Editors' Summary

Increasingly, the U.S. government is realizing the importance of self-reliance. With international security threats rising, energy independence has become increasingly significant. However, freeing the United States from energy dependence may have its drawbacks. Specifically, environmental impacts reign high in priority when discussing revamping the categories and volume of energy use.

Editor's Summary: The government has faced an ongoing dilemma in its quest to balance its policy decisions with the waste-to-energy industry. In this Article, Eric Koester examines what it will take for the industry to again become a significant solution in our energy and solid waste dilemmas. First, he looks at the impact of environmental regulations on the industry, including air emissions and waste ash products. He examines the impact changes in energy regulation have had and what the future of energy regulation and deregulation may yield for the waste-to-energy industry.

Editors' Summary: The Supreme Court's decision in National Ass'n of Home Builders v. Defenders of Wildlife left unresolved the question of the meaning of discretion and agency authority. This decision and ensuing litigation over the meaning of discretionary agency action could impact the fate of over 1, endangered and threatened species. In this Article, Linus Chen explains the circuit court split over the conflicting statutory requirements of ESA §7 and CWA §402(b) regarding consultation and agency discretion.

When Congress enacted the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) in 1986, it included a provision to address what was perceived as a significant shortcoming in state law. Many states' statutes of limitation at the time began to run when a plaintiff was first injured, whether or not the plaintiff was aware of the injury or its cause. In the case of a long-latency disease, allegedly caused by past exposure to hazardous substances, the limitation period could expire long before the plaintiff was aware that he or she even had a claim.

As was noted in the Introduction to my recently published book The Clean Water Act and the Constitution: Legal Structure and the Public's Right to a Clean and Healthy Environment, as a result of a fairly comprehensive array of federal environmental legislation, including the Clean Water Act (CWA), the United States, for all of its remaining environmental issues, enjoys some of the best environmental quality of the industrialized nations. That environmental quality, in turn, has direct implications for the health and welfare of U.S.

Editors' Summary: This Article explores the relationship between the "precautionary principle," statutory regulation, and the law of toxic torts, with a focus on personal injury. The Article introduces the concept of precautionary environmental law through an analysis of the prevailing risk-based paradigm of statutory environmental regulation contrasted with a more precautionary, ecological approach.

Dispersants have been a critical oil spill response tool for decades, used in at least 66 documented spill responses worldwide, and 25 spills in or near U.S. waters. Oil dispersants can reduce the coastal impact from a spill, hasten the post-spill recovery process for affected waters and shores, and reduce the need to resort to other, more damaging response methods. For most of their history, dispersants have held a low profile in the public consciousness. Dispersants remained technical footnotes to the spills themselves--until the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Editor's Summary: On December 11, 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed into law CERCLA, commonly referred to as Superfund, creating a federal program to clean up our nation's most polluted hazardous waste sites. Today, every state and nearly every territory of the United States has at least one Superfund site within its borders. In this Article, John Quarles and Michael Steinberg examine the first 25 years of the Superfund program. In so doing, they provide insight as to where this program may lead in the future.

I. John Wesley Powell's Blueprint for a Dryland Democracy