The public interest suffered a major judicial setback on May 12, when the Supreme Court announced its decision in Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society,¹ declaring erroneous a line of decisions awarding attorneys' fees to environmental and other public interest plaintiffs.² The five-Justice majority held that only Congress, not the courts, can authorize an exception to the "American rule" that attorneys' fees cannot ordinarily be recovered by a prevailing party from a losing party.

A recent court ruling has brought one step closer to resolution the long-simmering dispute between the Army Corps of Engineers on the one hand and EPA, the Department of Justice, and numerous environmental groups on the other, concerning the proper scope of federal regulatory jurisdiction over dredge and fill activities throughout the nation.

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

The Environmental Law Institute has launched several programs in international and comparative environmental law in 1975.

The vast majority of environmental impact statements prepared under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) during the last five years have concerned the localized environmental effects of particular major federal actions such as highway segments and dams, or of specific federal loans, grants, permits, and licenses. That NEPA was intended to have such an impact at the lower levels of federal decisionmaking, where most decisions regarding environmentally harmful projects are formulated and made final, is clear from its legislative history.¹

In a far-reaching decision announced June 6, 1975,¹ District Court Judge John H. Pratt has ordered the Department of Interior to prepare, consider, and disseminate environmental impact statements on annual budget requests for financing the National Wildlife Refuge System. Judge Pratt found that such requests are "proposals for legislation" within the meaning of §102(2)(C) of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), and are also "major federal actions" that clearly have a significant effect on the environment.

Hard cases make bad law. So do unique, serpentine factual patterns.

In June 1975, Congress finally diverted the Bureau of Reclamation's Garrison Diversion Unit, a massive irrigation project with potentially catastrophic environmental and diplomatic impacts.

On July 25, 1975,¹ the Army Corps of Engineers promulgated interim final regulations governing the granting of permits for activities in United States inland and ocean waters, including, inter alia, the discharge of dredged and fill materials. The Corps' action came in response to a court order² invalidating the agency's previous rules that restricted its regulatory jurisdiction over the latter category of activities to "navigable waters" as traditionally defined.

Man has been dumping his wastes into the oceans since time immemorial, but the quantity and toxicity of these discharges has increased steadily as our industrial society has become more complex. Though scientists have just begun to study the environmental impact of these personal and industrial wastes and though tracking the paths of discharged metals and bacteria through shifting ocean currents is a frustrating and difficult task, the results thus far obtained from such investigation are not encouraging.