Editors' Summary: This Comment surveys the environmental activity of the second session of the 98th Congress. The most important environmental product of that session is a tough new set of RCRA amendments. Otherwise, Congress, especially the Senate, found itself in a sort of gridlock on the big pollution control reauthorizations. Congress did pass a number of other environmental bills, including a whole raft of wilderness bills. The president signed all but two, which would have reauthorized the Equal Access to Justice Act and created an American Conservation Corps.

Editors' Summary: Just as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and states, after long delays, are primed to begin final implementation of the complicated hazardous waste control provisions of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA), the president has signed Amendments greatly adding to the scope and complexity of the program. The agencies must now, like Sisyphus, return to the bottom of the mountain and start the long upward trek again. Actually, their plight is less grim than his, since they need not recover the same ground.

OWEN OLPIN: Welcome to the 13th Annual Conference on the Environment, sponsored by the ABA's Standing Committee on Environmental Law. To open our discussion of hazardous waste siting issues, I am delighted to introduce Deputy Administrator Alvin Alm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Congress has chosen in the past not to intervene directly in hazardous waste siting, and it is unlikely that they will change that course. The responsibility for siting new or expanded facilities has therefore become either a local one (from a land use perspective, the treatment, storage, and disposal (TSD) facility is treated as another conditional use for an industrial zone) or through preemption, a state function. Since Michigan's enactment of Mich. Comp. Laws §299.501-526 in 1978, all major industrial states and most others have passed some form of siting legislation.

Between the passage of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in 1976 and 1981, no new hazardous waste facilities had been sited in the United States. Public reaction to Love Canal and the Valley of the Drums, perceptions of health and environmental risks, and the resulting "not in my backyard" syndrome contributed to the construction freeze. The same concerns are being expressed today, but I feel that we, as a society, are now taking a more national and responsible view of hazardous wastes and recognizing our ability to deal with the problems of waste management and disposal.

I am going to speak about the mismanagement of hazardous waste and its effect on public health. The Superfund and other sites I will be discussing illustrate the variety of unanticipated incidents to occur at hazardous waste sites over the last several years.

ROBERT FRANTZ: John McGlennon made reference to the need for facilities. The premise of this entire discussion is that a serious need for hazardous waste facilities exists. Otherwise, we would not be here debating how they can best be sited.

The difficulties inherent in mediation are well illustrated by a story about the attempt Kurt Waldheim, Secretary General of the United Nations, made to mediate the Iranian hostage crisis. When he arrived at the airport in Tehran, a large crowd was there to receive him. He stood at the microphone with his translator and said, "I've come here to mediate a compromise in this difficult controversy between your country and the United States." Well, it turns out that in Farsi, "mediate" means "meddle" and "compromise" is the worst of words, meaning to violate one's principles!

Professor Prosser, in his treatise on torts, states that "the law of torts . . . is concerned with the allocation of losses arising out of human activities."¹ In the hazardous waste field, the potential for loss is very serious. Tort liability falls into two general areas. The first property damage associated with release of pollutants into the environment through ground and surface water, soil, and air transport. The second, victim compensation, has become the topic of considerable debate and study.