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Environmental Crimes and the Sentencing Guidelines: The Time Has Come . . . and It Is Hard Time

Editors' Summary: Criminal prosecution is becoming an increasingly important component of the federal government's environmental enforcement strategy. The recent issuance of the federal Sentencing Guidelines has dramatically increased the role of criminal enforcement in environmental law. The guidelines require judges to impose specific sentences within certain ranges for various categories of environment crimes. Defendants are unlikely to escape with probation, as was often the case in preguideline prosecutions. This Article analyzes the impacts and mechanics of the guidelines.

EPA's Environmental Enforcement in the 1990s

Environmental enforcement officials in the United States stand on the frontiers of law and science. As the federal agency that stands guard over the environment, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must draw the line of enforcement at the boundaries of current knowledge about the ecosystem and use its enforcement authority to encourage compliance and bring violators to book.

Liability of Corporate Officers Under CERCLA: An Ounce of Prevention May Be the Cure

Editors' Summary: Estimates of hazardous waste cleanup costs now reach $500 billion nationwide, or $2,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. And historically, estimates of cleanup costs have nearly always gone up. As the magnitude of the problem has become clearer, governments and private plaintiffs have searched for more deep pockets to pay for cleanups.

General Motors Corp. v. United States: A Boon to Clean Air Act Enforcement

Editors' Summary: In June, the Supreme Court handed the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Air Act enforcement program a significant victory. The Court held that EPA is not required to act on a proposed SIP revision within four months and is not barred from enforcing the existing SIP if it does not act on the proposal within a reasonable time. This Comment describes the "four-month rule" for revisions and the enforcement bar that created the split in the circuits, and it analyzes the opinion.

Death Valley: Congress Debates Strip Mining in National Parks

Resource extraction on a large scale has recently begun in some national parks, dwarfing the modest diggings and pickings of old-time gold bugs and causing consternation in Congress. As a result, a rash of measures have been introduced which would curtail, regulate or ban mining operations within the boundaries of the National Parks.

Council on Environmental Quality, Fifth Annual Report, The National Environmental Policy Act

"The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and good will would wish, five or ten years hence, had been done," declared Edmund Burke nearly two centuries ago. At the turn of this decade, in pursuit of the public interest, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act1—a comprehensive national policy for restoring, protecting, and enhancing the quality of our environment.

The Deepwater Ports Act of 1974: Half Speed Ahead

On January 3, 1975, the Deepwater Ports Act of 19741 was signed into law, and the United States thereby prepared to join the sizeable fraternity of nations already using this type of facility. Congressional consideration of deepwater ports—offshore tanker moorings at which oil is unloaded and piped ashore—led House and Senate committees through a tangle of vexing issues, including supertanker design, conflicting local and national interests, international law, antitrust implications, and the ubiquitous clash between energy needs and environmental considerations.

A NEPA Settlement: Conservation Council of North Carolina v. Froehlke

On February 5, 1974, a Consent Judgment in the case of Conservation Council of North Carolina v. Froehlke,1 signed by District Court Judge Eugene A. Gordon, was docketed in the United States District Court of North Carolina, thereby concluding a principal phase of litigation in the B. Everett Jordan Dam (formerly New Hope Dam) project controversy.