Editors' Summary: In 1980, Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, which provided a federal scheme for cleaning up hazardous waste sites and a so-called "Superfund" to finance the cleanups. Congress also considered but failed to include provisions to compensate victims of hazardous waste exposure. Instead, it created a study group, which in 1982 recommended a remedial system for hazardous waste injuries.

Editors' Summary: An important but rarely litigated issue under NEPA concerns the consideration that agencies must give to the human health consequences of federal projects. Although human health effects have understandably been characterized as the "most important issue to be covered in an EIS," on many occasions such effects have been neglected out of concern for the more traditional subjects of environmental analyses. In this Article, Mr.

Earlier this year in KFC Western, Inc. v. Meghrig, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that private parties may obtain restitution of the costs of cleaning up contaminated property under §7002(a)(1)(B) of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). The Ninth Circuit's ruling in KFC Western opened the way for private parties to use the RCRA citizen suit provision to recover their costs of investigating, studying, and cleaning up contaminated property from responsible parties.

The passage of the National Environmental Policy Act¹ compelled the adjustment of traditional legal doctrines in order to accommodate the concerns of environmentalists. The courts expanded long-standing notions of justiciability,² standing,³ and irreparable injury⁴ to allow representation of environmental interests to the degree previously accorded the representation of economic interests.

The federal-aid highway approval process is a labyrinth of which Daedalus could be proud. A series of Policy and Procedure Memoranda (PPMs), Instructional Memoranda (IMs), and Orders creates an administrative maze that the Federal Highway Administration had until recently managed to protect from presentation in the Code of Federal Regulations.

On August 16, 1974, the Environmental Protection Agency announced its latest proposed regulations¹ for implementation of the Clean Air Act's stated purpose, ". . . to protect and enhance the quality of the Nation's air resources . . ."² Usually referred to as "significant deterioration" regulations, the proposed regulations are EPA's latest move in a chess game against the Sierra Club, whose opening move, Sierra Club v.

In 1971, a prominent citizen of Glens Falls, New York, sought to persuade municipal officials that the city needed a swimming pool in one of its parks, and suggested that the pool be built to commemorate a deceased friend.To demonstrate his dedication to the project, the wealthy promoter offered to raise half of the city's share of the construction costs from private sources.

In a note published in the August ELR (On the Road Again: Certification Acceptance Forces NEPA to Adapt, 4 ELR 50023), Jeff Morgenthaler of ELR was sharply critical of the Federal Highway Administration for its recently promulgated "certification acceptance" procedures. In the following Article, David E. Wells, Chief Counsel of the FHWA, and Stanley Abramson, Attorney Advisor in the Office of the Chief Counsel, analyze the purposes and potential of certification acceptance in a strongly positive light. This Article should not be construed as a rebuttal to Mr.

Growth as an American ideal is a fundamental component of the expansive pioneer spirit. It is vital to the maintenance of class mobility. But it is a truism whose hold upon the American approach to land use planning, or lack thereof, is being challenged for the first time in courts throughout the nation.

Garrison Diversion Project, or more simply Garrison Diversion, is the common name of an undertaking of the Bureau of Reclamation with the official title of, "Initial Stage, Garrison Diversion Unit, Pick-Sloan Missouri River Basin Program."¹ The basic scheme of the Garrison Diversion is the withdrawal of water from the Missouri River for irrigation of 250,000 acres of farmland in semi-arid areas of central and north-central North Dakota.² What gives the project international significance is that about 75 percent of the area to be irrigated