For the first time since its decision in Applicability of the Fairness Doctrine to Cigarette Advertising, 9 F.C.C. 2d 921 (1967), the Federal Communications Commission last month held the doctrine's requirements applicable to specific one-minute spot television commercials. In re Complaint by the Wilderness Society and Friends of the Earth, Concerning Advertisements Sponsored by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (Esso) and Shown Over the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), 1 ELR 30043 (June 30, 1971).

Environmental lawsuits against federally aided highway projects, like other attempts to litigate the environmental effects of governmental projects that have been in formulation for many years, often face the argument that recently enacted laws designed to protect the environment do not apply to projects that were already in progress, but still incomplete, when the laws were passed. Generally the impact of the new statute on ongoing projects is probed by asking two questions: How far advanced was the project on the date when the statute or regulation became effective?

On April 13, 1971, the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that the district court had improperly exempted the Office of Science and Technology (OST) from compliance with the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. §552. Soucie v. David, 1 ELR 41001-02.

Programs for open space preservation have traditionally been justified on aesthetic grounds or have stressed regional planning needs. Husbanding the amount of surviving open space was thought to preserve planning options and to provide needed recreational space for entire metropolitan regions. Only recently has the importance of open space for the quality of suburban community life begun to be recognized.

Asking for a comprehensive, regionally oriented §102 environmental impact statement under the National Environmental Policy Act, 42 U.S.C. §§4321 et seq., rather than individual statements on separate decisions by departmental agencies, conservationists and Indian groups filed two suits seeking to halt further government approval needed by a consortium of public utilities for their plans to expand and develop an extensive power generating complex in the Four Corners area of the American Southwest. Jicarilla Apache Tribe of Indians v. Morton, 1 ELR Dig.

The opinion of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Calvert Cliffs Coordinating Committee, Inc. v. Atomic Energy Comm'n, 1 ELR 20346 (D.C. Cir. July 23, 1971), puts the AEC—and implicitly all other federal agencies—on notice that NEPA will in fact require major changes in the spirit and the detail of administrative decisionmaking so that environmental values are fully protected.

An attempt by several leading environmental organizations to obtain a definitive statement governing the transfer of environmental lawsuits at the instance of federal defendants, usually from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to forums situated at or near the location of the disputed project, failed in The Jicarilla Apache Tribe of Indians v. Pratt, No. 71-1676 (D.C.Cir., Sept. 1, 1971), when the Court of Appeals for the D.C.

In its Second Annual Report, the Council on Environmental Quality offered the following assessment of the Refuse Act Permit Program:

On April 13, 1971, the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that the district court below had improperly exempted the Office of Science and Technology (OST) from compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. Soucie v. David, 1 ELR 20147. The lower court had sustained OST's refusal to furnish the plaintiff, the Executive Director of Friends of the Earth, with a copy of the Garwin Report, a scientific study commissioned by the president on the proposed supersonic transport plane (SST).

This month, ELR is publishing in Articles and Notes at 1 ELR 50057 a chapter on the law and the environment taken from the second annual report of the Council on Environmental Quality. See Environmental Quality: The Second Annual Report of the Council on Environmental Quality, Government Printing Office (August 1971) Chap. 5.