In the June 1988 issue of the Environmental Law Reporter,¹ Laura Kosloff concludes that the Supreme Court decision in Phillips Petroleum Co. v.

Beginning with enactment of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA),¹ and continuing through the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984 (HSWA)² and the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA),³ Congress has been engaged for almost a decade in a fundamental restructuring of environmental law.

Editors' Summary: Exactly 20 years ago this month, in February 1969, Senator Henry Jackson (D-Wash.) and Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) introduced draft legislation that led the way to the ultimate enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act. A product of the growing environmental consciousness of American society during the 1960s, NEPA was Congress' first modern environmental law, and it set the tone for the complex superstrucure of federal environmental law that was to follow.

Editors' Summary: While the 1988 FIFRA Amendments are not the comprehensive reform package many had hoped for, the Amendments do address an issue at the heart of the pesticide program—EPA's reregistration of old pesticides. After unsuccessful attempts to amend FIFRA in 1982 and 1986, Congress passed a bill stripped of controversial issues such as groundwater contamination and farmer liability for contamination resulting from lawful pesticide use.

I rise (or, more appropriately, write) for a point of personal privilege! I have always wanted to use that phrase, filled as it is with righteous indignation. I am indebted to Professor Edward Brunet of the Lewis and Clark Law School for giving me the opportunity to do so.

Editors' Summary: The Superfund hazardous waste cleanup program has had centerstage prominence in environmental law throughout the 1980s, and its history has been one of virtually continuous controversy and criticism. Some of the debate centers around the Environmental Protection Agency's management and expertise in administering the program, while other debate focuses on policy choices implicit in choosing the program's goals and direction.

Editors' Summary: The United States and other industrialized nations export a significant amount of their hazardous wastes abroad for disposal. Exporters often send their waste to countries where environmental regulation is less stringent than in the generating country in order to avoid the high cost of compliance with domestic disposal requirements. Although the United States and the European Community have established limited controls on waste exportation, these regulations do not ensure that waste shipped abroad is transported or disposed of in an environmentally sound manner.

Despite numerous changes made in the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund)¹ by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA),² the two years of experience with its implementation seem to have produced few improvements in the settlement or litigation process. New cleanup standards are not only driving up the costs of remedial action, but are also delaying further the process of site cleanup by increasing the number of issues that are being litigated.

Last summer, in the midst of a searing heat wave that gripped the nation's capital, the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, upon which I sit, was trying to get a grip on the threat posed by a much larger kind of heat wave, global warming. The testifying scientists asked us to imagine 90-100 degree summer days running nearly three months, triple the current number of days that are this warm. Air quality would deteriorate as the heat wave progressed, since the higher temperatures would cook up a chemical soup of irritating pollutants.

Editors' Summary: The major federal environmental regulatory schemes make frequent use of numerical standards. The consequences of exceeding these standards can be extremely serious—companies may be subjected to civil or even criminal liability, or required to undertake increased regulatory responsibilities. For example, liability under the Clean Water Act is based on exceedances of numerical limits in NPDES permits.