In June 1979, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) promulgated new source performance standards (NSPS) to control particulate and sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. In Sierra Club v. Costle,¹ decided in April 1981, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the standards against an array of substantive and procedural challenges by both industry and environmental groups.

Federal jurisdiction over and protection of the nation's wetlands and navigable waters, long a source of spirited litigation, continues to give rise to litigation involving knotty legal issues and heated legislative debate. The large number of decisions to have appeared in recent issues of the Reporter show, not surprisingly, continued controversy over jurisdictional issues. Avoyelles Sportsmen's League v.

Congress' concentration on budgetary and economic matters reduced the output of substantive environmental legislation in the first session of the 97th Congress. Nevertheless, environmental issues drew their share of attention, thanks in large part to the Reagan Administration's draconian budget cuts, its controversial choices for key environmental positions in the Administration, and its inability to mobilize the bipartisan majorities that have been the hallmark of its stunning legislative victories in non-environmental contexts.

Section 7¹ of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is the conscience of contemporary environmental law. It requires us to look anotherr form of life in the eye and make the explicit decision that this line of evolution should no longer continue. Decisions like this, eye-to-eye, are not an easy business. It is considerably easier not to look and not to know.

Welcome. This evening I would like to trace for you the genesis and development of this program and then reflect on the issue with which it deals—federalism.

In this Article, I am to take EPA's three most sweeping pollution control statutes—the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA)—and spell out how each of them deals with federal/state relations. Beyond that, I am supposed to plant the question in your minds whether the existing allocation of responsibilities makes sense, and how it might be reformed if it doesn't. I think we could ask that question either by taking each statute as a whole or by comparing them with each other, and I plan to do a little of both.

Senator Moynihan (D-N.Y.) and Congressman Scheuer (D-N.Y.) are pushing legislation to make the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) into an independent commission. It is hardly necessary to recount the immediate reasons for the initiative; they are on the front pages of newspapers across the country. A press release announcing the legislation said simply:

We are paying the price, day in and day out, for an agency embroiled in controversy, paralyzed by distrust from without and defiance from within. It is time to begin anew.

It is time for a fresh, bipartisan review of outdoor recreation policy in this country to close a circle begun 25 years ago. In 1958, Congress created the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (ORRRC) to study the nation's outdoor recreation needs. The ORRRC was composed of four members of the Senate, two from each party, and four members of the House, again, two from each party. President Eisenhower appointed seven public members, including ORRRC's chairman, Laurance S. Rockefeller.

The passage of the National Environmental Policy Act¹ compelled the adjustment of traditional legal doctrines in order to accommodate the concerns of environmentalists. The courts expanded long-standing notions of justiciability,² standing,³ and irreparable injury⁴ to allow representation of environmental interests to the degree previously accorded the representation of economic interests.

The federal-aid highway approval process is a labyrinth of which Daedalus could be proud. A series of Policy and Procedure Memoranda (PPMs), Instructional Memoranda (IMs), and Orders creates an administrative maze that the Federal Highway Administration had until recently managed to protect from presentation in the Code of Federal Regulations.