NEPA's Power to Amend Other Federal Laws: EDF Seeks to Compel the FDA to Consider Environmental Criteria
Two previously unrelated trends, the demise of the returnable glass bottle and the evolution of NEPA into a substantive statute, have recently converged in a suit brought by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).1 EDF is challenging a regulation recently promulgated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that severely restricts the impact of NEPA on the agency's decisionmaking process.2 If upheld, the agency rule will effectively render the FDA powerless to regulate the nationwide use of non-biogradable plastic beer and soft drink bottle