Under heavy administration and industry pressure to end its five-year moratorium on the leasing of federal coal lands, the Interior Department has issued a series of regulations that permit massive strip mining of western coal deposits.

Prior to Public Law No. 94-83, the 1975 amendment¹ to NEPA, the Second and Seventh judicial circuits had developed strict interpretations of the statute's requirements concerning federal participation in environmental impact statement (EIS) preparation. Both courts reached these conclusions in the context of the peculiar federal-state interaction that surrounds the planning and construction of federal-aid highways. Now both have recanted. The Second Circuit did so earlier this year in Conservation Society of Southern Vermont v.

On July 22, 1976, two state supreme courts handed down significant decisions interpreting the requirements of state statutes modeled on the National Environmental Policy Act. One of the rulings dealt with judicial review of an agency threshold determination not to file an environmental impact statement; the other concerned the adequacy of a particular environmental impact statement. And one followed a series of judicial opinions construing the state's statute while the other represented the court's first look at its state environmental policy act.

Concluding, for the moment, a 14-year battle by North Carolina residents—joined by local politicians—and national environmental groups against the nation's largest utility, American Electric Power, President Ford on September 11 signed into law a bill that formally includes a 26.5 mile segment of the New River in North Carolina in the national wild and scenic rivers system.¹ The law effectively vacates a license granted by the Federal Power Commission (FPC) to an American Electric subsidiary, Appalachian Power Company, to build a 40,000-acre pumped storage project

Barring the introduction of a radical new energy technology that will ease the use of fossil-fuel and nuclear-powered electric generating plants, energy conservation is both the most pragmatic method of reducing the adverse environmental consequences of electricity generation and the best way of assuring that the demand for electricity does not outpace our capability to generate it.

The California legislature has finally ended four years of suspense by enacting the Coastal Act of 1976,¹ which permanently establishes a permit program governing land use along the 1,100-mile California shoreline.

Two of the most significant public lands laws in many years came out of the end-of-session logjam in the 94th Congress. Under the new laws, both the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, whose practices have been the foci of criticism from environmentalists in recent years, have obtained broad new statutory guidance in carrying out their duties. (At press time, the President had not signed either bill, but no problems were anticipated.)

The proposed Clean Air Act Amendments of 1976, a product of almost two years of legislative effort, died on the last day of the 94th Congress, because of a Senate filibuster of the final version agreed to by Senate and House conferees. The legislation addressed numerous policy issues which have arisen during implementation of the original statute, including significant deterioration of currently clean air, the necessity for urban transportation controls, and control of air pollution from federal facilities.

On October 11, 1976, five years after initial introduction of federal legislation to regulate toxic substances, President Ford signed into law the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).¹ Although the regulatory scheme established by the TSCA is in some respects cumbersome and fragmented, due in large part to the close balance of opposing forces in the 94th Congress, the Act is probably the most significant piece of environmental legislation to be enacted in the last two years.

The Tax Reform Act of 1976, Pub. L. No. 94-455, signed by President Ford on October 4, 1976, includes among its hodge-podge of some 1,500 pages several provisions of interest to those involved with environmental protection. The Act establishes new lobbying rules for tax-exempt charitable organizations, adds tax incentives to encourage the preservation of historic structures, and changes the tax treatment of pollution control facilities.