Editors' Summary: Since 1910, the federal government has played a role in regulating pesticides. At first, the motive was to fight fraud, but as pesticides became more sophisticated and as environmental concerns grew, the government's regulatory efforts became more comprehensive. Now, near the dawn of bioengineered pesticides, with society confronting and reevaluating environmental risks, and with agencies facing fiscal challenges, pesticide regulation continues to evolve. It is a field of concern to the pesticide industry, of course, but in U.S.

There seems to be agreement across a wide spectrum of those involved in Superfund cleanups that such cleanups should take into consideration the kinds of activities that are expected to take place at the site after the remedial work is completed. While cleaning every site to levels suitable for all conceivable uses may be a laudable goal, doing so can impose costs that are out of proportion to the added amount of protection obtained.

Editors' Summary: Under CERCLA, a liable party cannot transfer its liability, yet it can contractually arrange for a third party to ultimately bear the financial burden of that liability. The applicability of these contractual allocations of environmental liability generally hinges on judicial interpretation of representations, warranties, indemnities, and releases. This Article surveys the case law on contractual allocation of CERCLA liability. Addressing legal issues unique to particular types of contractual provisions, the Article recommends ways to use and draft such provisions.

Editors' Summary: Despite adding the §113(f) "contribution" provision to CERCLA in 1986, Congress did not indicate whether the section was meant to supplement private parties' efforts to recover response costs form other potentially responsib parties's efforts to recover response costs form other potentially responsible parties under CERCLA §107 or was meant to preclude such cost recovery actions. More and more courts that address this issue are requiring plaintiffs to file §113(f) actions.

Editors' Summary: Institutional controls are a mechanism for providing a certain degree of safety in the absence of technology that could clean contaminated sites thoroughly. Institutional controls come in a variety of forms, each of which can be designed to meet specific site needs. Flexible but long-lasting mechanisms such as institutional controls can be used to ensure that land uses continue to be compatible with the level of cleanup at a site.

Congress enacted the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in 1976, to regulate management of solid and hazardous waste. RCRA Subtitle C regulates hazardous waste management and Subtitle D governs nonhazardous, solid waste. In 1984, Congress passed the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA), significantly amending and expanding RCRA Subtitle C. HSWA added to RCRA the Land Disposal Restriction (LDR) Program, or land ban, which bars land disposal of hazardous wastes that fail to meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or the Agency)-promulgated treatment standards.

Editors' Summary: Congress first addressed the problem of leaking underground storage tanks (USTs) in 1984, by enacting Subtitle I of RCRA. The UST regulatory program addresses, inter alia, corrosion protection, reporting, corrective action, and financial responsibility. In this Article, the author provides an overview of the federal UST program. The author outlines the program's significant elements and explores specific regulations in the context of the technical problems they are intended to address, giving particular attention to how, to what, and to whom the regulations apply.

Water policy in the United States has been significantly influenced in recent years by a number of high-profile environmental and water use conflicts, including disputes relating to California's Bay Delta, Florida's Everglades, the management of the Colorado River system, the Columbia/Snake system, and the Klamath and Trinity River Basins. For a variety of legal, institutional, and financial reasons, the federal government has played a major role in all of these matters, typically in partnership with state and local stakeholders.

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.

Offshore areas are under pressure to industrialize for renewable energy. To plan for offshore wind development, Rhode Island engaged in a marine spatial planning process that resulted in the Ocean Special Area Management Plan (O-SAMP), a regulatory invention of the Coastal Zone Management Act. Notably, the Rhode Island O-SAMP maps and plans for uses in federal waters beyond the three-mile line dividing state and fedeal jurisdiction, as well as within the state's territorial sea, posing a challenge to the boundaries of offshore federalism.