"You must remember that since 1916 the way we conduct our business obviously was not a matter in which the public was ever given the knowledge to comment on . . . We are being pried open."

—Office of the Chief Counsel

Federal Highway Administration¹

The Shell Chemical Company is fighting back vigorously against the Environmental Protection Agency's order suspending production of the pesticides aldrin and dieldrin. On August 2, EPA Administrator Russell Train announced the suspension, stating that continued manufacture of the chemicals posed an "imminent hazard" to human health. Train cited studies showing that dieldrin residues are present in most of the food Americans eat, and that small amounts of dieldrin produced cancer in mice and rats when added to their diets.

A recent case provided the Michigan Supreme Court with its first opportunity to consider the state's Environmental Protection Act (EPA).¹ Although the Court was split by a broader issue involving the state constitution, the three Justices joining in the opinion of the court produced a highly significant discussion of the Act and its impact on highway condemnation procedures. Environmentalists view the decision as a major step forward in the law's development.

The first session of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea ended in Caracas, Venezuela in late August without reaching agreement on a single article of a convention on the law of the sea. The Conference is scheduled to reassemble for another two-month session in March, 1975 at Geneva, and the conferees left open the possibility of a return to Caracas next summer for final negotiations and signing of a treaty.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Environmental Defense Fund have won two more rounds in their fight to ban production of the carcinogenic pesticides aldrin and dieldrin, but the final outcome is still far from certain.

The chub is a fish that many Americans have never heard of. To many others, however, it is a food; to the fishermen of Lake Michigan, a livelihood; and to the Vita Food Company, purveyors of smoked chub, a business. In the past few years, the level of DDT and dieldrin in Lake Michigan has risen, and so too have residues of the two chemicals in the tissues of the fish caught in the lake's waters.

Mass-marketed recreational "off-road vehicles" (ORVs) such as snowmobiles, dune buggies, trail bikes, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, and four-wheel drive cars and light trucks are a comparatively recent phenomenon. These descendants of the World War II "jeep" are designed for overland use in addition to travel on paved roads and highways.

Recent ELR Comments have discussed the gradual erosion in the past few years of the "American rule" barring awards of counsel fees to successful litigants.¹ The appearance of public interest legal organizations has accelerated that trend, as the relief sought is usually injunctive, and injunctions do not pay the rent. Beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress has included provisions authorizing grants of counsel fees in several pieces of legislation that depend on citizens' initiative for their implementation and enforcement.

In a sweeping move that has raised some doubts among mayors, city attorneys and environmentalists, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secured congressional enactment in August of a new authority to shift the burden of assessing environmental impacts of HUD-supported projects to local agencies that apply for HUD funds. The operative provision, §104(h) of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974,¹ states:

The extent of the federal government's duty to comply with state pollution control requirements under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 remains a problematic area of environmental law.