The court holds that a county in Missouri can regulate the location of solid waste facilities. A development company challenged a county regulation that prohibits the location of a sanitary landfill within one-quarter mile of any occupied dwelling. A trial court denied the company's motion for summa...
The court holds that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) guidelines for carrying out the certification of Waste Isolation Pilot Plant's (WIPP's) compliance with radioactive waste disposal regulations are specific enough to qualify as "criteria" under 40 C.F.R. Part 191. The court note...
The court dismisses environmental groups' complaint alleging that the National Environmental Policy Act requires the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to prepare a supplemental programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) addressing new information concerning the use of the Los Alamos National L...
The court denies environmental groups' motion for a preliminary injunction to enjoin new U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear weapon Stockpile Stewardship and Management (SSM) facilities, as well as activities or major upgrades to mission capability based on alleged violations of the National Env...
Editors' Summary: EPA recently proposed for public comment a draft guidance document that discusses voluntary federal recommendations for hundreds of thousands of nonhazardous industrial waste sites that currently escape RCRA regulation. In this Dialogue, a member of the chartered advisory group that assisted the Agency in the development of the document discusses its attributes and shortcomings. The Dialogue describes the history of EPA's use of RCRA Subtitle D and the statutory and programmatic obstacles to meaningful federal regulation.
The Tenth Circuit affirmed a district court decision that Utah's statutes regulating the storage and transportation of spent nuclear fuel are preempted by federal law. Contrary to the state's arguments, the plaintiffs who challenge the statutes—a consortium of utility companies and a Native Americ...
In September 1991, 25 people died at the Imperial Food Products plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, when they were trapped in a factory fire. Witnesses to the fire said the employees could not escape because the building doors were locked, apparently to prevent pilferage. The North Carolina assistant labor commissioner subsequently stated that the locked doors constituted "serious violations" of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act). The plant, however, had never been inspected for health or safety violations in its 11 years of operation.
New rules are emerging to change the way the government makes decisions about cleanup of hazardous waste sites under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund). These changes have altered Superfund decisionmaking fundamentally and irrevocably, requiring the government to reach for new levels of accountability, rationality, and consistency. Central to the government's ability to meet this challenge is the way in which it makes and explains decisions about acceptable risks and required levels of cleanup.
Editors' Summary: Redeveloping abandoned urban hazardous waste sites, or brownfields, can significantly benefit developers, local communities, and the environment. Developers can purchase brownfields inexpensively, and subsequent redevelopment brings jobs to local communities and economic growth to inner cities, while allowing virgin land to remain pristine. Yet, barriers to redevelopment, such as the probability of legal liability, uncertainty regarding cleanup standards, and lenders' unwillingness to finance contaminated property, can make redevelopment extremely risky and difficult.
When the 103d Congress convened on January 5, 1993, many observers believed that it would make up for the dismal environmental record of its predecessor. The 102d Congress had tried and failed to reauthorize the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Its attempt to elevate the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to a cabinet-level department had been blocked in the House of Representatives, and its attempt to reform the General Mining Law of 1872 had been blocked in both houses.