Editors' Summary: Fee shifting provisions continue to be a vital concern both for those who seek the awards and those who may have to pay them. The law of fee shifting has swung through a series of changes in the past ten years, with Congress and a few courts promoting awards while the Supreme Court has generally discouraged them. Two developments in recent months well illustrate this pattern: Congress has revived and amended the Equal Access to Justice Act, expanding opportunites to claim fees from the federal government, and the D.C. Circuit in Sierra Club v.

Editors' Summary: Despite its importance, historic preservation is an unfamiliar area to many environmental lawyers. The 1966 National Historic Preservation Act requires federal agencies to consider and, where possible, minimize the impacts of their actions on historic properties and sites. Harm to historic properties is among the environmental impacts to be considered in NEPA procedures as well.

Editors' Summary: CERCLA is one of the most important environmental statutes, and one of the most difficult to follow. The shape of the legal scheme is being wrought, not in agency rulemakings, but in the courts, and each week brings another significant decision. To help our readers stay abreast of these developments, ELR tries to provide both in-depth analyses of specific issues such as bankruptcy and generator liability, and surveys of the broad trends in the law.

Editors' Summary: Congress gave private citizens an important, though secondary, role in enforcing the new pollution control statutes of the 1970s. EPA and the states were given the principal responsibility to act when polluters violated standards, but the public was not expected necessarily to sit back and wait for the governments to solve the problems. Citizens could take enforcement matters into their own hands if the governments failed to act.

Editors' Summary: The principal federal program for protecting wetlands is found in §404 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. Section 404 prohibits the discharge of dredged or fill material in the waters of the United States without a Corps of Engineers permit and also empowers EPA to set standards to guide the Corps' issuance of permits.

I have just read the comment in the February 1986 News & Analysis concerning the recent attainment/nonattainment area cases.¹ I found the analysis interesting and thorough. Further, I believe that the analysis is valid based upon what the decisions say. However, I thought I should bring to your attention two aspects of Ohio v. Ruckelshaus² where the court's opinion does not correctly reflect the record before it.

This is the first issue of ELR in the last three years published without the services of Ken Rosenbaum. Ken was hardworking, a meticulous legal editor, and a fine writer. His 1983 comment on bankruptcy and hazardous waste signalled an emerging issue that has since reached Supreme proportions. Ken was responsible for many improvements in the content and presentation of ELR. He wrote ably on public lands, forest management, and insurance issues and made a significant contribution to the literature on NEPA worst case analysis. In addition, Ken played a special role on the ELR staff.

Editors' Summary: The recent wave of citizen suits to enforce federal pollution control laws has touched off waves of controversy, much of it over the fact that citizen enforcers can sue for civil penalties under the Clean Water Act. Two aspects of the civil penalty cases have provoked debate: whether plaintiffs may sue for penalties for past violations where the defendant is now in compliance with the Act, and whether settlements of citizen enforcement suits may direct that payments may be paid to private institutions for environmental quality work in lieu of penalties.

Editors' Summary: It may seem an unlikely place to look for environmental law, but the Food Security Act of 1985 includes several important additions to this field. The "swampbuster" provisions of the Act deprive farmers who fill wetlands to expand their acreage under cultivation of federal price supports for all their crops on all their lands. The author points out that prior to the recent legislation, federal agricultural policies had worked against federal wetland protection policies.

Editors' Summary: The Second Circuit recently held that the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) preserves state tort remedies in interstate water pollution disputes and makes applicable the law of the state in which the alleged injury took place. As a result, Vermont citizens will have their claims concerning pollution of Lake Champlain by a paper mill located across the lake in New York decided under their own law. In so holding, the Second Circuit expressly took exception to a recent decision of the Seventh Circuit, which held that the law of the polluter's state applied.