I am privileged to be able to address the interaction between real property and environmental law as both a government employee and a private citizen. Too often, we are inclined to burrow in to the provisions of CERCLA, SARA, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, RCRA and other environmental statutes without considering how they fit into the universe of the law. I am from the Justice Department's Land and Natural Resources Division, which litigates environmental and land management cases on behalf of a government that owns over one third of the land mass of the United States. The responsibility of being an owner of 750 million acres, many of which are the subject of transactions and, indeed, in litigation, is onerous. The Lands Division handles not only enforcement of the environmental statutes but also the defensive representation of clients whose handling of hazardous substances has sometimes been problematic: the Department of Energy with their nuclear weapons facilities, the Army and Air Force with their missile testing ranges and jet fuels, and the Navy with the remaining portions of nuclear reactors on decommissioned ships. With such problems, we must confront many of the same issues faced in the private sector.

I would also like to bring to the program the perspective provided by the Constitution. The Fifth Amendment's protection of private property against taking for public use without just compensation marked a radical departure from the medieval European system in which property was held "of the King." It was a dramatic break with tradition for our founding fathers to adopt Locke's notion that government derived its powers through a social contract requiring the consent of the governed, and Jefferson's concept of a limited government whose powers to take and inhibit the use of private property were significantly limited.