upon as the source of the natural resource raw materials that supply the region's "basic" industries: mining and metal processing, farming and ranching and the food processing associated with them, and timber harvest and the manufacturing based on it. The second view focuses more on the present and expected future.

On March 1, 1999, at 11:56 p.m. Pacific Coast time, the people of the United States took title to the Headwaters Forest, the largest remaining stand of privately owned, old growth redwoods in the world. Uncertain until the end, the transaction was recorded only minutes before the $250 million appropriation of federal funds for the purchase expired.

The February 2000 issue of the Environmental Law Reporter (ELR) carried an Article by Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes relating the dramatic negotiations that led to the settlement of the Headwaters controversy, whereby the federal government agreed to buy the Pacific Lumber Company's (PALCO's) Headwaters Forest, a 7,500-acre tract of old growth redwood trees, in order to preserve it as a national park. Though I was one of the lawyers for PALCO, and thus my perspective of this affair understandably differs from Mr.

From the enactment of the National Park Service Organic Act (the Organic Act or the Act) in 1916 until a 1998 decision by a federal district court in Utah, the National Park Service (NPS) had managed national parks without resolving theseeming contradiction between the Act's directive to conserve park resources "unimpaired" and its simultaneous directive to provide for visitors' "enjoyment" of those resources. Uncertainty, confusion, and disputes about the inevitably conflicting implications of these mandates were virtually guaranteed by the text of the Act, which requires the NPS to—

Our magnificent 40,000-mile National Trails System was established by Congress under the National Trails System Act (NTSA) of 1968 through the combined efforts of President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, and Sens. Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.) and Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.). Private and nonfederal public lands make up the lion's share of federally recognized long-distance trail corridors.

"In the ranchers' view, history has created expectations in respect to the security of 'grazing privileges'; they have relied upon those expectations; and the statute requires the Secretary to 'safeguard' that reliance."

"Their adamance derives from a recollection of history that never existed and from asserted promises that were never made."

Keynote Presentation: Making the Partnership Work

Panel Discussion: Regulation of Nuclear Materials

Regulation of Air Quality

Regulation of Water Quality: Is EPA Meeting Its Oblilgations or Can the States Better Meet Water Quality Challenges?

Regulating Solid and Hazardous Wastes

The 1990s mark the end of an era when pitched legislative battles can lead to either sound or timely public policy. Rather, the formulation of consensus by a critical mass of private-sector stakeholders is the only way to achieve the timely reauthorization of Superfund and may be the best (if not the only) way to break the gridlock that paralyzes other legislative debates.

New rules are emerging to change the way the government makes decisions about cleanup of hazardous waste sites under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund). These changes have altered Superfund decisionmaking fundamentally and irrevocably, requiring the government to reach for new levels of accountability, rationality, and consistency. Central to the government's ability to meet this challenge is the way in which it makes and explains decisions about acceptable risks and required levels of cleanup.