Joint implementation provides U.S. companies an opportunity to contribute to an officially sanctioned effort to reduce greenhouse-gas1 emissions, the anthropogenic cause of global warming. Joint implementation typically takes place in developing countries, with the financial and technical assistance of sponsors in the developed world.
Editors' Summary: Title IV of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 contains an innovative performance-standard approach to pollution abatement. The Acid Rain Program that Title IV established imposes a national cap on utilities' sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions, the principal cause of acid rain, and grants allowances to utilities to emit specific amounts of SO2.
About a decade ago, disposal facilities began infiltrating the market for transportation of hazardous waste, to guarantee that they would be shipped an adequate supply of waste. To regain the transportation business, transportation companies increased the scope of the services they provided, to include recommending and selecting treatment and disposal facilities. This intense competition for the transportation and disposal markets created a new intermediary called a hazardous-waste "broker."
Over the last year or so, Congress has considered several proposals to reform the regulatory system.1 This short Comment suggests an alternative approach to reform, based on the theory that the regulatory system should work in the following manner: (1) Congress should set clear goals; (2) agencies should implement those goals; and (3) courts should provide quality control, ensuring that regulations embody well-thought out policy decisions that are driven by Congress' goals.2 The system does not work this way now, and probably will not unti
Editors' Summary: This Article presents an argument that EPA's use of reference concentrations (RfCs) in risk assessments, if upheld by the courts, will dramatically change the nature of health-based regulation. In a background section, the Article summarizes RfC methodology and its origins.
It may seem curious to some that the survival of a relatively small number of three-inch fish among all the countless millions of species extant would require the permanent halting of a virtually completed dam for which Congress has expended more than $ 100 million…. We conclude, however, that the explicit provisions of the Endangered Species Act require precisely that result.
Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153, 172-73, 8 ELR 20513, 20517 (1978) (TVA v. Hill).
In the July 1996 issue of News and Analysis, Richard Blaustein discussed the concept of joint implementation, a potentially important provision of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC).1 In his Dialogue, the author summarized the history of joint implementation, the current debate over its future role as a mechanism for international climate-change mitigation, and some of its potential implications for private-sector companies here in the United States.
Editors' Summary: This Article examines the judicial review provisions of EPA's proposed New Source Review (NSR) Reform Package issued under the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act. The proposed rule would require the terms and conditions of state-issued NSR construction permits under Title I of the Act to be reviewable in state court, and would further allow states to designate the state forum as the exclusive means for judicial review of permit terms and conditions.
The federal government procurement process has long been used as an engine for social change, including in the environmental area.1 At the present time, it is also driving toward adoption of commercial and private-sector quality and management systems standards in order to integrate the public and private-sector industrial base.
Editors' Summary: This Article is the first of a two-part series that examines the promise and reality of Clean Air Act enforcement by reviewing four central enforcement issues: (1) the development of the "any credible evidence" rule; (2) the evolution of the compliance assurance monitoring proposal; (3) the controversy over the requirement of federal enforceability of limitations on a source's potential to emit pollutants for purposes of determining its status as a "major source" under the Act; and (4) the tension between state-law voluntary disclosure, immunity, and environmental audit