Editors' Summary: The Superfund hazardous waste cleanup program has had centerstage prominence in environmental law throughout the 1980s, and its history has been one of virtually continuous controversy and criticism. Some of the debate centers around the Environmental Protection Agency's management and expertise in administering the program, while other debate focuses on policy choices implicit in choosing the program's goals and direction.

Editors' Summary: The United States and other industrialized nations export a significant amount of their hazardous wastes abroad for disposal. Exporters often send their waste to countries where environmental regulation is less stringent than in the generating country in order to avoid the high cost of compliance with domestic disposal requirements. Although the United States and the European Community have established limited controls on waste exportation, these regulations do not ensure that waste shipped abroad is transported or disposed of in an environmentally sound manner.

Despite numerous changes made in the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund)¹ by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA),² the two years of experience with its implementation seem to have produced few improvements in the settlement or litigation process. New cleanup standards are not only driving up the costs of remedial action, but are also delaying further the process of site cleanup by increasing the number of issues that are being litigated.

Last summer, in the midst of a searing heat wave that gripped the nation's capital, the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, upon which I sit, was trying to get a grip on the threat posed by a much larger kind of heat wave, global warming. The testifying scientists asked us to imagine 90-100 degree summer days running nearly three months, triple the current number of days that are this warm. Air quality would deteriorate as the heat wave progressed, since the higher temperatures would cook up a chemical soup of irritating pollutants.

Editors' Summary: The major federal environmental regulatory schemes make frequent use of numerical standards. The consequences of exceeding these standards can be extremely serious—companies may be subjected to civil or even criminal liability, or required to undertake increased regulatory responsibilities. For example, liability under the Clean Water Act is based on exceedances of numerical limits in NPDES permits.

Editors' Summary: The Federal Water Pollution Control Act, sometimes known as the Clean Water Act, prohibits the discharge of pollutants into waters of the United States without a permit. One of the keys to the Act is thus the permit system, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). The Environmental Protection Agency's NPDES program has had a checkered career in moving toward the goal of "fishable and swimmable" water throughout the United States.

Some months ago the editors of ELR asked me to write an essay on the status of environmental law in the law schools. I considered simply describing the progress of my own life and not-so-hard times as a teacher since 1966, when I first put together a course called "Conservation and the Law" at the University of Michigan. I soon decided that a report from the front lines would be more suitable.

One of the most crucial public policy problems facing America today is the lack of progress in dealing with hazardous waste. At the root of this inaction is an overriding issue: How do we pay the immense cost of correcting the damage done by past waste handling practices?

Editors' Summary: One of the traditional principles of tort law states that a cause of action is allowed only if a present injury exists. This principle has been gradually eroded as an increasing number of courts in toxic tort cases have allowed plaintiffs to recover for the increased risk of developing a disease in the future as a result of exposure to a toxic substance.

Although the law governing the siting of municipal waste landfills varies from state to state, there are similarities in procedures and problems. This Dialogue provides some suggestions on how a landfill applicant can efficiently proceed through the siting process and uses the recent successful siting application filed by Gallatin National Company before the village of Fairview, Illinois, as an example.