Energy conservation, especially as derives from improved efficiency of conversion and end use, has become perhaps the only widely agreed upon part of our national policy for dealing with the current projected shortfalls between domestic fuel supplies and the nation's appetite for energy.

Several environmental organizations recently filed suit seeking to require an environmental analysis of the Agency for International Development's (AID) use of pesticides in foreign countries.¹ The basis for the suit is AID's financial and technical assistance in the use of pesticides, including several banned in the United States, by foreign governments. Resolution of this narrow issue hinges on the answer to an important legal question—the applicability of NEPA to activities outside the United States.

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.