Editors' Summary: When Congress enacted the Superfund statute in 1980, it authorized the federal and state governments to recover for natural resource damages caused by hazardous substances. The potential of this legal doctrine went virtually unrecognized for several years, in part because of the ambiguity of what was included in the new cause of action, and in part because of executive branch delay in implementing the laws' mandates on natural resource damages.

Editors' Summary: Practice before administrative agencies, especially EPA, has always been an important part of an environmental lawyer's job. Administrative practice is becoming increasingly important. Several statutes have recently been amended to provide for the administrative assessment of civil penalties by EPA. The first step after EPA proposes to assess a civil penalty is generally a hearing before an EPA administrative law judge (ALJ).

Editors' Summary: Criminal enforcement of hazardous waste laws is occurring with greater frequency, more serious penalties, and more corporate defendants. At the same time, states are taking widely varying approaches to their criminal hazardous waste programs, leading to substantial diversity from state to state even within a particular region of the country.

Editors' Summary: Since the early 1970s, environmental issues in this country have changed significantly. Moreover, the passage of time has resulted in the institutionalization of the once-new ideas. New environmental agencies now oversee substantial proportions of the federal budget. Environmental impact assessment, once seen in some quarters as a procedural impediment, is now a respected method of analyzing developmental impacts and has been imported by otherr countries for their own use.

Editors' Summary: One of the most serious tasks Americans face in the near future is electing a president to lead the nation into the 1990s. Environmental law and policy are heavily influenced by the decisions made by elected officials and their senior appointees, and environmental issues should command close attention as voters and opinion leaders approach the 1988 election.

Traditionally, emergency planning and the regulation of public nuisances have been functions of local and state governments. The role of the federal government has been limited to planning for national and regional calamities, in areas other than hazardous chemical accidents, and the direct regulation of industry. The federal government has also been involved in responding to such calamities, including chemical accidents and post-accident cleanup.

Samuel Epstein and Shirley Briggs reiterate Rachel Carson's grim Silent Spring¹ vision of the world in their recent Dialogue.² The authors state that the "runaway technology" of the chemical industry is responsible for increasing cancer rates and "contamination of our world." This apocalyptic³ view of cancer and pollution is not supported by the scientific knowledge gained in the quarter century since Silent Spring was published.

Nineteen eighty-eight marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment in 1963 of the Senate Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution. In the 1960s our effort was to learn as much as we could about environmental problems and the options for dealing with them. We undertook to arouse public awareness of the problems in order to generate political support for the policies and programs we were equipping ourselves to recommend. Our legislative initiatives, from today's perspective, evolved slowly, but they picked up momentum as we developed confidence in our perceptions of what was required.

New Jersey's innovative Environmental Cleanup Responsibility Act (ECRA) has been the subject of much discussion since it became effective on December 31, 1983.¹ The majority of this discussion has focused on who is subject to ECRA and why it takes so long for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to review a case. Harriett Jane Olson's recent Dialogue is an example of what is being said about the above two topics.²

Editors' Summary: Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is an umbrella phrase that includes a variety of techniques designed to avoid expensive and time-consuming litigation. ADR techniques such as mediation and arbitration have been used successfully for years to resolve disputes among private parties. However, attempts to apply ADR to environmental enforcement cases have met with resistance from the federal government and the private sector.