Editors' Summary: The Supreme Court's recent Sweet Home decision validated the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's regulation defining "harm" under the ESA to include habitat modification. The decision leaves private landowners facing uncertainty regarding what types of actions they may take on their land without causing "harm" to a listed species and thereby committing a "take" of the species in violation of the Act.

Editors' Summary: ESA § 10(j), the Act's experimental population provision, allows the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to release populations of threatened and endangered species into their historic range without complying with many of the Act's restrictions. This Article examines the statutory, regulatory, and judicial aspects of the experimental population program. It begins by examining the background for Congress' enactment of § 10(j). It then analyzes § 10(j) and the regulations that the FWS issued for implementing § 10(j).

The relationship between trade and the environment was perhaps the hottest issue in the debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993.¹ The North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), commonly known as the Environmental Side Agreement, was the Clinton Administration's answer to environmentalists' concerns with NAFTA.² After completion of the NAAEC, most major national environmental groups supported NAFTA's passage.³ A central tenet of this support was that the NAAEC's citiz

Much has been said and written about the impediments to environmental and economic progress that the current regulatory system presents.¹ The overly prescriptive "technology enforcing" schemes that prior Congresses created are quickly becoming anachronistic. Technological innovation has been greatly inhibited by the constraints imposed by the "one size fits all" command-and-control approach that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has pursued for the past 25 years.

Owners of residential property located near, and at risk from, a source of contamination, like owners of property that has actually been contaminated, often find it difficult, if not impossible, to sell their property and usually cannot sell it at a fair market price. From the point of view of prospective buyers, both kinds of property, whether actually contaminated or at risk of contamination, are undesirable.

Editors' Summary: Mining law in the United States is a complex patchwork of federal and state statutes and regulations. This Article provides a basic summary of that law. It begins with an overview of the mining industry. It examines the types of minerals mined, relevant forms of land and mineral ownership, and potential environmental impacts. It then discusses legal tools for restricting the use of land for mining and limiting mining's adverse environmental effects.

Editors' Summary: Supplemental Environmental Projects (SEPs) are environmentally beneficial projects that regulated parties perform in exchange for penalty reductions when settling claims for alleged violations. This Article discusses the use of SEPs, focusing particularly on EPA's 1995 SEP policy. The author first provides a context for understanding SEPs with a general review of the role of penalty policies in EPA enforcement, culminating in a discussion of the evolution of EPA policies about SEPs.

Editors' Summary: On December 22, 1995, EPA issued its Final Policy Statement on Incentives for Self-Policing, which sets forth the conditions under which EPA will reduce civil penalties assessed against regulated entities when they manage their own compliance responsibilities and disclose their own violations of environmental laws. This Article analyzes the Policy and evaluates its long-term prospects. The Article begins by describing the history behind the Policy.

It has become manifest that the manner in which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) imposes, implements, and enforces environmental requirements is in serious need of reform. This was recently and eloquently expressed by former EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus in his speech at the Environmental Law Institute's 1995 Annual Dinner. Expressions of the need for change have come from many points on the political spectrum, including the White House and the Congress. Unfortunately, practical measures to accomplish reform must overcome formidable obstacles.

The history of hazardous waste management divides into two eras: the cradle-to-grave era (beginning in 1980)¹ and the land disposal restrictions (LDR) era (beginning in 1986).² Since the decision in Shell Oil Co. v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,³ however, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has struggled to establish the foundation for what may be a new era.