Although the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has been widely acclaimed as an instrument of decisionmaking reform, doubts have periodically been expressed regarding its effectiveness.¹ No legislation, however well intentioned or successful, should be exempt from periodic reexamination. Some criticisms of NEPA have been well-founded—prompting improvements in its implementation—but other criticisms have faulted the Act itself, claiming it to be counter-productive in relation to the purposes for which it was enacted.

An easement is a limited right, granted by the owner of real property, to use all or part of his property for specific purposes. A traditional legal use of an easement, for example, has been for owner A, on whose property a stream flows, to allow neighbor B to cross A's property in order to take water from A's stream.

From an environmental perspective, the midterm record of the 96th Congress was notable less for its achievements than as convincing evidence that the climate of concern and commitment to protection that led to a surge in environmental legislation in the early part of the 1970s has drastically changed. There is a certain irony in this shift because it comes at a time when continuing and newly recognized threats to environmental integrity beset the country as never before.

After more than a decade of litigation-intensive environmental controversies, environmental groups and their opponents have begun to look for alternative means of settling disputes. Formal litigation can be so burdensome and take so long to resolve that it may present one of the least efficient and least effective means of obtaining relief. Mediation, a technique that is in a relatively early stage of development in environmental disputes, is emerging as one promising method of conflict resolution.

Over the last several years, public attention has focused increasingly on the risks associated with hazardous wastes and other toxic substances. Incidents of environmental contamination at locales such as Love Canal, New York, Toone, Tennessee, and Gray, Maine, have fueled the controversy and have led to claims that releases of toxic substances and hazardous wastes constitute a serious threat to public health and the environment. Indeed, as reports of such incidents have mounted,¹ so have the estimated costs of addressing the problem.

The National Environmental Policy Act's (NEPA's) requirement that environmental impact statements (EISs) be prepared for "major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment"¹ has been well defined by the courts and is now a fact of life with which federal agencies routinely contend. Less well defined or accepted, however, is the requirement that impact statements be supplemented when important new information comes to light or when a project has been modified such that the original EIS is rendered inadequate.

In June 1979, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) promulgated new source performance standards (NSPS) to control particulate and sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. In Sierra Club v. Costle,¹ decided in April 1981, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the standards against an array of substantive and procedural challenges by both industry and environmental groups.

Federal jurisdiction over and protection of the nation's wetlands and navigable waters, long a source of spirited litigation, continues to give rise to litigation involving knotty legal issues and heated legislative debate. The large number of decisions to have appeared in recent issues of the Reporter show, not surprisingly, continued controversy over jurisdictional issues. Avoyelles Sportsmen's League v.

Congress' concentration on budgetary and economic matters reduced the output of substantive environmental legislation in the first session of the 97th Congress. Nevertheless, environmental issues drew their share of attention, thanks in large part to the Reagan Administration's draconian budget cuts, its controversial choices for key environmental positions in the Administration, and its inability to mobilize the bipartisan majorities that have been the hallmark of its stunning legislative victories in non-environmental contexts.

Section 7¹ of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is the conscience of contemporary environmental law. It requires us to look anotherr form of life in the eye and make the explicit decision that this line of evolution should no longer continue. Decisions like this, eye-to-eye, are not an easy business. It is considerably easier not to look and not to know.