In addition to its rulings in Kleppe v. Sierra Club,¹ Train v. Colorado Public Interest Research Group,² and Kleppe v. New Mexico,³ which are individually analyzed elsewhere in this issue, the Supreme Court rendered several other significant decisions in environmental cases as part of its end-of-term flurry of activity. Resolving a split in authority among the judicial circuits,⁴ the Court ruled on June 7 that while federal facilities must comply with air and water pollution control standards and compliance schedules adopted by states pursuant to the Clean Air Act and Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 (FWPCA), such installations need not obtain state-issued discharge permits required of other dischargers under these same statutes.

In reaching its decisions in Hancock v. Train⁵ and Environmental Protection Agency v. California,⁶ the Court started from the basic premise that any congressional action to subject federal installations to state regulation must be "clear and unambiguous." The two specific provisions at issue, §118 of the Clean Air Act⁷ and §313 of the FWPCA,⁸ respectively, call in identical language for federal compliance with "requirements respecting control and abatement of . . . pollution to the same extent that any person is subject to such requirements." This, the Court concluded, was not specific enough.