Starting January 1, 1974, the Environmental Protection Agency will issue "environmental explanations" written in laymen's terms for proposed new standards, regulations, and guidelines of national application.¹ The new policy, a response to what EPA called the "growing demand by the judiciary and the public" for full disclosure of the reasons for governmental decisions, would apply to national standards of environmental quality and to emission, effluent, and performance standards.

On August 23, 1973, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would request auto manufacturers to label 1974 model year cars to show customers the model's weight, probable mile-per-gallon rating, and estimated operating cost.¹ The proposed program is to be voluntary, although EPA's Assistant Administrator, Robert Sansom, noted that the Federal Trade Commission may already possess the authority to make such disclosure mandatory.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court recently upheld the validity of two Maine laws, both of which promise to have a far-reaching impact upon state environmental legislation in the 1970s. The Site Location Act of 1970¹ establishes a strict land use control system by requiring state approval of the landsites of all major industrial, commercial, and residential developments.

In March of this year, after the United States signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora,¹ two bills designed to implement the Convention were introduced in the House of Representatives. The two measures, one proposed by the Administration, the other by Rep.

On September 23, 1973, Oregon Gov. Tom McCall ordered a complete ban on the use of electricity for commercial display or decorative purposes throughout the state.¹ The Governor declared that the "inherent authority" of his office provided the legal basis for the unprecedented order.

A question that has begun to appear with increasing frequency in recent NEPA litigation concerns the environmental damage that a private or state party may cause in the early, "pre-federal" stages of a project before it becomes a "major federal action" and an impact statement must be prepared. This is another of the second-generation NEPA issues that have come to the fore as the battle lines between environmental plaintiffs and nonfederal developers have been drawn.

A comment in last month's ELR¹ analyzed the question of NEPA's applicability to "major federal actions" taken by the Environmental Protection Agency, and called on EPA to prepare impact statements, rather than "environmental explanations," for its guidelines, regulations, and standards. On September 20, the House received the conference report on H.R.

This past summer, the Environmental Law Institute and the Environmental Protection Agency contracted for a year-long research project entitled "Legal Aspects of Incentive Approaches to Pollution Control." The contract calls for a survey and analysis of federal environmental statutes to determine what flexibility they may allow for the adoption of incentive mechanisms at the federal, state, or local level; and for an intensive case study of the legal aspects of alternative policies for controlling the disposal of used lubricating oils.

On October 9, 1973, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed the Surface Mining Reclamation Act,¹ the first federal program of its kind for the regulation of coal surface mining activities and the reclamation of coal-mined lands. According to the terms of the bill, permits must be issued by a state regulatory authority before any person can engage in surface mining within a state.

In his energy message of April 18, 1973, President Nixon endorsed the construction of deep water ports, capable of accommodating supertankers, as the answer to the nation's predicted need for sharply increased petroleum imports in the foreseeable future. Such ports would provide moorings outside U.S. territorial waters from which foreign oil could be piped ashore or offloaded into smaller tankers able to use existing harbors.