Debate over reforms to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) consumed substantial energy during the 1997 session of Congress, and those deliberations will continue in 1998 with the hope of finally producing consensus about how the law can be improved. While interested parties may have different, often opposing views of how CERCLA should be reformed, some of their proposals may not represent progress, particularly the procedural changes related to restoring injured natural resources and expediting recoveries of natural resource damages (NRD).

This Dialogue analyzes related issues of the rebuttable presumption for trustees' NRD assessments provided by both CERCLA and the Oil Pollution Act (OPA) and the appropriate standard of judicial review for future challenges to those assessments. It highlights a forgotten opportunity for the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to provide adjudicatory administrative hearings on disputes over NRD assessments and discusses how proposed CERCLA reforms would affect this approach to reducing transaction costs and streamlining trustees' recovery of damages in future NRD cases.