Reprocessing of nuclear materials to obtain plutonium will soon become a commercial reality. Plutonium, not found naturally on the earth but produced by the fission of uranium, is extremely toxic to both humans and the environment and is a basic component of nuclear weapons. Yet, the element is a potent source of energy and is a fuel of both the light water reactor and of the planned breeder reactor, which will generate more plutonium than it uses.

Editors' Summary: A central issue in the evaluation of federal and state environmental regulatory mechanisms is the degree of discretion which should be vested in the regulatory authorities to set and enforce environmental standards.

The general rule in the United States is that the prevailing party in a lawsuit may not recover his attorney fees from the loser unless a contractual or statutory provision explicitly allows such an award. The Supreme Court's 1975 decision in Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society¹ scuttled the incipient development of the "private attorney general" doctrine as a rationale for attorney fees awards to successful "public interest" plaintiffs in federal court in the absence of statutory authorization.²

Within the last year, the Supreme Court of the state of Washington has handed down opinions in three cases which have refueled a long-standing but recently dormant controversy over Indian fishing rights. The dispute centers around the proper allocation of the state's anadromous¹ fish resource, composed largely of steel-head trout and several species of salmon.

Recognizing the pervasive environmental presence of an increasingly large number of chemical substances, Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)¹ in late 1976 to impose a federal regulatory scheme over substances that present an unreasonable risk of injury to human health and the environment. This scheme includes the mandatory collection of data on those substances currently being used and the hazards they present, followed by vigorous regulation of the manufacture and use of dangerous substances in order to minimize or eliminate those hazards.

William Rodgers, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, has entitled his new book simply Environmental Law, holding out the promise to the reader of comprehensive coverage of an expansive, evolving, and amorphous body of law. A first reading of the book reveals that Rodgers has succeeded in imposing some structure on the masses of material involved and in producing an insightful analysis of the field.

In a promising but controversial attempt to ensure fuller compliance with the mandates of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) has formulated a draft set of regulations which, when made final, will require all federal agencies to follow more rigorous NEPA procedures than has been the case to date. The Council drafted the regulations pursuant to Executive Order No.

For the second time in less than a year, a federal district court has enjoined the Department of the Interior's program to accelerate development of outer continental shelf (OCS) petroleum resources off the shores of the middle Atlantic states. On January 28, 1978, only three days prior to the formal commencement of the sale of leases to tracts for oil and gas development in the Georges Bank region of the mid-Atlantic¹, Federal District Judge Arthur Garrity, in Massachusetts v.

On January 27, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot apply the "bubble concept" in determining whether a modification in an existing plant is subject to new source performance standards under §111 of the Clean Air Act.¹ In ASARCO, Inc. v.

In two recent decisions, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found violations of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in the conduct of federal agencies concerning the 1976 sale of outer continental shelf oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Alaska¹ and the approval of construction of a joint railroad line for the transportation of coal out of the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.² The court, however, refused to grant injunctive relief pending full compliance with NEPA's requirements.