The focus of much dialogue and debate in the public eye over climate change and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) tends to focus on industrial emissions of pollution for manufacturing or the production of electricity. Emissions from transportation sources (like trains, planes, and automobiles) and from the heating, cooling, and lighting of buildings themselves are less readily visible, yet each constitutes roughly a third of America's total greenhouse gas emissions. In The Quiet Revolution Revived: Sustainable Design, Land Use Regulation, and the States, Sara Bronin correctly focuses on the importance of facilitating the creation of "green" buildings, and identifies what she sees as significant barriers, at the local level, to the implementation of greener buildings.

While agreeing with Bronin's objectives, we feel that The Quiet Revolution Revived could benefit from consideration or reconsideration of three particular areas: (1) the article's conflation of "green building" regulation and "land use" regulation; (2) transportation energy related to building location; and (3) recent federal, state, and local efforts that are addressing all of these issues in ways consistent with what we see as Bronin's intent. Our intent here is less to critique the article than to provide other information that interested readers should know about reducing GHG emissions related to buildings. In short, we think there are both times when localities will lead states and times when states need to step in to facilitate important policy objectives. In this case, there are other vehicles to achieve greater GHG reductions that do not require even a "quiet revolution" in order to have a tremendous impact.

Keynote Presentation: Making the Partnership Work

Panel Discussion: Regulation of Nuclear Materials

Regulation of Air Quality

Regulation of Water Quality: Is EPA Meeting Its Oblilgations or Can the States Better Meet Water Quality Challenges?

Regulating Solid and Hazardous Wastes

Environmental regulation of pollution in the United States is often maligned as costly and ineffective. Pollution continues to plague and degrade the natural resources in the United States, and U.S. waters in particular. Nonpoint source pollution is currently the most significant source of water pollution, but it is also the most unregulated. While other discharges into U.S. waters have been dramatically reduced since the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) was enacted, nonpoint source pollution—caused most by runoff from agricultural operations—has increased. Furthermore, the dangers of nonpoint source pollution are significant and well-documented. This Dialogue examines why the federal government has not enacted and enforced strong antipollution measures against agricultural emissions into water. After considering the dangers of nonpoint source pollution generally and agricultural nonpoint pollution in particular, this Dialogue analyzes FWPCA provisions that address nonpoint pollution and evaluates their efficacy. Next, this Dialogue evaluates potential legislative solutions to nonpoint source pollution, including H.R. 961, a series of FWPCA amendments the U.S. House of Representatives of the 104th Congress passed in 1995. This Dialogue explains why Congress has not implemented potentially effective alternative solutions—such as pollution taxes on farmers or strengthening minimum federal standards—and why Congress may indeed pass a probably ineffective solution.

When the 103d Congress convened on January 5, 1993, many observers believed that it would make up for the dismal environmental record of its predecessor. The 102d Congress had tried and failed to reauthorize the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Its attempt to elevate the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to a cabinet-level department had been blocked in the House of Representatives, and its attempt to reform the General Mining Law of 1872 had been blocked in both houses.

The new Congress would be different, many pundits predicted. A Democrat was president for the first time in 12 years, and Democrats held majorities in both houses of Congress. Environmentalists predicted that the union of these forces would facilitate the passage of significant environmental legislation. And the new Congress had an ambitious environmental agenda: Not only did the FWPCA, the ESA, and RCRA need reauthorizing, but Superfund authorization was set to expire, state and local governments called for revisions to the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), and many legislators still supported mining law reform.

Editors' Summary: Redeveloping abandoned urban hazardous waste sites, or brownfields, can significantly benefit developers, local communities, and the environment. Developers can purchase brownfields inexpensively, and subsequent redevelopment brings jobs to local communities and economic growth to inner cities, while allowing virgin land to remain pristine. Yet, barriers to redevelopment, such as the probability of legal liability, uncertainty regarding cleanup standards, and lenders' unwillingness to finance contaminated property, can make redevelopment extremely risky and difficult. This Article explains the nature of the brownfields problem and provides an overview of the historic, social, economic, and environmental issues that impact brownfield redevelopment. It next addresses current federal, state, and local initiatives to remedy problems associated with brownfields, and presents case studies that illustrate how brownfields may be redeveloped successfully. The Article concludes with recommendations essential to addressing and overcoming barriers to brownfields redevelopment.

