Editors' Summary: It has become regular practice for federal legislators to insert into annual appropriations bills riders having little to do with the appropriations process. Last year, under the sponsorship of the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, a bill that would have exempted recyclers from CERCLA "arranger" and "transporter" liability was almost enacted as a rider to the omnibus appropriations bill for fiscal year 1999. This Dialogue examines that rider and the changes it would have wrought to CERCLA.

Editors' Summary: One of the most important legal tools in the effort to remediate the nation's contaminated sites is state law that applies to such cleanups. In 1989, the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) conducted a study of this law, and last year, it completed its most recent update of that study. In this Article, two ELI Senior Attorneys discuss the results of that update as it concerns two key aspects of site remediation—voluntary and brownfield cleanup programs.

In the past few years, owners of contaminated land, seeking to supplement possible causes of action under the Comprehensive Environmental, Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and under state common law and state statutes, increasingly have looked to §7002(a)(1)(B) of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) to shift responsibility for remediation costs to former owners or operators.

Given the steady march of adverse environmental impacts and inimical socioeconomic and community change at the local level in many metropolitan areas—due in part to haphazard growth—this Article identifies and examines a significant concern with how we have tried to manage sprawl into the rural parts of regions. Planners' heavy reliance upon programs and policies that are time-limited or mostly serve to pace growth may merely delay an inevitable environmental and economic decline. This Article analyzes the legal possibilities of stronger, more definitive policies.

If we want to think about changes in local sustainability over the last 10 years, perhaps the best place to start is with Al Gore. In 1992, just before the Rio Earth Summit and before he was to be tapped as a vice presidential candidate, then-Senator Gore published a treatise on the environment called Earth in the Balance.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers but as fountains of life.

—John Muir (1898)

A walk in the park is one of our finest cultural opportunities, a value that people expect to find available in their community.

—National Association of State Park Directors

"The task . . . is to become a co-worker with nature in the reconstruction of the damaged fabric . . . ."

—William Perkins Marsh (1864)

"This is a day of redemption and of hope. It's a day when the limits of what is possible have been greatly expanded because we are showing our children that restoration is possible, that we can restore a community to its natural state."

—Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt (1995)

The Defenders of Wildlife Judicial Accountability Project—undertaken with the assistance of the Vermont Law School Clinic for Environmental Law and Policy—seeks to fill a data void on the environmental record of President George W. Bush and his Administration by analyzing all reported environmental cases in which the Bush Administration has presented legal arguments regarding an existing environmental law, regulation, or policy before federal judges, magistrates, or administrative tribunals.

I. Introduction

In the 19th century, doctors prescribed Soothing Syrup for cranky babies. The syrup was actually laudanum, which is opium, dissolved in water. While it did quiet and calm unruly behaved children, the side effects included addiction and death.¹ Currently, Soothing Syrup prescriptions are on the rise as more and more 21st century doctors prescribe psychotropic drugs to misbehaving children.

A more substantive precautionary principle of international law is evolving as new treaties articulate new measures of precaution in different contexts. Although there is considerable controversy over how to articulate or define a precautionary "principle" of law, the goal is to ensure that the mere lack of scientific knowledge about risks cannot justify a failure to take appropriate precautions. Where we have sufficient evidence of risk, we often take precautions, despite a lack of certainty about those risks.