The federal-aid highway program is the nation's most extensive and expensive continuing public works program. In 1971 alone, $4.7 billion were distributed to the states as reimbursement for highway building costs.¹ Since 1956, these federal expenditures have been funded by highway user taxes deposited into the Highway Trust Fund.² Highway trust funds are used only for building highways.

On February 17, 1969, a bill was introduced in the United States House of Representatives "to provide for the establishment of a Council on Environmental Quality."¹ The following day, a measure with similar intent was introduced in the Senate.² In the next 11 months, the two bills received congressional consideration, with bipartisan sponsorship and support, were combined in conference, and were amended to proclaim their primary purpose: "to establish a national policy for the environment."³ The National Environme

The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970¹ give wide powers to the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to establish standards for air quality, to approve or modify state-proposed plans for achieving and maintaining that quality, and to regulate new or modified emission sources (including automobiles, stationary sources and sources of hazardous pollutants).

The following table sets out on a state-by-state basis exactly which portions of each state's implementation plan have been approved or disapproved by the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. The citations in entries down the left-hand side of the page are to sections of 40 C.F.R. Pt. 51, setting forth the requirements for a complete implementation plan. The numbers below each state's name are page references to the Federal Register at which the action noted occurred.

ENTRIES BASED ON INFORMATION AVAILABLE AS OF FEBRUARY 14, 1973

[See Illustration in Original]

According to the Department of the Interior, more than 100 species of fish and wildlife may presently be threatened with extinction within the United States. The recently concluded Convention to Control International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (ELR 40336) listed 375 species of animals as imminently threatened with extinction throughout the world, and another 239 species of animals as not yet threatened with extinction but requiring additional controls over trade in them.

The oil industry has been frustrated since 1970 in its efforts to build a hot oil trans-Alaskan pipeline across federal domain lands from Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope to the Pacific Port of Valdez 800 miles to the southwest. Environmentalists maintain that pipeline ruptures across earthquake prone Alaska could cause lasting ecological damage in the last large wilderness in North America, and that the tankers required to carry the oil from Valdez to the West Coast could cause serious marine pollution.

A recent district court opinion from Texas may constitute something of a watershed for the National Environmental Policy Act in the courts. Just as the lengthy district court opinion over two years ago in the Gillham Dam case¹ led the way in identifying and resolving the first generation of NEPA issues, the even more lengthy decision in Sierra Club v.

This month's issue of ELR contains an article by Judge James L. Oakes of the Second Circuit (3 ELR 50001). The article, Developments in Environmental Law, is based upon the Judge's introductory address at Environmental Law II, the third annual conference on environmental law sponsored by the American Law Institute and the Smithsonian Institution. This year, the Environmental Law Institute cooperated with the sponsoring institutions in conducting the conference.