By the literal terms of §107 of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA),¹ the states may be held strictly liable for costs incurred by private parties in responding to hazardous pollution incidents traceable to state-owned facilities. In United States v. Union Gas Co.,² however, a federal district court recently held that private-party liability suits against the states are barred by the Eleventh Amendment.

Editors' Summary: In 1981, in an effort to gain leverage over federal plans to sell outer continental shelf oil and gas leases, California and several environmental groups sued the Interior Department. They argued that under §307(c)(1) of the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA), Interior must certify that such lease sales are consistent with approved state coastal management plans. The case progressed to the Supreme Court, where last January, in Secretary of the Interior v. California, the Court ruled against the plaintiffs.

Editors' Summary: The Fifth Amendment taking issue is emerging as a significant concern in wetlands regulation. In a recent case, 1902 Atlantic, Ltd. v. Hudson, a district court for the first time declared that the Corps of Engineers' denial of a permit to develop a wetlands would amount to a taking of property. Mr. Want examines land use taking law and surveys cases applying it to wetlands. He concludes that while courts may continue to apply taking law to wetlands, actual declarations of taking will be rare.

It is now a commonplace of political discourse that technological advances have had a profound effect on our democratic institutions. Mass communications is the familiar example. But I would like to draw your attention to another way in which technology may impinge upon a democratic society, one that is perhaps as serious, if more subtle; one that commands a huge proportion of my own attention. It refer to the chemical products and byproducts of modern technology and the potential social disruption associated with the processes we have created to control them.

Editors' Summary: Public lands interest groups expect widespread litigation in the late 1980s over the 125 national forest land and resources management plans due under the National Forest Management Act (NFMA). This Comment speculates on the issues that will surface in the coming litigation, focusing on three controversial parts of the NFMA: §6(k), dealing with designation of lands unsuitable for timber management; §13, dealing with departures from sustained-yield management for timber; and §6(g)(3)(B), dealing with preservation of forest diversity.

Editors' Summary: The federal government has broad authority to protect the public health and the environment from hazardous substance pollution, but that power often must sit idle until the nature of the hazard posed by a given disposal site can be determined. EPA can investigate apparently hazardous disposal sites itself, for example under §104(b) of CERCLA. The Agency also orders private parties to conduct preliminary investigations of sites.

William Ruckelshaus is on a crusade to persuade the American public to fundamentally change its ideals about public health and the environment. We should, he says, "accept" risk.¹ We should lower our expectations of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We should not dare to hope for more than "reasonable" protection from carcinogens and other hazards.

Editors' Summary: The federal government has liberally interpreted CERCLA to give it great power and discretion in cleaning up unsafe hazardous waste disposal sites. The government has reserved the Superfund response monies for emergencies and sites where no solvent responsible party can be found, and has insisted that a broad group of waste handlers, including non-negligent, off-site waste generators, are jointly and severally liable for site cleanup. In some two dozen recent decisions, the courts have accepted most or all of the government's interpretation of the law.

Editors' Summary: The Chesapeake Bay is a precious ecological and economic resource whose productivity is declining, apparently due to water pollution. A dozen years after enactment of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, a comprehensive response to the industrial and municipal degradation of the nation's surface waters, the decline in Bay productivity continues. The author, head of Maryland's environmental protection programs, reports that a series of events have combined to produce regional action that could be effective in reversing the decline.

The EPA Journal recently asked six respected observers what their response would be to the question "how clean is clean at a hazardous waste site?" They received six different answers. The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) decisions in regard to selecting remedies at hazardous waste disposal sites have emerged from experience, because nowhere do existing law or Agency policy define the level of cleanup that must be achieved during a response action.