One of the most prominent issues in the Congressional debate over reauthorization of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund) has been how to reduce "transaction costs" while at the same time fairly and expeditiously resolving liability disputes. This Dialogue asks: Would the allocation procedures proposed in last year's Superfund reauthorization bills meet those sometimes conflicting goals?

On February 4, 1994, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) April 1992 lender liability rule, which delineated the scope of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act's (CERCLA's) secured creditor exemption. The court held in Kelley v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that the regulation could not stand as a substantive or legislative rule because Congress, through CERCLA, gave courts and not EPA the authority to interpret questions of liability.

In an 8-to-1 decision authored by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit's decision that the South Florida Water Management District's (District's) operation of a pumping station required a national pollutant discharge elimination system (NPDES) permit because pollutants transferred from a canal to a water conservation area would not have occurred but for the operation of the pump.

One of the most fundamental tenets of toxicology is that "the dose determines the poison." This simple phrase provides the basis for the belief that all agents—chemicals and physical phenomena that are capable of producing some effect—have the potential to cause toxicity. Whether toxicity actually occurs is principally a matter of dose: the greater the exposure to a given agent, the more pronounced or severe the response of a cell or organism.

In recent years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has expanded its programs to assist governments around the world in building their capacity to protect the environment. This effort serves policies embodied in a variety of treaties, appropriations, and other legislative and executive decisions. A small but important part of this work is the effort to help other countries develop an effective legal framework for environmental protection.