The enactment of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA),¹ and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to administer it in 1970 marked a turning point in the recent environmental history of the United States. Beginning in 1950, new forms of environmental pollution appeared and rapidly intensified: smog, acid rain, excess nitrate and phosphate in water supplies, pesticides and toxic chemicals in the food chain and our bodies, and dangerous accumulations of radioactive waste.

Editors' Summary: Environmental auditing has become one of the most widely used techniques for detecting and preventing environmental problems before they get out of hand. Increasingly, corporations with sophisticated environmental staffs are using the technique to evaluate not only the corporation's own pollution concerns but also those of corporations that are possible partners in a merger or acquisition. Environmental auditing is thus becoming part of the "due diligence" practiced in evaluating major business transactions.

Editors' Summary: When Congress originally enacted CERCLA in 1980, it gave the state and federal governments a strong arsenal of tools to respond to actual or threatened releases of hazardous substances. CERCLA authorized state and federal governments to recover response costs and natural resource damages from responsible parties. However, CERCLA authorized only the federal government to obtain injunctive relief to compel responsible parties to perform remedial actions.

Editors' Summary: The actions of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may well be one of the single most influential factors influencing the quality of the nation's environment. EPA is often the maker of environmental policy as it writes regulations, balances when and how to enforce its laws, distributes grants, approves state programs, and proposes or comments on legislation before Congress. EPA must work effectively as one agency among dozens in the federal government, knowing when to press environmental issues and when to hold back.

Editors' Summary: In 1987, the Supreme Court issued two blockbuster regulatory takings decisions. The decisions provide some much-needed guidance for deciding when government regulation constitutes a taking of private property requiring just compensation under the Fifth Amendment. However, the decisions have also raised concern among federal agencies about the takings implications of their actions.

Editors' Summary: Perhaps no law in the federal natural resources arsenal has engendered more long-term controversy, while nonetheless maintaining its original structure and premise, than the Mining Law of 1872. Enacted to validate the trespasses of prospectors on the public lands, this "hardrock" mining law truly embodies the spirit of the Old West and the independence of the miner. The era of disposal of the public lands into private hands is ending, however, and the door to such disposal was essentially shut with the enactment of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in 1976.

Editors' Summary: With virtual certainty, one of the two Dialogues that follow is the environmental views of the next president. Choosing between them is one of the most important environmental decisions that Americans collectively will make over the next several years.

Editors' Summary: CERCLA authorizes the federal government and states, as guardians of the public trust, to sue polluters to recover damages for injuries to natural resources caused by releases of hazardous substances. These causes of action are governed by the Department of the Interior's natural resource damage assessment regulations, which have recently been challenged in federal court. Critics assail the regulations as strongly biased toward the undervaluation of damaged resources.

Editors' Summary: Although NEPA requires the preparation of an EIS for every major federal action significantly affecting the environment, federal agencies often decide in particular cases that compliance with NEPA is satisfied by preparation of EAs. The decision not to prepare an EIS is usually based on a finding of no significant impact. When an agency's threshold NEPA decision is challenged in court, what is the appropriate standard of review?