Major Upcoming EPA Standards and Regulations
ENTRIES BASED ON INFORMATION AVAILABLE AS OF FEBRUARY 14, 1973
[See Illustration in Original]
ENTRIES BASED ON INFORMATION AVAILABLE AS OF FEBRUARY 14, 1973
[See Illustration in Original]
According to the Department of the Interior, more than 100 species of fish and wildlife may presently be threatened with extinction within the United States. The recently concluded Convention to Control International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (ELR 40336) listed 375 species of animals as imminently threatened with extinction throughout the world, and another 239 species of animals as not yet threatened with extinction but requiring additional controls over trade in them.
The oil industry has been frustrated since 1970 in its efforts to build a hot oil trans-Alaskan pipeline across federal domain lands from Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope to the Pacific Port of Valdez 800 miles to the southwest. Environmentalists maintain that pipeline ruptures across earthquake prone Alaska could cause lasting ecological damage in the last large wilderness in North America, and that the tankers required to carry the oil from Valdez to the West Coast could cause serious marine pollution.
A recent district court opinion from Texas may constitute something of a watershed for the National Environmental Policy Act in the courts. Just as the lengthy district court opinion over two years ago in the Gillham Dam case1 led the way in identifying and resolving the first generation of NEPA issues, the even more lengthy decision in Sierra Club v.
This month's issue of ELR contains an article by Judge James L. Oakes of the Second Circuit (3 ELR 50001). The article, Developments in Environmental Law, is based upon the Judge's introductory address at Environmental Law II, the third annual conference on environmental law sponsored by the American Law Institute and the Smithsonian Institution. This year, the Environmental Law Institute cooperated with the sponsoring institutions in conducting the conference.
Small doses of airborne lead in the urban environment may be lowering human resistance to infectious diseases.
The Institute is preparing a series of recommendations on non-technological research and development needs in the energy field under a grant from Resources for the Future (RFF), Washington, D.C. The Institute's proposals, together with those generated by RFF, will be submitted to the National Science Foundation (NSF). The study is being conducted in conjunction with the Federal Power Commission's Power Survey, and the research suggestions will be given to the Power Commission for consideration.
The Council on Environmental Quality has once again proposed revisions in its guidelines.1 ELR subscribers were sent Federal Register reprints of the proposed guidelines as an insert with the regular monthly mailing of the April 1973 issue, to enable them to respond to CEQ within the brief 45-day comment period. Here, ELR will simply summarize the major changes and provisions in the guidelines.
The Justice Department is presently investigating the feasibility of establishing a separate court system having exclusive jurisdiction over environmental issues.Section 9 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 authorized the study that will culminate in a report to Congress by October 1973. As the keynote address of a two-day conference of the Special Committee on Environmental Law of the ABA, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Walter Kiechel Jr.
The Council on Environmental Quality estimates that the federal agencies will spend $65 million annually to administer the National Environmental Policy Act when its provisions are fully operable.1 After some initial agency attempts to delegate substantially all of the burden of impact statement preparation, the Greene County case2 reversed the trend by stressing that the federal agencies themselves were primarily responsible for preparing the impact statement.