On May 15, 1974, the House Rules Committee reversed itself and voted 8-7 to clear the National Land Use Policy Act¹ for consideration by the full House. The bill, which would provide $800 million to the states over eight years to develop land use plans in accordance with federal guidelines, has already passed the Senate. A floor fight is expected, as conservatives of both parties will press for enactment of a weak substitute bill.

A sharply divided Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has given a boost to the growing trend to awards of counsel fees in public interest litigation and also to the National Environmental Policy Act.¹ Sitting en banc, the court ruled 4-3 that the environmentalist plaintiffs who sued to stop construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline were entitled to recover half of their attorneys fees from Alyeska, the pipeline consortium. Judge J.

One of the pillars of Project Independence, President Nixon's program for U.S. self-sufficiency in energy supplies by 1980, is the exploitation of hitherto untapped reserves of oil and gas believed to lie under the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). So far, OCS drilling has occurred only in the Gulf of Mexico, off the shores of Texas and Louisiana, and off the coast of California. Lease sales now underway for parcels off the Gulf coasts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida will bring the total OCS area leased over the last 20 years to approximately 10 million acres.

It was perhaps inevitable that the collective trauma that Americans suffered during last winter's acute shortage of gasoline and heating fuel would generate the need to find a scapegoat. Different individuals and groups have chosen different targets. Some blame poor governmental planning and a lack of citizen concern, while others view the oil industry's soaring profits and questionable statistics as evidence of an artificially manufactured crisis designed to eliminate small competitors and drive prices up.

Perhaps, the most visible evidence of a popular ethic of discarding materials rather than recycling them, beverage containers litter American highways and city streets in distressingly high numbers. The "Keep America Beautiful" campaign and similar appeals to consumers' consciences have not eliminated the problem.

One lengthy and bitter dispute between industry and environmentalists has concerned the need for federal legislation designed to discourage and control surface coal mining. Although strip mining techniques can be used to obtain only three to 18 percent of the nation's coal resources and may preclude further mining by other methods, the coal companies have always found strip mining economically attractive. Part of the reason for strip mining's profitability has been that the cost of reclaiming gutted land has largely been avoided by irresponsible mine operators.

In an effort to protect the redwood forests in California from encroaching lumbering interests, Congress in 1968 passed a bill establishing the Redwood National Park in Del Norte and Humboldt Counties. The purpose of the Act was "to preserve significant examples of the primeval coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests and the streams and seashores with which they are associated for purposes of public inspiration, enjoyment, and scientific study.

In the most recent decision of the almost 10 years of litigation on Virginia's prison medical center project, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held on May 8 that the state of Virginia must either comply with the dictates of NEPA or lose federal funds allocated under LEAA's block grant program.¹

One of the longest battles in environmental law concerns Consolidated Edison's 10-year effort to build a pumped-storage hydroelectric generating facility on the Hudson River at Storm King Mountain. Fearing damage to the Storm King area, environmentalists managed through protracted litigation to delay the project from 1965 until the spring of 1974, when Consolidated Edison, convinced that all legal hurdles were passed, began construction of the $537-million facility.

A Comment in the June, 1973 ELR discussed the split of authority between two Circuit Courts of Appeals on the extent to which the Independent Offices Appropriations Act of 1952 permits government agencies to recoup their administrative costs from the beneficiaries of agency action.¹ The statute, codified at 31 U.S.C. §483a, provides: