I. Introduction and Overview

Editors' Summary: Since the Supreme Court's decision in Rapanos v. United States, courts, practitioners, and scholars have continued to discuss Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's significant nexus test. Under this test, to protect a wetland one must establish that there is a significant nexus between the wetland and a traditional navigable water. In this Article, authors William W. Sapp, Rebekah Robinson, and M. Allison Burdette suggest that the nearer a traditional navigable water is to the wetland, the better the chance of establishing that there is a significant nexus between the two.

There can be no sustainable development without sustainable transportation. It is an essential component not only because transportation is a prerequisite to development in general but also because transportation, especially our use of motorized vehicles, contributes substantially to a wide range of environmental problems, including energy waste, global warming, degradation of air and water, noise, ecosystem loss and fragmentation, and desecration of the landscape. Our nation's environmental quality will be sustainable only if we pursue transportation in a sustainable way.

Editors' Summary: The recently completed 105th Congress provided the nation with a legacy of unparalleled legislative inactivity. Few, if any, of the legislative initiatives earmarked as priorities passed as bitter partisan debate ruled on Capitol Hill. This Comment analyzes how such partisanship and subsequent congressional lethargy created the environmental successes, controversies, and failures of the 105th Congress.

Although the 104th Congress did not begin officially until January 4, 1995, its significance was apparent as soon as the polls closed on November 8, 1994. When the votes were tallied, Republicans had acquired majorities in both the Senate and the House for the first time in 40 years. And they were quick to proclaim the beginning of a revolution in congressional lawmaking.

Editors' Summary: It has become regular practice for federal legislators to insert into annual appropriations bills riders having little to do with the appropriations process. Last year, under the sponsorship of the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, a bill that would have exempted recyclers from CERCLA "arranger" and "transporter" liability was almost enacted as a rider to the omnibus appropriations bill for fiscal year 1999. This Dialogue examines that rider and the changes it would have wrought to CERCLA.

If we want to think about changes in local sustainability over the last 10 years, perhaps the best place to start is with Al Gore. In 1992, just before the Rio Earth Summit and before he was to be tapped as a vice presidential candidate, then-Senator Gore published a treatise on the environment called Earth in the Balance.

The Defenders of Wildlife Judicial Accountability Project—undertaken with the assistance of the Vermont Law School Clinic for Environmental Law and Policy—seeks to fill a data void on the environmental record of President George W. Bush and his Administration by analyzing all reported environmental cases in which the Bush Administration has presented legal arguments regarding an existing environmental law, regulation, or policy before federal judges, magistrates, or administrative tribunals.

In a recent article reviewing the U.S. Supreme Court's environmental decisions over the last 30 years (1969-1999), Professor Richard Lazarus argues that "the Justices have never fully appreciated environmental law as a distinct area of law."¹

The 1999 National Nuclear Security Administration Act (NNSA Act) threatens to reverse 20 years of reforms and court decisions intended to bring the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) into compliance with environmental laws and regulations. The NNSA Act, enacted in the wake of allegations of spying at Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory in New Mexico, established a semi-autonomous agency within DOE—the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The NNSA operates nine laboratories and facilities within the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.