The nation's coastal areas are among its most significant natural resources. Coastal zones include a variety of ecological niches, in either marshy wetlands or beach and rocky areas. Partially submerged lands subject to tidal action are a rich biological factory, providing nutrients for numerous varieties of fish and birds and spawning grounds for the majority of the fish caught commercially off the U.S. coasts.
The National Environmental Policy Act of 19691 mandated that federal agencies consider the environmental effects of proposed agency action in addition to their primary agency goals. Section 102(2)(c), NEPA's action-forcing mechanism, requires agencies to prepare impact statements on major federal actions that significantly affect the environment.
Two recent developments give rise to optimism in the effort to improve water quality in the southwestern United States. Both the passage of the Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Act of 19741 and a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency for the establishment of a salinity control program in that same basin2 tackle what has sometimes been considered an insurmountable interstate and international problem.
A pending adjudication of water rights in Colorado offers an encouraging new twist on an old problem. It appears that an assertion of an implied federal reservation of large-scale water rights for Naval Oil Shale Reserve development may preempt the rights of present water users in a manner that will actually benefit water district members and protect the environment of a water-scarce region.
The Ford Administration has not delayed in announcing its environmental policy. In a speech delivered August 15 in Spokane "on behalf of President Ford," Interior Secretary Rogers C.B. Morton indicated that the new Administration will continue the policy enunciated by former President Nixon in July of compromising or delaying environmental controls in order to facilitate accelerated economic growth.1
"You must remember that since 1916 the way we conduct our business obviously was not a matter in which the public was ever given the knowledge to comment on . . . We are being pried open."
—Office of the Chief Counsel
Federal Highway Administration1
The Shell Chemical Company is fighting back vigorously against the Environmental Protection Agency's order suspending production of the pesticides aldrin and dieldrin. On August 2, EPA Administrator Russell Train announced the suspension, stating that continued manufacture of the chemicals posed an "imminent hazard" to human health. Train cited studies showing that dieldrin residues are present in most of the food Americans eat, and that small amounts of dieldrin produced cancer in mice and rats when added to their diets.
A recent case provided the Michigan Supreme Court with its first opportunity to consider the state's Environmental Protection Act (EPA).1 Although the Court was split by a broader issue involving the state constitution, the three Justices joining in the opinion of the court produced a highly significant discussion of the Act and its impact on highway condemnation procedures. Environmentalists view the decision as a major step forward in the law's development.
The first session of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea ended in Caracas, Venezuela in late August without reaching agreement on a single article of a convention on the law of the sea. The Conference is scheduled to reassemble for another two-month session in March, 1975 at Geneva, and the conferees left open the possibility of a return to Caracas next summer for final negotiations and signing of a treaty.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Environmental Defense Fund have won two more rounds in their fight to ban production of the carcinogenic pesticides aldrin and dieldrin, but the final outcome is still far from certain.