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A Practical Guide to Surviving Multimedia Inspections

Editors' Summary: Facility owners and operators that have become accustomed to environmental regulatory inspections that focus on a single medium are in for a change. EPA is placing greater emphasis on conducting multimedia inspections. This new focus requires that facilities be better prepared in order to minimize potential penalties. Focusing on potential RCRA, FWPCA, and CAA violations, this Article provides background on multimedia inspections and suggests steps that facility owners and operators can take to enhance their chances of safely surviving a multimedia inspection.

Regulation of Radiological and Chemical Carcinogens: Current Steps Toward Risk Harmonization

Editors' Summary: Until recently, the regulation of chemical carcinogens and the regulation of radiological carcinogens developed independently. Different governmental agencies operating under different statutory directives were responsible for addressing the dangers from these carcinogens. As a result, different policies and practices were developed. This Article explores these differences and the record on resolving them. It first examines the history of federal regulation of chemical and radiological carcinogens and summarizes EPA's approach to risk assessments for them.

The Clean Water Act: What's Commerce Got to Do With It?

Few commentators doubt the value of clean, unadulterated waters teeming with varied and colorful aquatic life. The debate centers instead on more pragmatic concerns, that is, how to best accomplish the accepted imperative. Some maintain that the primary responsibility should fall on the federal government because of its insularity from regional economic and political pressures. Others suggest that states should take the lead because of their familiarity with and ability to respond to local environmental concerns. Both sides have valid points.

The Right to Trial by Jury in CERCLA Cost-Recovery and Contribution Actions

Editors' Summary: Federal district courts are nearly unanimous in holding that the right to trial by jury under the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not apply to CERCLA cost-recovery and contribution actions, because those actions are for equitable restitution rather than legal damages. The author suggests that the district courts have erroneously concluded that these actions seek equitable restitution. The Article begins by discussing the U.S.

Property Rights and Responsibilities: Nuisance, Land-Use Regulation, and Sustainable Use

Editors' Summary: This Article addresses the effect of the U.S. Constitution's Takings Clause on the government's authority to protect environmental resources. An earlier Article, published in the May 1994 of ELR, analyzed bases for government regulation provided by limitations inherent in the property right itself. In contrast, this Article focuses on an emerging doctrine of sustainable use, rooted in background principles of nuisance law and the government's complementary police power.

Property Rights, Property Roots: Rediscovering the Basis for Legal Protection of the Environment

Editors' Summary: Environmental regulation has come under increasing attack from those who argue that governmental limitations on property use violate constitutional restrictions on regulatory takings of property. The author addresses this controversy by focusing on the background limitations on owners' rights that are inherent in property law itself, as opposed to the external controls that government may impose under the doctrines of police power and nuisance.

Development Moratoria, First English Principles, and Regulatory Takings

Is an intentional temporary deprivation of the use of land not a "temporary taking"? This proposition was asserted by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. The Ninth Circuit denied en banc review, despite a strong dissent by Judge Alex Kozinski. Perhaps because it had never explicated the meaning of "temporary taking," and perhaps in part because its interest was kindled by the Kozinski dissent, the U.S. Supreme Court recently granted certiorari. The question is limited to:

A Practical Guide to Writing Environmental Disclosures

Editors' Summary: An information-sharing arrangement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gives teeth to the Securities and Exchange Commission's warning that companies that do not satisfy environmental disclosure requirements will be subject to enforcement actions. This Article provides companies a framework from which they can develop a strategy to meet those requirements. After briefly reviewing the relevant law, regulations, and guidance in this area, the authors offer insight into crafting and executing an effective environmental disclosure strategy.

How to Reduce Lead Exposures With One Simple Statute: The Experience of Proposition 65

Editors' Summary: Human exposure to lead is one of the most serious environmental health threats today. Lead causes a variety of adverse health effects and is particularly harmful to children. Unfortunately, the current regulation of lead exposures is fragmented and often unsuccessful. California's Proposition 65, a right-to-know initiative, however, has achieved some noteworthy successes in reducing public exposures to lead.

The Interior Department's Water 2025: Blueprint for Balance, or Just Better Business as Usual?

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR or the Bureau) observed its centennial in 2002, and celebrated 100 years of building dams and supplying water for irrigation and other purposes in the western United States. In 2003, the U.S. Department of the Interior (the Interior) and the Bureau shifted their focus to the future of the West and its water supply needs, producing a document called Water 2025: Preventing Crises and Conflict in the West.