On August 18, 1990, President Bush signed into law the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA),1 the most comprehensive federal legislation ever dealing with oil spill liability, compensation, prevention, response, and research. Nowhere in the statute will you find the word "federalize";2 read between the lines and into the legislative history, however, and you will discover federalization is a major theme throughout the law.
On July 23, 1990, the U.S. Claims Court found in two separate decisions that the federal government had unconstitutionally taken private property without just compensation.1 In both, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) had denied Clean Water Act §4042 permits to fill wetlands.
Keynote Presentations: The Values Underlying Our Environmental Regulatory System
Panel Discussion: The Governmental Regulatory System
Corporate Compliance With Environmental Regulation: Striking a Balance
Panel Discussion: The Corporate Compliance System
Panel Discussion: The Communication/Feedback System
Panel Discussion: Completing the Loop
MICHAEL P. LAST: Some may think that the question, "environmental compliance: is the system working?" is intended to be theoretical. That is not the case. Our objective is to take a hard and honest look at our regulatory struccture and evaluate how it works and whether the way in which it works optimizes what the system as a whole is hoping to achieve.
JOHN A.S. McGLENNON: I have two or three suggestions that EPA should consider in order to develop a more formalized feedback system. One is to incorporate an annual review process into some of our regulations. There would be no harm in convening an annual or biennial meeting of representatives of the regulated community to ask how well we are doing and how well the regulation is working.
The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, which operates within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,1 recently imposed the most severe penalties in its 13-year history on the Virginia Electric and Power Company (VEPCO), following its finding that VEPCO officials were responsible for a series of material false statements to the Commission. The false statements, 12 in all, were made between 1968 and 1973 at various stages in VEPCO's application for licenses to construct a four-unit complex of nuclear power reactors at North Anna, in rural Louisa County, Virginia.
Californians are no strangers to freeway interchanges and their strategic importance to ambitious land developers.
Two U.S. Courts of Appeals have recently ruled1 that §113 of the Clean Air Act2 does not give the Environmental Protection Agency authority to require states, under pain of civil sanctions and penalties, to adopt or enforce particular transportation control measures as part of their implementation plans.
Obliged to enforce myriad laws that lack built-in incentives to compliance, buffeted by literally hundreds of conflicting lawsuits, whipsawed by a congressional combination of strict legislative deadlines and skimpy budgets, and straitjacketed by OMB overseers, the Environmental Protection Agency must be the most beleaguered administrative agency in American history.1
The recent case of Sierra Club v. Department of Interior1 may supply a legal basis for compelling the Department of Interior to curtail activities on lands peripheral to any National Park when such activities have an adverse effect on it. The case may even permit the National Park Service to force the Secretary of Interior to go to Congress for funds for such environmentally protective actions if the Office of Management and Budget fails to provide them.