I was pleased to see a copy of your Comment on environmental auditing disclosure issues. As you are aware, we have been actively involved in analyzing and encouraging private-sector environmental auditing for several years. It's nice to see informed analysis on these auditing issues.
Editors' Summary: In the past few years, many states have enacted legislation that closely parallels the fund and liability provisions of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund).States have been spurred to adopt their own superfund legislation by the financial requirements and response action opportunities presented them by CERCLA as well as by gaps in the federal Act.
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) litigation is often a tactical exercise. NEPA requires decisionmaking procedures that ensure the full and timely consideration of the environmental impacts of major federal actions. Though NEPA suits are usually waged over procedural points, preserving the integrity of NEPA's procedures is not necessarily the plaintiffs' first goal. Plaintiffs may bring NEPA suits as an indirect means to a more substantive end—to force the agency to abandon what they judge to be a poor proposed action.
Editors' Summary: In 1983, Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in central California achieved national prominence when Fish and Wildlife Service scientists discovered severely deformed and dead waterfowl at the refuge and concluded that the cause was selenium contamination from irrigation wastewater stored there. The use of Kesterson as a disposal site for such irrigation wastewater will cease in six months, but the problems it has raised will not soon fade. The contamination at the site must be cleaned up and further contamination prevented.
Editors' Summary: A federal district court in Colorado recently added fuel to the fires of state-federal conflicts by ruling that federal reserved water rights apply to wilderness areas. The reserved rights doctrine, the focus of controversy ever since it was first recognized by the Supreme Court in 1908, is disliked by many western water users since water is a limiting factor in continued western urban and industrial development and water appropriated for federal interests means less is available for state and private interests. This Comment discusses the ruling in Sierra Club v.
Editors' Summary: This Comment reviews the Supreme Court's reversal of the Sixth Circuit's decision in United States v. Riverside Bayview Homes, Inc., the controversial FWPCA wetlands jurisdiction case. The Court rejected the Sixth Circuit's argument that the jurisdiction must be narrowly construed in order to avoid potential takings of private property.
Editors' Summary: This Comment surveys the environmental activity of the first session of the 99th Congress. While Congress could have passed reauthorizations of most major environmental programs including hazardous waste management, clean water, and clean air, it focused instead on money—the budget, departmental appropriations, and tax reform. Numerous bills progressed during the session, but few actually passed—the farm bill and the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act being the notable exceptions.
Editors' Summary: The 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments single out for harsh air pollution control measures those parts of the country whose air quality does not measure up to federal standards. Virtually every major city in the country was a nonattainment area for ozone, the regulatory surrogate for smog. The final deadline for cleaning up these areas expires next year and many cities still have too much smog.
The mind rolls back to the words of the Bard in The Merchant of Venice:
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The needs of mercy.1
Editors' Summary: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has long been embroiled in controversy over its regulation of hazardous air pollutants under §112 of the Clean Air Act. The Act requires rapid, stringent regulation of pollutants EPA lists as hazardous, but leaves it to EPA to decide what to list. In the 16 years since §112's enactment, EPA has listed only a handful of pollutants and been slow to regulate those it has listed.