The Bob Marshall Wilderness Area in Montana, relatively uncelebrated until 1981, recently became the focus of a legal and political controversy raising crucial environmental as well as constitutional issues. Though the specific controversy has now subsided for the most part, it set in motion a heated debate over the basics of federal wilderness law and policy.

Controlling air pollution from automobiles has proved to be one of the most difficult objectives of the Clean Air Act to achieve.¹ Motor vehicle emissions account for a large percentage of the total concentrations of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide (CO), photochemical oxidants (ozone), and lead in urban air, and most of the 200 largest cities in the country have health-threatening levels of at least one of these pollutants in their air.² Nonetheless, attempts to control these emissions have generated intense political controversy.

Effluent limitations for industrial facilities that discharge pollution directly to surface waters are one of the cornerstones of the national clean water program established by the 1972 Amendments to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA).¹ They embody Congress' decision to scrap an ineffective regulatory system based on water quality in favor of a more workable, technology-based system of effluent regulation.

The National Contingency Plan (NCP) is the federal government's handbook governing responses to oil and hazardous substance releases endangering human health and the environment.

To many, run-of-the-river dams, of which there are over 67,000 greater than 25 feet high in this county, appear environmentally benign. Indeed, hydroelectric dams are often praised as the least environmentally damaging of traditional energy sources. However, in addition to environmental problems stemming from dam construction, such as flooding, destruction of fish and wildlife habitat, and loss of natural river flows, the operation of dams, especially large impoundments such as hydroelectric projects, can create significant water quality problems.

In October of 1980, the National Wildlife Federation and two Alaskan communities lost in their bid to obtain an injunction against the Department of the Interior's sale of oil and gas development leases in the Beaufort Sea.¹ Nevertheless, they negotiated with the Department of Justice a stipulation under which they would receive just under $60,000 in attorney fees, pursuant to the attorney fees provisions in the Endangered Species Act and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

On February 1, 1982, a scant 11 months before the deadline by which all areas in the country except those with severe automobile-related pollution problems are to meet federal clean air standards, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) conditional state implementation plan (SIP) approval policy.¹ This ruling relieved EPA of its obligation to assume the regulatory responsibilities of those states that had not satisfied the rigorous planning requirements imposed by Congress in the 1977 Amendments to the Clean Air Act

Judicial enforcement of federal environmental statutes has resulted in some uncertainty over the extent of the discretion enjoyed by the courts in fashioning equitable remedies. Some courts have insisted that where they are faced with a clear violation of a statute containing a flat ban on or a mandatory precondition to an activity the court must enjoin the activity pending compliance. Others, apparently the majority, have held that while injunctions are not mandatory, there is a presumption in favor of furthering the statutory purposes.

One of the recurring questions under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)¹ is the extent to which it requires federal agencies to consider the effects of their actions on people. It is undisputed that the impacts that must be addressed within an environmental impact statement (EIS) include effects on natural resources and ecosystems. Certainly, where a proposed federal action will induce direct biological impacts in humans, they must be explored with an EIS.

The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA)¹ was enacted in 1977 to alleviate the widespread environmental impacts of surface coal mining operations.² To remedy a perceived lack of adequate state regulation, the Act imposes stringent uniform federal standards on mining operations, which will be enforced by states, if they choose to do so, and by the federal government where states decline. Central to the federal enforcement program are administrative civil penalties.