With its recent unanimous decision in Kleppe v. New Mexico,¹ the Supreme Court has probably written its last chapter in a half-century old controversy concerning the authority of the federal government to manage wildlife on federal lands.

In addition to its rulings in Kleppe v. Sierra Club,¹ Train v. Colorado Public Interest Research Group,² and Kleppe v. New Mexico,³ which are individually analyzed elsewhere in this issue, the Supreme Court rendered several other significant decisions in environmental cases as part of its end-of-term flurry of activity.

The Garrison Diversion Unit (GDU), a massive $496 million irrigation project in North Dakota sponsored by the United States Bureau of Reclamation, continues to receive widespread criticism because of its alleged adverse economic and environmental impacts.

Environmentalists have historically challenged only the domestic manifestations of nuclear power. The tangible fact of a nuclear power plant, together with a well-established regulatory system, lends itself to neighborhood mobilization and discrete legal fights. Recently, however, some environmentalists have ambitiously questioned a less visible aspect of the nuclear energy issue: exports of nuclear fuel destined for use in reactors operated in foreign countries.

On July 26, 1976, President Ford signed into law the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZM Act) Amendments of 1976,¹ a measure designed to improve the ability of the nation's 30 coastal states to plan for and control the impact of energy facility and resource development in their coastal areas. The Amendments, which several executive departments had vainly urged the President to veto, augment the present system of federal financial assistance for state development and implementation of coastal zone management programs.

Amaranth, the food color additive popularly known as Red No. 2¹ was one of the first chemical compounds to receive regulatory approval under the Pure Food and Drug Law of 1906,² the original federal food additive legislation. For nearly 70 years, the color was widely used to create or brighten the red, purple, brown and white color of foods, drugs and cosmetics. Then, in early 1976, following literally decades of short- and long-term tests of the chemical, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) abruptly ordered Red No.

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