Several key issues have emerged as pivotal in ongoing efforts to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Progress on these complex issues is central to the success of TSCA reform. To foster further discussion of these critical topics, the Environmental Law Institute convened a series of issue-specific lunchtime teleconferences during the summer and fall of 2011 to provide a forum for focused dialogue among key players. The first panel of the series, held on June 30, 2011, set the stage for the series by examining the status of TSCA reform in the larger context of the U.S.

For nearly 40 years, EPA allowed application of pesticides directly to or over waters of the United States without an NPDES permit and instead relied on the FIFRA registration process to regulated such pesticide use. Following mixed results from the courts regarding the legality of this practice, the pesticide industry filed a petition for rulemaking and obtained a favorable rulemaking outcome. Nonetheless, the pesticide industry challenged the results of its own rulemaking petition in hopes of obtaining an even more generous rule.

The Federal Circuit Cienega X decision imposes insufficient financial analysis of Penn Central’s two economic prongs to satisfy either economic practice or the Penn Central test. The decision’s imposed change in value measurement evaluates only one prong of the Penn Central test. Change in value satisfies the economic impact prong but does not establish severity of the economic impact vis-à-vis frustration of distinct investment-backed expectations (DIBE).

In Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that U.S. treaty negotiators severed the perpetual right to use land from formal title to the land in an 1837 (and 1854) Treaty. The Mille Lacs majority and dissent differed only as to whether treaty-guaranteed usufructuary property rights had been abrogated by subsequent events.

Major emitting facilities are required to comply with BACT standards for each pollutant subject to regulation under the CAA. This requirement—initially thought to be inconsequential—has now become a dominant feature of the PSD program, for the first time subjecting greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources to federally mandated pollution control standards. This Article is the fifth in a series on the CAA’s complex PSD program.

The use of environmental tort claims to compensate pollution victims or to protect the environment and human health is still in an early stage of development in China. Nevertheless, tort cases play an outsized role in China’s environmental law system. From 2004 to 2009, China’s courts heard more environmental pollutionrelated tort cases than pollution-related administrative and criminal cases combined. Since 1998, the number of environmental lawsuits filed with the courts increased at an annual average of 25%.

This Comment presents an overview of China’s environmental administrative enforcement primarily regarding pollution control. It introduces the institutional framework of China’s environmental enforcement at the national and local levels and discusses the role of citizens and courts. The main challenges with China’s environmental enforcement are also presented.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949 by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). For almost three decades after the PRC’s establishment, there was a perception that a formal legal system for many areas of national life was unnecessary since the economy was centrally controlled and conflicts could thus be resolved through mediation or administrative means without reference to legal rights and obligations.

This Article proposes an “environmental practices money security interest” (EPMSI) that lawmakers could add to Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) Article 9.1 The EPMSI would grant priority over earlier investors to financers whose extensions of credit enable debtors to invest in improving environmental impact.