The Water Resources Development Act of 1986¹ is the most comprehensive water resources development legislation enacted by the Congress in half a century and is the most environmentally sensitive water resources bill ever developed. The law combines all types of water resources projects and establishes a new equitable federal/nonfederal partnership in the development of projects, including local financial contributions where appropriate.

Editors' Summary: The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA) resolved some of the questions raised under the 1980 Act, including the controversy surrounding the availability of preenforcement review. SARA, however, also raises a host of new questions concerning the timing, scope, and standard of judicial review. The author, an experienced Superfund defense counsel, uses a series of hypotheticals to illustrate the difficulties potentially responsible parties may face under SARA if EPA adheres to its current prosecutorial strategy.

Editors' Summary: Contamination of groundwater and other public water supplies caused by the migration of hazardous wastes from chemical burial sites has long been recognized as posing a significant health hazard. The recent decision by a federal district court in Sterling v. Velsicol demonstrates the importance of state tort law in fixing liability for the harm caused by such dumpsites, as the $12.7 million award to the plaintiffs would indicate. In this article, Mr. Siegel and Mr.

Editors' Summary: Twenty-five years ago this month, the New Yorker magazine published excerpts from a landmark book that would be published later that year—Silent Spring. Rachel Carson's eloquent yet chilling chronicle of the hazards of synthetic pesticides quickly became the starting point for any analysis of the subject and was one of the major forces behind the development of the environmental movement. Justice William O.

Editors' Summary: The Price-Anderson Act, established in 1957 to encourage the then-fledgling commercial nuclear power industry by providing it with relative immunity from liability for an accident, expires August 1, 1987. Disagreements over whether and how the law should be renewed and modified have side-tracked legislation over the past few years, but with the August deadline nearing, congressional efforts have been stepped up. In this Article, Professor Reitze and Ms.

Editors' Summary: SARA raised the already high stakes in the CERCLA cleanup game. The incentive for potentially responsible parties (PRPs) to enlarge the pool of defendants has risen accordingly. In this Article, the authors discuss recent developments in three areas that may help PRPs in their efforts to spread out the liability for cleanup costs: joint and several liability, contribution, and liability of state and local governments.

Editors' Summary: Perhaps the most sinister environmental threats include those that are least perceptible. One such threat is the large scale extinction of biological species, with ominous implications for a shrinking gene pool and multiplier effects throughout the food web whenever key species are lost. This Comment analyzes one of the principal international responses to this threat, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

Welcome to the 15th Annual Airlie House Conference on the Environment.

Something, as they say, is going on, and we of the Standing Committee are not sure what it is. We seek, therefore, to explore the larger significance of a number of seemingly disparate events.

I would like to present a framework that may help to answer the question, "What is going on out there?" It may also help to gather together some of these disparate stories, like the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) negotiated rulemaking, Clean Sites's coalescing efforts at Superfund¹ sites, efforts to mediate land use and facility siting disputes, and statewide policy dialogues.