The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has issued another landmark decision under the National Environmental Policy Act. The ruling in Scientists' Institute for Public Information, Inc. v. Atomic Energy Commission, reprinted in full at 3 ELR 20525, goes significantly beyond the court's earlier decisions in Calvert Cliffs¹ and NRDC v.

On October 1, 1972, the Oregon Minimum Deposit Act,¹ popularly known as the "bottle bill," went into effect. The first state act of its kind, the controversial Minimum Deposit Act seeks to reduce roadside litter by requiring refunds to be paid on all beer, malt, and carbonated soft drink containers and by banning pull-top cans.

Last month's ELR reported the decision of the District Court for the District of Columbia in City of New York v. Ruckelshaus,¹ ordering the Administrator of EPA to allot among the states the entire sum authorized by Congress for water quality improvement under the Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments of 1972.

On May 17th, the Atomic Energy Commission, in conjunction with the CER Geonuclear Corporation, exploded three 30- kiloton nuclear devices beneath Rio Blanco County in northwest Colorado in an experiment designed to test the feasibility of releasing natural gas trapped below the earth's surface. Repercussions from the project, both figurative and literal, may extend into the distant future.

On June 12, the Attorney General of California filed suit in federal district court seeking a judgment that the state may impose reasonable conditions on the operation of a federal water project in order to protect environmental interests. The action, California v. Morton,¹ grows out of a conflict between the State Water Resources Control Board and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation regarding the operation of the federal Central Valley Project (CVP).

On October 16, 1972, Congress passed the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments over the president's veto.¹ The Act, which took effect immediately, settled numerous discretionary and non-discretionary duties on the Administrator of EPA and prescribed deadlines for compliance with his mandatory responsibilities.

The superior court case of Stock v. Alaska¹ has established for the first time in that state standards for determining when an officer of a corporation can be held criminally liable for the acts of his corporation. At issue in this appeal was the criminal conviction of a corporation president for allowing raw sewage from his corporately-owned Juneau trailer court to flow into state waters in violation of the state water pollution statute.

The National Wildlife Federation recently filed three suits seeking to reform Federal Highway Administration (FHwA) procedures for administering the federal-aid highway program. Readers of ELR will recall that last month's issue included a Comment regarding the partial publication of FHwA procedures. That Comment in turn relied upon an earlier ELR article co-authored by Robert Kennan, attorney for the National Wildlife Federation, which criticized the FHwA for failing to give its procedures adequate circulation.¹

Two Ohio cities, Wooster and Cuyahoga Falls, have enacted strict insulation requirements for new construction in an effort to conserve energy. Proponents of the new ordinance estimate that the additional costs of construction caused by these insulation requirements will be more than offset by fuel savings in the long run. Meanwhile, fuel consumption will be substantially reduced.

Less than four years after its creation, the Council on Environmental Quality stands at a crossroads. Several officials have left the Council, including Chairman Russell Train, who has been nominated to head the Environmental Protection Agency. The Office of Management and Budget has stepped up an attack that if successful will strip CEQ of much of its power and responsibility. At the same time, Congress has moved to exempt the Alaskan Pipeline from NEPA, a damaging blow to the statute that is the legal underpinning of the environmental movement and that established CEQ.