Editors' Summary: On March 24, 1983, the Environmental Law Institute held a press conference announcing the release of ACID RAIN IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA: NATIONAL RESPONSES TO AN INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM, authored by Gregory Wetstone and Armin Rosencranz. Mr. Wetstone prepared this summary of the major findings of the book for ELR Dialogue, based on his press conference remarks.
On February 17, 1983, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued its second analysis of Clean Air Act sanctions for nonattainment areas. Like the first report, which was reprinted at 12 ELR 30019, the current CRS paper was authored by Robert Meltz and is published in the Administrative Materials section of this month's issue of ELR, 13 ELR 30001. In this paper, Mr.
Editors' Summary: Commercial bankruptcy threatens to become a recurring impediment to the enforcement of hazardous waste laws. Last November, a federal district court ruled it had no jurisdiction to hear a RCRA and CERCLA enforcement action against Johns-Manville Sales Corporation, a bankrupt. The Comment reviews and criticizes the decision and suggests an alternative analysis to be applied in environmental bankruptcy cases.
Editors' Summary: On January 7, 1983, the D.C. Circuit decided Duquesne Light Co. v. Environmental Protection Agency, turning back sweeping industry challenges to EPA's Clean Air Act §120 noncompliance penalty regulations. The Comment reports that the rules' broad coverage and narrow exemptions, streamlined administrative procedures, and methodology for calculating penalties equal to the economic benefits of delayed compliance all survived the court's scrutiny. The court remanded the rules on only three relatively minor, though not insignificant, points.
Editors' Summary: On February 7, 1983, the California Supreme Court issued an eagerly awaited decision on the application of the public trust doctrine to the appropriation of the waters feeding Northern California's Mono Lake by the City of Los Angeles. In a significant victory for environmentalists who seek to stop what they see as the draining of the unique ecological resource to slake the excessive thirst of the Southern California megalopolis, the court held that under California law the public trust must be taken into account in such appropriation decisions.
Editors' Summary: Section 404 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, the Corps of Engineers' dredge and fill permit program, is once again the focus of legislative and administrative reform efforts. Legislative reforms include proposed bills to return the Corps' jurisdiction to traditionally navigable waters and to limit permitting time to 90 days. Administrative reforms have been more concrete. In July 1982, the Corps issued amendments to its regulations in response to the goals of the President's Task Force on Regulatory Relief.
Editors' Summary: Almost 40 years ago, in First Iowa Hydro-Electric Cooperative v. Federal Power Commission, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Power Act preempted almost all state controls on hydroelectric development. Over the last 10 years, though, court decisions and statutes have afforded the states increasing power to regulate areas concurrently under federal control. In this Article, Mr. Arnold examines First Iowa in light of these trends.
Editors' Summary: In the landmark Mono Lake case, National Audubon Society v. Superior Court, 13 ELR 20272, the California Supreme Court ruled that long-established water rights are subject to limitations protecting the public trust in navigable waters. The decision is introduced in Rossmann, The Public Trust in Appropriated Waters: California High Court Decides Mono Lake Case, 13 ELR 10109 (1983). In this Article, Harrison C. Dunning analyzes the implications of the decision.
Editors' Summary: In the interests of preserving the scenic and recreational values of its long coastline and guaranteeing the public access necessary for general exploitation of those values, California has developed a system for strictly regulating coastal development. The regulatory system, born in a public initiative in 1972, developed during a four-year planning period, and enacted in the 1976 Coastal Zone Conservation Act, has been a controversial experiment in state land use control to protect an invaluable public resource. Mr.
I enjoyed your comment on RCRA §7003 [RCRA's Imminent Hazard Provision and Inactive Hazardous Waste Dumps: A Reappraisal After United States v. Waste Industries, 13 ELR 10074]. Having helped design the Department of Justice's hazardous waste enforcement program around §7003 and having contributed to the post-hoc legislative "history," I of course think the court in United States v. Waste Industries [13 ELR 20286] should have interpreted §7003 to apply to inactive sites.