In Chattanooga, Tennessee, as in hundreds of other communities and states, air pollution is a vital concern. Consequently, the Hamilton County Air Pollution Control Board has been authorized to fight air pollution in several ways. One is to require that stationary sources of air pollution (e.g., incinerators, factories, hospitals, and even apartment complexes) obtain permits to continue emitting smoke and other gas or particulates into the atmosphere. The permit requirement is used to learn how much pollution such facilities are creating and, if in violation of local standards, how they intend to reduce it. A permit is required of every owner or operator of a stationary facility capable of producing air pollution. However, one local facility, the Volunteer Army Ammunition Plant, has refused to comply with this permit requirement. Its refusal is premised on the ground that because the plant is owned by the United States Department of the Army, although operated by a private concern, the plant is a federal facility,¹ to which the County Board permit requirement does not legally apply. Consequently, litigation is now pending between the County Board and the Secretary of the Army to determine whether the Board has the authority to require that the federal facility obtain a permit.² The federal officials responsible for the plant have promised repeatedly that the Volunteer Plant will comply with the County Board's air quality standards, but continue to refuse to submit to the County permit requirement. Local officials are skeptical; in their view, full compliance without a permit is illusory.

While this conflict was developing in Tennessee, a different procedure led to a different result in Estaceda, Oregon. The Eagle Creek National Fish Hatchery there is a federal facility owned and operated by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. This hatchery had discharged pollutants into Eagle Creek which decreased the oxygen content, raised the temperature and created aesthetic problems. The state of Oregon requires a water discharge permit for each facility capable of polluting the waters of Oregon. Unlike the permit system in Chattanooga, however, permits enforcing the Oregon law are issued by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) if the discharger is a federal facility. As a result, the Eagle Creek National Fish Hatchery applied for a water discharge permit from the regional office of EPA, which issued a permit to the hatchery on the condition that the hatchery meet a compliance schedule requiring it to purify its water by December 31, 1976. The compliance schedule requires the purchase and installation of necessary waste water treatment equipment. There is no lawsuit or conflict between local and federal officials in Estaceda.