Beginning with enactment of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA),¹ and continuing through the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984 (HSWA)² and the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA),³ Congress has been engaged for almost a decade in a fundamental restructuring of environmental law. For years, legal scholars asserted that traditional regulatory mechanisms were inadequate to control pollution and, by 1980, environmental disasters such as Love Canal and toxic contamination of the James River convinced Congress that a new approach was needed. The resulting legislation heralds a shift in the primary focus of environmental law from prospective regulation to retroactive liability. New, liability-based statutes hold those involved in polluting activities responsible for resulting environmental damage without regard to individual degrees of fault or whether the damage was caused by actions that were legal when taken. The effect of these laws is to shift much of the responsibility for planning for a dangerous and uncertain environmental future to that segment of society most capable of finding innovative and efficient solutions—the private sector. Regardless of its perceived fairness, if carried through this approach will result in a quantum leap in the effectiveness of environmental laws.