It is time we started to think seriously about environmental law reform. Environmental law has been with us for over 15 years and, although it is still a growing teenager,¹ 1985 is not too soon to plan for its maturity.Its intense energy and compulsion to accomplish everything at once without concern for the long-term consequences were understandable, probably essential, in its youth. It had to carve a place for itself in a world that, but for a relatively small number of idealists, was largely indifferent.

Editors' Summary: It is a sign of the maturity of environmental law that criminal enforcement is coming of age. Although federal and state pollution control agencies have long had criminal enforcement powers, those powers were rarely used. One explanation may have been a reluctance to saddle businessmen confronted with complex and confusing regulatory demands with the stigma of criminal indictments.

Editors' Summary: In October 1984, EPA proposed listing on the National Priorities List six groundwater sites on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Those sites are the first to involve contamination by intentionally and legally applied pesticides. EPA's proposal to use CERCLA to respond to that contamination has caused a great deal of controversy, from an exchange of letters between Congressman Florio and EPA Administrator Thomas to submission of CERCLA amendments by the Administration that would explicitly exempt pesticide contamination from the statute's coverage.

Editors' Summary: In 1983, the Minnesota Legislature enacted the country's most aggressive and comprehensive state Superfund statute, the Minnesota Environmental Response and Liability Act (MERLA). The statute establishes an extensive private cause of action that includes joint and several liability for economic and personal injury, broadly defined; relaxes standards of proof of causation; and applies this liability retroactively.

Once again, as in the past several years, it appears that Congress will consider amending the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). A coalition of environmental groups, led by the Natural Resources Defense Council, has suggested legion amendments ("The Federal Pesticide Reform Act of 1985") which would largely rewirte the law. Senator Proxmire (D. Wis.) introduced S. 309 to amend FIFRA on January 29, patterned after the environmentalists' proposal.¹

Just as surely as the cropdusters appear on the spring horizon to spray their mist of pesticides on the nation's agricultural lands, helicopters hover over forest lands to drop their mix of insect and weed killers, and lawn care services douse the suburbs with chemical agents, the Agriculture Committees in the United States Congress approach their seasonal task of reauthorizing the federal law intended to control those deadly sprays.

Editors' Summary: In recent years, environmental law has gone underground. The realization that groundwater has been widely contaminated by toxic substances from chemical dumps, pesticide application, and other sources has focused attention on subsurface pollution. Recently, a new culprit has been identified—leaking underground tanks in which oil, gas, chemicals, and wastes are stored. Congress perceived the problem as serious enough to warrant addition of a new program to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) at the end of last year.

The impact of toxic chemicals and waste on the environment and human life is of worldwide concern. The United Nations has been working for over a decade on development of a legal system to protect against toxic effects possible from the vast array of chemicals that now are manufactured and used in the world, and from the abandonment of toxic wastes. For several years, the U.N. quietly has been developing an international information and notification system. Every country in any stage of development is concerned to prevent another Bhopal.

Editors' Summary: A close reading of the broad and convoluted liability provisions of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act suggests that generators who arranged for the disposal of wastes are not liable for cleaning up subsequent hazardous substance releases to the environment, unless they chose the unsafe sites at which the releases occurred. The legal battles that have been waged over the scope of generator liability under the Act have largely bypassed this issue, concentrating instead on joint and several liability and causation.

Editors' Summary: The huge liabilities associated with cleanup of hazardous waste sites have driven some waste generators and disposers into bankruptcy. When this happens, business creditors find themselves fighting with the government and cleanup-related claimants over the bankrupt's assets.These confrontations have become more common: the Supreme Court has already handed down one ruling in a cleanup-bankruptcy case, Kovacs, and has granted certiorari in two more.