The Environmental Protection Agency recently awarded the Environmental Law Institute an eight-month contract to prepare a handbook which will assist local governmental bodies known as "208 planning agencies" in the design of regulatory programs for the control of water pollution. The handbook will focus on the legal and institutional aspects of programs regulating water pollution and will supplement other EPA technical studies.

Economist Robert C.

Students of the administrative process generally agree that all interested and affected persons should have an opportunity to participate in agency decision making.¹ Full participation is thought to serve the public interest because it achieves thorough exposition and consideration of information relevant to a particular rulemaking or adjudication; in short, it is thought to contribute to a better-informed, and, therefore, wiser decision.

PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) have made a comeback. First brought to international attention in the late 1960s by outbreaks of "Yusho disease"¹ in Japan and by discovery of trace concentrations in United States' fish, wildlife, food, food packaging, and human tissue,² these synthetic industrial-electrical compounds were thought to have been brought under domestic control in 1972.

Section 309,¹ a little-known but broad-ranging provision of the Clean Air Act of 1970, empowers the EPA Administrator to review and comment upon all environmental impact statements prepared by other federal agencies. In addition, the section provides a "referral" mechanism by which the Administrator can apply leverage against the sponsoring agency to have an environmentally harmful project modified or dropped altogether.

The courts generally do not favor private nuisance actions for air pollution; the dire prospect of shutting down a polluting industry usually prevails over individual plaintiffs' comparatively insubstantial environmental rights. Often, however, the court's task of balancing the partics' relative equities is eased by defendant's transigence, e.g., where it neither seeks to alleviate the complainants' suffering nor to perform functions that are particularly vital to the economic health of society.

The federal government's commitment to environmental protection has weakened considerably since 1970-1971. Perhaps nothing better symbolizes this shift than Secretary of Transportation William Coleman's recent decision to permit the Concorde supersonic transport (SST) to land in the United States.¹ This authorization contrasts with Congress' 1971 vote to cancel federal funding of a United States SST.

On March 12, following an unprecedented request by the state of North Carolina, Interior Secretary Thomas S. Kleppe designated a 26.5-mile stretch of the New River in North Carolina as a component of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers system.

In the first significant judicial reaction¹ to last year's amendment² to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has repudiated its earlier "hard line" view³ that NEPA prohibits delegation of environmental impact statement preparation to state agencies.

The California Legislature is currently debating one of the most important issues it has ever confronted: the proposed California Coastal Plan.¹ The outcome of this legislative fight may determine not only the future of the 1,100-mile California coast, but also the national destiny of comprehehensive resource management and innovative developmental controls.