According to at least some of the voluminous literature on the subject, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)¹ may be an excellent example of effective environmental legislation, but it suffers from one serious limitation: the lack of a "substantive mandate."² These commentators argue that NEPA falls short of its potential, and perhaps its goals, because it fails explicitly to impose upon federal agencies a legally enforceable directive to enhance and refrain from degrading the environment.

A question that has long eluded definitive judicial resolution is whether a federal agency's failure to prevent an environmental significant state or private activity from occurring can constitute major federal action for which an environmental impact statement (EIS) must be prepared under §102(2)(C) of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).¹ It is well established that the Act requires a federal agency to prepare an EIS analyzing such a non-federal project when it proposes to approve financial assistance or issue a permit without which the activity could no

The stiff monetary sanctions, injunctions, and even prison terms that are authorized to be imposed upon violators of the federal pollution control laws¹ act as a "big stick" with which timely compliance is encouraged by federal and state enforcement authorities. There are circumstances, however, in which these remedies are simply not effective or realistically available. An example of such a case is where the noncompliant facility is publicly owned, such as a municipal electric utility.

The central mechanism in the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA)¹ for limiting discharges from industrial point sources is the national pollutant discharge elimination system (NPDES) permit program.

In one of two recent decisions¹ that promise to streamline administration of the national pollutant discharge elimination system (NPDES), the United States Supreme Court validated the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) refusal to hold a public hearing in connection with the granting of an extension of an NPDES permit for a California sewage treatment plant. In Costle v.

Any given major industrial facility often must obtain literally dozens of permits under a variety of pollution control laws in order to operate. A common complaint of plant operators has been that this welter of differing permit requirements and procedures is arcanely confusing, full of redundancies and contradictions, time consuming, and unjustifiably costly.

Appropriate use of the enormous tracts of federally owned lands in the western United States has been a subject of constant dispute over the years.

To observe that the field of environmental law is prone to surges of rapid growth is to restate the obvious. Congress and state legislatures, spurred by the public to remedy unanticipated environmental problems, have responded quickly by establishing comprehensive regulatory schemes. As a result, the role of the courts in shaping this area of the law, while hardly lethargic, has been limited largely to fleshing out statutory ambiguities and giving effect to legislative intent.

In an attempt to expedite and achieve consistency in judicial review of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) actions taken pursuant to the Clean Air Act, Congress made certain regulatory decisions reviewable exclusively in the courts of appeals. Challenges to all other EPA actions, however, were relegated to the district courts. Not surprisingly, the proper forum for judicial review of particular EPA actions has been a matter of chronic dispute. In Harrison v.

In Agins v. City of Tiburon,¹ one of the most intently awaited opinions of the 1979-80 Term, the United States Supreme Court upheld a municipal ordinance placing density restrictions on residential development for the sake of preserving open spaces in the hills surrounding San Francisco Bay.