Solid waste disposal presents one of the most pressing, though least glamorous, environmental issues today. Environmentalists have long urged that comprehensive recycling programs can achieve three important goals: reducing the mountains of refuse which must be disposed of by incineration, ocean dumping, or landfills; preserving the natural resources that must be used to make the discarded steel, glass, paper, etc.; and conserving the energy required to process raw materials.

A see-saw battle to save a Florida Swamp is being fought in the federal courts;¹ it stems from President Nixon's 1970 decision to terminate construction of the Cross-Florida Barge Canal.

At a time in our history when governmental secrecy based on a claim of privilege has come under close scrutiny, it is surprising to find any court expanding, rather than narrowing, the government's power to withhold information from the public. It is still more surprising to find this power sustained in a case in which the information sought was already in large part in the hands of the public. By a curious turn of logic, however, when the government summarizes facts already in the public record for the purpose of making a decision, that summary can be kept secret, according to the U.S.

One issue disputed by environmentalists and poverty lawyers has been that of exclusionary zoning. Advocates of controlled land use have long supported legislative restrictions on indiscriminate development of land resources. Population density, with its correlates of air, water, and noise pollution, and of aesthetically offensive high-rise apartments, has often been cited as justifying drastic restrictions upon prospective users of existing sanitary facilities as well as use of other methods of development control.

Russell Train, EPA Administrator, told the Senate Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution on April 10, 1974, that the Agency he heads will henceforth prepare full-fledged impact statements on its major actions.¹ Since January 1 of this year, EPA had been issuing "environmental explanations," designed to serve the function of an impact statement without seeming to concede that NEPA obligated EPA to prepare statements.² In his testimony, Train held to the position that impact statement preparation was not required by law, and said that the d

On May 15, 1974, the House Rules Committee reversed itself and voted 8-7 to clear the National Land Use Policy Act¹ for consideration by the full House. The bill, which would provide $800 million to the states over eight years to develop land use plans in accordance with federal guidelines, has already passed the Senate. A floor fight is expected, as conservatives of both parties will press for enactment of a weak substitute bill.

A sharply divided Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has given a boost to the growing trend to awards of counsel fees in public interest litigation and also to the National Environmental Policy Act.¹ Sitting en banc, the court ruled 4-3 that the environmentalist plaintiffs who sued to stop construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline were entitled to recover half of their attorneys fees from Alyeska, the pipeline consortium. Judge J.

One of the pillars of Project Independence, President Nixon's program for U.S. self-sufficiency in energy supplies by 1980, is the exploitation of hitherto untapped reserves of oil and gas believed to lie under the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). So far, OCS drilling has occurred only in the Gulf of Mexico, off the shores of Texas and Louisiana, and off the coast of California. Lease sales now underway for parcels off the Gulf coasts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida will bring the total OCS area leased over the last 20 years to approximately 10 million acres.

It was perhaps inevitable that the collective trauma that Americans suffered during last winter's acute shortage of gasoline and heating fuel would generate the need to find a scapegoat. Different individuals and groups have chosen different targets. Some blame poor governmental planning and a lack of citizen concern, while others view the oil industry's soaring profits and questionable statistics as evidence of an artificially manufactured crisis designed to eliminate small competitors and drive prices up.

Perhaps, the most visible evidence of a popular ethic of discarding materials rather than recycling them, beverage containers litter American highways and city streets in distressingly high numbers. The "Keep America Beautiful" campaign and similar appeals to consumers' consciences have not eliminated the problem.