In a decision anxiously awaited by advocates of historic preservation and land use planners, the Supreme Court on June 26 upheld the consituationality of both New York City's Landmarks Preservation Law and the city's refusal under it to permit construction of a 50-story office building above Grand Central Terminal. The Court's ruling in Penn Central Transportation Co. v.

The United States Supreme Court's recent decision to affirm an injunction preventing completion of the Tellico Dam is a classic example of judicial adherence to strict statutory construction. In Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill,¹ the High Court read the Endangered Species Act² to require that the $100 million federal project to stopped because it would extinguish the endangered snail darter, a small fish found only in that of the Little Tennessee River to be flooded by the dam.

On June 23, the United States Supreme Court, in Philadelphia v. New Jersey,¹ struck down a 1974 New Jersey statute which prohibited liquid and solid waste from being transported into the state for disposal. The statute,² designed to protect the state's rapidly diminishing landfill sites and at the same time reduce the environmental threat posed by the treatment and disposal in New Jersey of waste collected elsewhere, was declared to be an unconstitutional burden on the flow of interstate commerce.

Among the flurry of decisions climaxing the last two weeks of its 1978 term, the United States Supreme Court in Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, Inc.¹ affirmed the constitutionality of the Price-Anderson Act,² which limits private liability for accidents resulting from the operation of federally licensed nuclear power plants.

Administrators of the federal government's public lands are currently facing a major problem in attempting to resolve the conflict between the demand for recreational space for "off-road vehicles" (ORVs), such as trail bikes, dune buggies, and snowmobiles, and the need to protect the lands from serious environmental damage that can be caused by such machines.

The authority of federal agencies to acquire, use, or distribute surface waters in the western states was dealt a dramatic setback by the United States Supreme Court on July 3. In California v. United States¹ the Court read §8 of the Reclamation Act of 1902² to require federal agencies constructing reclamation projects to comply with state-imposed limitations on the use of project waters except where such limitations are inconsistent with the statutory objectives of the project.

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) efforts to implement provisions of the 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments aimed at preventing the significant deterioration (PSD) of air quality in clean air areas of the nation have quickly become the subject of a number of lawsuits.

Recent litigation and congressional enactments have served to spotlight a relatively new and little considered statutory mechanism which attempts to inject congressional oversight into the process of formulating the President's annual budget request.

A California state court recently interpreted the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA),¹ one of the strongest environmental statutes in the country, in a manner which apparently limits the utility of that statute as a powerful substantive tool for environmental protection.Like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)² on which it is modeled, CEQA requires that an environmental impact report (EIR) be prepared for proposed government and government-licensed projects affecting the environment.

In contrast to the environmental record of the 95th Congress in its first session, which displays an emphasis on pollution prevention, the focus of attention in the second session clearly shifted toward natural resources conservation. Though some significant accomplishments in this area were recorded in 1978, the luster of these gains was dimmed by lack of action on several important issues and the failure to fully protect environmental values in some instances.