New rules are emerging to change the way the government makes decisions about cleanup of hazardous waste sites under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund). These changes have altered Superfund decisionmaking fundamentally and irrevocably, requiring the government to reach for new levels of accountability, rationality, and consistency. Central to the government's ability to meet this challenge is the way in which it makes and explains decisions about acceptable risks and required levels of cleanup.

This Dialogue briefly reviews the major developments driving the government toward goals of greater clarity and consistency in applying risk assessment concepts to the cleanup of contaminated property. It then critiques the government's current practice of establishing cleanup levels and selecting from a broad range of acceptable risks by using a confusing mix of environmental standards, site-specific risk assessment, best professional judgment, and best available technology. This Dialogue argues that the government must establish a single, nationwide risk target to apply at every site in order to foster effective public participation in cleanup decisions and rational use of future land use considerations, and to achieve a consistent level of protection, regardless of the socioeconomic or ethnic composition of affected communities. This Dialogue further argues that the government should devote more of its resources to improving risk assessment in general, as well as its application to specific sites.

In September 1991, 25 people died at the Imperial Food Products plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, when they were trapped in a factory fire. Witnesses to the fire said the employees could not escape because the building doors were locked, apparently to prevent pilferage. The North Carolina assistant labor commissioner subsequently stated that the locked doors constituted "serious violations" of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act). The plant, however, had never been inspected for health or safety violations in its 11 years of operation. In fact, with the number of inspectors in North Carolina at that time, it would have taken 65 years to visit every workplace in the state. OSH Act reform advocates cite the Imperial Food Plant fire to argue that worker protection laws must be strengthened.

Vice President Al Gore has suggested that the OSH Act might be a good place to start "reinventing government," and has proposed reforms intended to increase the frequency of inspections without hiring hundreds of new federal inspectors. Gore's report, Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less (the National Performance Review Report), champions privatizing the occupational safety and health inspection process to reduce government costs and encourage voluntary compliance with regulations. This Dialogue explores some of the advantages and disadvantages of Gore's proposed reforms, discusses the differences between Gore's proposal and reform bills currently pending before Congress, and addresses the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL's) views on OSH Act reform.

Editors' Summary: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on three takings cases in its 2004 term: Lingle v. Chevron U.S.A., Inc.; Kelo v. City of New London; and San Remo Hotel, Ltd. Partnership v. City & County of San Francisco. In Lingle, the Court struck down the "substantially advance" test set forth in Agins v. City of Tiburon. Kelo, which gained attention from the media and public, upheld the use of eminent domain for economic development purposes. And San Remo involved a relatively straightforward procedural issue. After describing and analyzing each of these cases, the author of this Article concludes that these cases reinforce the Court's takings jurisprudence that the Takings Clause imposes only modest constraints on government action.

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. While this is obvious for well-known poisons such as cyanide, arsenic, lead, and pesticides, it is also true that essential substances such as vitamins, minerals, and even oxygen are toxic at excessive doses.

The tenet that the dose determines the poison provides the basic framework for how toxicologists assess the "hazard potential" of chemical products and materials. The goal of such assessments is to determine the levels of exposure that cause harmful effects, the nature of those effects, and the so-called safe level of exposure. Toxicological testing is designed, therefore, to determine what toxicologists call the dose-response relationship. Investigators attempt to describe how a given chemical affects the body at varying doses ranging from very high to very low. The type of information these studies yield will hopefully lead to a determination of the threshold that separates a safe exposure from the early stages of toxicity. While establishing evidence of a true toxicity threshold is often complicated, the belilef is that such thresholds exist for each harmful effect and that they can be determined from toxicology studies.