The Convention on Nature Protection and Wild Life Preservation in the Western Hemisphere¹ was introduced in an article in the May issue of ELR,² in the context of an analysis of the recent decision in Izaak Walton League v. St. Clair.³ The author suggested that the Convention provided independent grounds for support of Judge Neville's opinion enjoining mining activities in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of the National Wilderness Preservation System.

On January 1, 1970, the Council on Environmental Quality came into existence with the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act.¹ The CEQ was to serve as the guardian of environmental concerns within the Executive Branch. It was given the functions of advising the president, monitoring other agencies' compliance with NEPA, and providing information to the public on environmental matters.²

Section 309 of the Clean Air Act¹ makes the Environmental Protection Agency full partner of the Council on Environmental Quality in the task of overseeing implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act.² Congress gave EPA responsibilities complementary to those of CEQ so that both agencies could accomplish together what each alone would be unable to do. Section 309 lays the groundwork for a formidable administrative team fully capable of ensuring compliance with NEPA in government decisionmaking.

On July 23, 1973, a consent judgment was entered against the defendants in a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., titled National Wildlife Federation v. Tiemann.¹ This Article explains the terms of a settlement agreement included in the consent judgment and suggests ways in which citizens concerned about ongoing construction of the federal-aid highways affected by the settlement agreement may take advantage of it.

The comment is often made that the states are experimental laboratories for environmental legislation.¹ In the instance of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the opposite has been the case. The federal government has served as an experimental laboratory for the various states. The experiment has proven successful, and that states are now adopting their own "little NEPAs." It is the purpose of this Article to summarize the state provisions.

Over the past three years, the courts have had many opportunities to interpret NEPA. The Act has been involved in 149 separate litigations, some of which have produced several opinions. Yet, Chapters IV, V, and VI abundantly confirm that the bulk of these interpretations focuses on the one short action-forcing provision set out in §102(2) (C). As important as that section is, its role is nevertheless an essentially subservient one. An archive of disregarded assessments that bring about no real improvement in federal decisionmaking might satisfy §102(2) (C), but would fail NEPA as a whole.

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969¹ (NEPA) was intended to bring about fundamental reform on all levels of the federal decisionmaking process where the environment was concerned. On its fourth anniversary (the law was signed on New Year's Day, 1970), the Act still has far to go in achieving its ambitious goals. Yet, the progress that it has made has revitalized many of the bureaucratic processes that slight environmental values.

To citizens who perceive the government's regulatory agencies as invariably bent on aggrandizing their power, it may come as a surprise to learn that these agencies have sometimes opposed efforts to make them assume new authority. The Federal Power Commission is one of these; for more than half a century, it has resisted attempts to expand its jurisdiction.

One of Aesop's fables tells of a wolf and a lamb who were drinking from the same stream. The wolf snarled at the lamb that it was muddying his drinking water, and that as punishment it would be eaten. "But," the lamb protested, "I can't be muddying your water, I'm downstream from you." The lamb was promptly eaten as a punishment for insolence.

Although DDT was immensely beneficial when first developed during the Second World War, its dangers, ably documented by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring, soon became apparent. One of the principal disadvantages of DDT is its persistence in the environment. But the persistence of the chemical proved to be as nothing compared with that of its manufacturers. On December 13, however, environmentalists won what appears to be the final round in a 10-year battle, first in state and then in federal forums, with the pesticide lobby and its friends in the government.