Editors' Summary: In Air Pollution Control District of Jefferson County v. United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Sixth Circuit upheld EPA's refusal to tighten the Indiana sulfur dioxide (SO₂) control requirements on an Indiana power plant that pollutes the air of Jefferson County, Kentucky from a mile across the state border. The court ruled that EPA properly processed, and then rejected, the county's Clean Air Act §126 petition for a revision in the Indiana requirements.

Editors' Summary: Recent months have brought a flurry of natural resource damage recovery actions under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). As it also failed to do with other CERCLA provisions, Congress did not provide clear guidance on a number of critical issues in natural resource damage recovery. Mr. Breen, an attorney involved in a major CERCLA natural resource damage action, outlines the status of the law at present.

Editors' Summary: New paths in the development of pollution control law and resource economics intersect in the natural resource damage provisions of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). The law gives the trustees for public access natural resources a new, streamlined cause of action for recovery of damages inflicted by the improper disposal of hazardous substances. At the same time, resource economists have been developing sophisticated methods for estimating the value of such resources to society.

In their article, "Bankruptcy and the Cleanup of Hazardous Waste: Caveat Creditor,"¹ Messrs.

I have been EPA's regional counsel in Philadelphia for six years, and as that assignment is now ending it seems suitable for me to say a few words about a regional counsel's work.

Editors' summary: Federal Water Polution Control Act §404 gives the Army Corps of Engineers broad jurisdiction to control development of wetlands. In United States v. Riverside Bayview Homes, Inc., the Sixth Circuit apparently drastically curtailed the Corps' jurisdiction, ruling that a parcel not frequently inundated by navigable waters was outside the Corps' overview. This Comment takes a close look at the opinion and its apparent anomalies, and concludes that the court's odd approach leaves Corps jurisdiction over many types of wetlands intact.

Editors' Summary: In Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., the Supreme Court resolved a long-running dispute over the definition of "source" in the Clean Air Act nonattainment area new source review program. The Court ruled that EPA acted within the discretion left if by Congress in changing to a definition making "source" synonomous with "plant," and castigated the D.C. Circuit for inserting its own policy preferences into an equation Congress intended the Agency to solve.

The Sixth Circuit has recently issued a decision in United States v. Riverside Bayview Homes, Inc. (Riverside Bayview) which suggests that the Corps of Engineers' §404 jurisdiction may be quite limited.¹ Last month's Comment on Riverside Bayview² argues that the apparently far-reaching effects of the decision can be dismissed as dictum and can be overcome by regulatory changes.

Editors' Summary: The "delisting" process is a controversial and important aspect of the implementation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lists a waste as hazardous, it brings the substantial weight and cost of RCRA's regulatory requirements to bear on companies that must dispose of that waste. The delisting process is a safety valve through which erroneous listing decisions can be reversed. The authors review the delisting procedures and EPA's delisting practice and argue that the safety valve is not functioning.

I have spent most of my professional career involved in the practice of environmental law and have watched it expand and grow from a cottage industry in the sixties into a significant, diverse area of practice in the eighties. The dramatic growth in environmental law has stemmed, of course, from the enactment during this period of numerous environmental protection and resource management statutes.