It is an environmental truism that neither the ecosystem nor pollutants respect state lines. One state's factory emissions may become another's acid precipitation; one's polluted waste waters may cause bacteria blooms and fish kills in another's lakes. This phenomenon goes far to explain the federal government's growing involvement in air and water pollution control, traditionally a matter of state and local responsibility. The federal role now seems to some so pervasive as to strain the fabric of the federal system.

Four court of appeals have now considered the validity of the Environmental Protection Agency's attempt to compel the states to administer and enforce transportation controls under the Clean Air Act. The split in judicial authority which the first three decisions produced was analyzed in a previous ELR Comment.¹ The D.C.

"Energy" is today more than a household word. In the two years since the Arab oil embargo, a great deal has been said, somewhat less has been done, and much remains to be achieved to solve the problem of energy shortage. The problem has two basic handles: increasing the supply of energy, or reducing the demand for energy. Both have their side effects. Increasing supply has a tendency to scar the land, foul the air and hasten the day when the earth's depletable resources will be exhausted.

The entire gamut of judicial responses to precautionary administrative action aimed at potential environmental threats to public health marked the D.C. Circuit's recent en banc decision¹ upholding the Environmental Protection Agency's 1973 regulations requiringprogressive phasing out of gasoline lead additives in the interests of public health.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has become the latest court to hand down a decision in the welter of litigation¹ surrounding EPA's establishment of single-number effluent limitations for industrial point sources under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 (FWPCA). Jumping foursquare into the effluent limitations controversy, the court held in E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. v.

In a decision that is likely to be emulated in other states, the Supreme Court of New Jersey has recently rejected Commerce Clause challenges to that state's ban on the in-state dumping of solid waste originating outside New Jersey. The unanimous opinion in Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission v.

Secretary of Transportation William Coleman refused on March 25, 1976, to designate Florida and Mississippi as "adjacent coastal states" under the Deepwater Port Act of 1974,¹ thereby effectively denying those states a right to delay or to veto the Secretary's ultimate decision on the applications of Louisiana Offshore Oil Project (LOOP), Inc., and SEADOCK, Inc., to construct and operate deepwater port facilities off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas.² Instead, the Secretary promised to "give the fullest consideration" to concerns expresse

Controversies involving the propriety of regulating activities on privately-owned wetlands and coastal marshes have increasingly supplied grist for the judicial mill in the form of land use and takings cases. Private development of marshes, induced by the attractively low land capital costs, must continually buck governmental regulation fashioned to preserve our remaining wetlands. In the past few years, the resulting decisions have run the gamut, from upholding regulations that allow virtually no use of private marshes to striking down any restrictions on wetlands alterations.

In early June, a bipartisan, industry-supported substitute version of the proposed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), cleared the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee.¹ Because of the substitution, agreed to by the subcommittee bill's sponsor, Rep. Bob Eckhardt (D-TX), in order to ease committee action, the House measure, H.R. 14032, differs substantially from the Senate-passed bill, S.

Centuries ago—before its health threat was appreciated—garbage was thrown out of house windows onto streets, which seemed convenient commons for disposal of private wastes. Public health measures long ago banned garbage in the streets, and now the last remaining convenient commons are the oceans, which have begun receiving increasingly voluminous and toxic human garbage.