Editors' Summary: For over three years, Congress has been trying to reauthorize and revise CERCLA. Reauthorization bills introduced in the 103d, 104th, and 105th Congresses have proposed extensive changes intended to "fix" a program that many people consider to be "broken." In this Article, an Assistant Attorney General for Natural Resources in the New Mexico Office of the Attorney General suggests that the Superfund program is not as flawed as its critics charge. He argues that the statute only needs some fine-tuning.

The Sad State of the Policy Debate

Since its creation in 1980, the Superfund program has overcome a number of obstacles. It survived embarrassing political scandals in its first few years. It endured a failure to reauthorize the underlying statute in 1985, a lapse that led to widespread disruptions at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and set the program back significantly. It has persevered in the face of attacks from many sides.

By the beginning of the 106th Congress, comprehensive legislative reform of the Superfund statute had consumed six fruitless years of effort. Adopting a new approach, the Administration decided to seek narrow, targeted legislation. In testimony that would be repeated several times in 1999, the U.S.

On July 1, 2001, Colorado Senate Bill 01-145 (SB 145) took effect. The statute creates an "environmental covenant" as a mechanism for enforcing use restrictions imposed in connection with the remediation of contaminated sites. The environmental covenants contain use restrictions that were relied upon in the remedial decision. Such restrictions are commonly known as "institutional controls." Colorado enacted this law because it was not clear whether existing mechanisms (such as common-law covenants and easements) would be legally enforceable in relevant circumstances.

The Comprehensive Emergency Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) authorizes designated trustees to recover damages for injury to natural resources caused by a hazardous substance release. Under its delegated authority, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) has promulgated regulations governing the assessment of natural resource damages (NRDs). The regulatory scheme, however, has posed tremendous difficulties for all interested parties.

Debate over reforms to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) consumed substantial energy during the 1997 session of Congress, and those deliberations will continue in 1998 with the hope of finally producing consensus about how the law can be improved. While interested parties may have different, often opposing views of how CERCLA should be reformed, some of their proposals may not represent progress, particularly the procedural changes related to restoring injured natural resources and expediting recoveries of natural resource damages (NRD).

Editors' Summary: In this Article, a Senior Attorney at the Environmental Law Institute discusses ways to redevelop brownfields while protecting public health and the environment. His Article explores the various mechanisms for controlling land use to allow for the sustainable development of these contaminated properties. The author begins by examining both government-imposed controls, such as land use planning and zoning, and property law-based controls, such as covenants and easements.

Conventional wisdom says that the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) is an impediment to the reuse of brownfields. Examination of a decade of experience, however, reveals that properties "captured by the net" of RCRA jurisdiction have gone on to new, productive, and economically viable reuse. Contrary to conventional wisdom, there is also a great potential for many more RCRA properties to do so.

The focus of much dialogue and debate in the public eye over climate change and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) tends to focus on industrial emissions of pollution for manufacturing or the production of electricity. Emissions from transportation sources (like trains, planes, and automobiles) and from the heating, cooling, and lighting of buildings themselves are less readily visible, yet each constitutes roughly a third of America's total greenhouse gas emissions.