The beverage container industry has shifted over the last several years from a deposit-and-return system to the "throwaway" metal or glass container. Legislation has been introduced in Congress that would require a deposit on all containers of beer and soft drinks, and thus have the effect of causing a widespread return to "returnable" containers. Laws that have this objective have been enacted in three states and several communities, and have been presented to the governing bodies of numerous other communities and states.

In recent years, the United States has finally awakened to the fact that its environmental assets are being rapidly and irreparably depleted due to lack of care and foresight, and that this destruction of our environment could ultimately result in our own collective demise. Many citizens consider the problem serious enough to merit constitutional recognition and have been pressing for such reform at both the state and federal levels. The federal government's attitude towards granting such recognition can hardly be described as enthusiastic.

Editors' Summary: This Article examines the policies and systems with which the U.S. Navy implements the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The author analyzes the many problems regarding NEPA compliance that the Navy has encountered, and proposes numerous reforms in the Navy's NEPA implementation system. This topic is especially timely because the Navy's NEPA program is currently facing a major court challenge in Concerned About Trident v. Schlesinger, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

After its first session, the 95th Congress can take credit for completing work on long-standing controversies in several major fields of environmental protection.The new amendments to the air and water pollution control laws represent a partial retreat from the strict statutory standards they replaced, but this retrenchment may be a result of both the pressures of economic uncertainty and a widespread inability to comply with past ambitious antipollution restrictions.

Editors' Summary: In December 1987 the Supreme Court held, in Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc., that citizens could not obtain civil penalties under §505 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) for violations that occurred wholly in the past. The ruling seemingly resolved a three-way split among the federal circuit courts of appeal on the scope of such citizen suits. But the Court's analysis actually leaves a number of questions unanswered, as the author of this Article observes.

The passage of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)¹ precipitated a recurring conflict between the needs of the military to prevent disclosure of military and diplomatic secrets and the public's legislated right to obtain information about the environmental impacts of government actions. NEPA brings environmental considerations into government decisionmaking and simultaneously requires public disclosure of the results of the process.

April 23, 1974, marked the first anniversary of EPA's jurisdiction over United States industrial and municipal ocean-dumping. In 1968—according to Council on Environmental Quality estimates—some 10 million tons of industrial waste and sewage sludge were disposed of at sea. In 1973—five years, a statute, and a treaty¹ later—that figure has climbed to 12 million tons. How did we get where we are? Where do we go from here?

The congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) is approaching the end of its first year of operation. Already, it is drawing considerable attention from environmental groups, and for good reason.

For decades, local governments have guided land development in the United States with antiquated techniques like zoning and a general lack of expertise. Growing public concern over this situation prompted the American Law Institute (ALI) to investigate the possibility of model legislation aimed at providing comprehensive land use planning at the state as well as municipal level.

I would like to welcome everyone to the Sixteenth Annual Airlie House Conference on the Environment. Our topic this year—"Burdens of Environmental Regulation on Private Property Ownership and Business Transactions: Reasonable or Unreasonable?"—is one of particular timeliness or, as some in this audience would say, urgency. It is a topic that cuts across many traditional disciplines in the law and affects many different constituencies.