Editors' Summary: Superfund's remarkable growth over the last 10 years has produced the equally remarkable growth of "the Superfund industry": a collection of high-technology companies and consultants whose business is the cleanup of hazardous waste sites. The industry's success has stemmed in part from the Superfund statute's liability scheme, which has found money in deep pockets to pay the high cost of waste site cleanup. Ironically, that same liability scheme threatens to suck the Superfund industry itself into the vortex of cost recovery litigation.

Editors' Summary: In an effort to fulfill President Bush's no net loss of wetlands policy, the Department of the Army and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in November 1989 entered into an agreement that clarified mitigation requirements of the Clean Water Act's §404(b)(1) guidelines. The implementation of the agreement was delayed three times in response to concerns raised by oil and gas interests and the development community. After much interagency debate and amidst continued controversy, the Army and EPA signed a new agreement on February 6, 1990.

As we mark the 20th anniversary of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more than a dozen federal environmental statutes have been passed since the Agency was created in 1970. Congress' method for solving environmental problems has been to enact more laws, often in reaction to catastrophes.¹ Pending legislation to create a cabinet-level Department of the Environment represents a unique opportunity to restructure federal laws and environmental regulatory programs.

On March 8, 1990, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published the revised national contingency plan (NCP) in the Federal Register.¹ In early June 1990, Pennsylvania and eight other states filed suit challenging the revised NCP. In New York v. EPA,² the states raise issues that go to the heart of EPA's approach to legal liability for responsible persons in several of its environmental programs.

Editors' Summary: During the last two decades, state and local governments have tried to find places to dispose of their share of the 160 million tons of garbage produced annually in the United States. Faced with landfill closings, local opposition to siting new landfills, and strict environmental regulations, they search beyond their geographic boundaries for disposal sites. In response, state and local jurisdictions with adequate disposal capacity have banned waste generated outside their jurisdiction.

In the 1970s, the newly created U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) embarked on three different regulatory approaches for reducing pollution. First, the Clean Air Act¹ mandated that EPA set ambient-based standards that protect human health and welfare. These standards require existing industrial sources of air pollution to install pollution control equipment only to the extent necessary to meet ambient standards.

Environmental news, like most news today, is enmeshed in the scare-of-the-week syndrome: "If it bleeds, it leads."¹ Reporters, seeking facts instead of truths, usually leave little room for in-depth coverage of scientific or environmental issues. At the same time, environmental stories have grown to be among the stories most widely reported on.²

Editors' Summary: Of cultural and environmental significance, Indian reservations present unique jurisdictional problems. This Article explores the implications of two Supreme Court cases—one on zoning authority and one on criminal jurisdiction—for EPA's implementation of environmental statutes on reservations. After discussing two doctrines of Indian law and the two cases, the author focuses on Justice Stevens' opinion in Brendale v.

Editors' Summary: On May 21, 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in California v. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that the Federal Power Act provides FERC with the exclusive authority to determine minimum instream flow rates for hydroelectric power projects. In so doing, the Court refused to upset the longstanding line of cases, beginning with First Iowa Hydro-Electric Cooperative v. Federal Power Commission, which established the tenuous balance in favor of federal authority over hydropower regulation.

A serious threat to our nation's fundamental environmental charter emerges in the fight over the future of the remaining ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest.