Law Commons^™

The Dilution Of The Clean Water Act, Mark C. Van Putten, Bradley D. Jackson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article argues that the zero discharge goal of the Clean Water Act is more than naive rhetoric. To the contrary, it is the Act's raison d'être, and it is woven into the fabric of the Act's operative provisions. So understood, the zero discharge goal can and should provide continuing guidance for EPA's implementation of the Act.

The International Law Of Pollution: Protecting The Global Environment In A World Of Sovereign States, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The International Law of Pollution: Protecting the Global Environment in a World of Sovereign States by Allen L. Springer

Compliance Without Coercion, Albert J. Reiss Jr.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Environment and Enforcement: Regulation and the Social Definition of Pollution by Keith Hawkins

Love Canal: Science, Politics, And People, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Love Canal: Science, Politics, and People by Adeline Gordon Levine

Relaxation Of Implementation Plans Under The 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments, David P. Currie

Michigan Law Review

This Article probes the convoluted ameliorative provisions of the 1977 Amendments in three parts. Section I deals with delayed compliance orders - orders granted to stationary sources unable to meet the statutory deadlines for compliance. Section 113( d) is the fountainhead provision, and besides a general provision for delayed compliance, it also contains specific provisions for sources unable to comply due to retirement of present facilities, due to investment in innovative facilities with the promise of greater pollution reduction in the future or due to government orders to convert from cleaner fuels to coal.

Section II analyzes two specific relief …

The Clean Air Act Amendments Of 1977 And The National Parklands, Robert Maynard

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article explores the new legislative scheme as it pertains to national parklands. After outlining the history of the PSD concept, the article considers the PSD provisions and their application to national parklands. Examination of the visibility section, which rounds out the framework for preservation of parkland air resources set up in the PSD section, completes the discussion. The analysis focuses on several potential defects in the regulatory structure of the amendments, including the failure to extend immediate protection under the PSD and visibility sections to a large number of national parkland units, the somewhat unrealistic criteria chosen to define …

Michigan Water Resources Commission Act Amendments: A Response To The Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments Of 1972, Jeffrey K. Haynes

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article appraises the strengths and weaknesses of the WRC Act and its recent amendments. After a description of the federal impetus behind the new amendments, the Michigan statutory framework is evaluated, including comparison of the WRC Act with a model state act designed to meet FWPCA requirements. Finally, the past implementation of the Act is discussed, with suggestions for future improvement.

Organized Labor, The Environment, And The Taft-Hartley Act, James C. Oldham

Michigan Law Review

The legal issues inherent in treating out-plant pollution under the Taft-Hartley Act cannot be fully evaluated without a realistic appreciation of practical considerations and industrial experience. For this reason, considerable empirical information has been collected from a variety of sources. The examination and evaluation of this data will precede the legal analysis. The data, it is hoped, will resolve two questions: What is the effect of out-plant pollution on the workers, and what has been the response of labor unions to date?

Effective Pollution Control In Industrialized Countries: International Economic Disincentives, Policy Responses, And The Gatt, Frederic L. Kirgis Jr.

Michigan Law Review

It is generally recognized that efforts toward meaningful pollution control by an industrialized nation or group of nations raise economic problems at the international level. Discussion has touched upon the balance of trade and the effects for developing countries. Yet there seems to have been little attempt to analyze how these problems will manifest themselves and how they may be resolved within the current international legal-economic ordering system. This Article cannot deal with them all, but will examine closely the international competitive disincentives to truly effective pollution-control efforts in the industrialized countries, where environmental imperatives bear heavily on national decision-makers. …

Controlling Great Lakes Pollution: A Study In United States-Canadian Environmental Cooperation, Richard B. Bilder

Michigan Law Review

In this context, a study of the proposed Agreement and, more particularly, of the long history of developing United States-Canadian cooperation that preceded it may be of use. First, this United States-Canadian experience offers guidance for the solution of some of the specific problems that programs for international environmental cooperation may face: questions of framework and approach; institutional organization, function, and authority; determination of objectives; apportionment of burdens; coordination; and implementation. Second, at a time when international discussion has focused principally on global approaches to the solution of environmental problems, it calls attention to the important, if less dramatic, contribution …

The Canadian Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act: New Stresses On The Law Of The Sea, Richard B. Bilder

Michigan Law Review

The Canadian Pollution Prevention Act is of interest in several respects. It opens a new round in the historic and multifaceted struggle over freedom of the seas. It raises complex questions of international law and policy regarding the legal regime of Arctic waters, the concept of contiguous zones, the status of waters within archipelagoes, and the doctrines of innocent passage and international straits. It illustrates both the perception of an increasing number of coastal states that existing international law and international arrangements are inadequate to protect their legitimate interests, and the strong pressures within such states for unilateral action to …

Foreword: Environmental Quality, The Courts, And The Congress, Henry M. Jackson

Michigan Law Review

In America, we have traditionally equated progress with gross national product, with the accumulation of personal goods, with economic development, and with miles of roads, numbers of kilowatts, and acres of land. We have been easily impressed by quantitative measures of who we are as a people and where we are going as a nation.

In many respects the ways we measure progress reflect our society's traditional emphasis on the accumulation of material goods and the expansion of commerce and technology. Our success in achieving these goals is apparent from the statistics. We produce more than ten million automobiles annually. …

Equity And The Eco-System: Can Injunctions Clear The Air?, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

On April 22, 1970, a number of private groups in the United States sponsored "Earth Day," an attempt to turn the attention of the population to matters of environmental concern. The dramatically favorable response to the idea of "Earth Day" suggests the extent to which more and more persons are becoming worried about ecological destruction. One of the methods of preventing that destruction, the obtaining of injunctions against industrial polluters, is the subject of this Comment. The central focus of this Comment is upon the injunction as a means of preventing air pollution, but most of the substance is equally …

Motor Vehicle Air Pollution: State Authority And Federal Pre-Emption, David P. Currie

Michigan Law Review

The problem of state authority over motor vehicle air pollution was recently highlighted when the Illinois Air Pollution Control Board, for the first time, adopted regulations to deal with vehicle emissions. Those regulations are disappointingly feeble. Except for outlawing visible smoke and for making it unlawful to dismantle pollution control devices, the new rules do nothing but state that the Board may decide to do something in the future about pollution from automobiles.

In attempting to improve upon these regulations, however, one is struck with a sense of considerable futility. Given the present limits of technology and the necessarily legislative …

The Evolution Of The Enforcement Provisions Of The Federal Water Pollution Control Act: A Study Of The Difficulty In Developing Effective Legislation, Frank J. Barry

Michigan Law Review

The Federal Water Pollution Control Act,1 which was originally enacted in 1948 and which has been amended five times from 1956 to 1970, has been the primary federal response to the problem of water pollution. The development of that Act in the past twenty-two years has been a story of delayed and inadequate response to the increasing problems of water pollution. The development of the Act's enforcement provisions is particularly representative of those problems. It is the purpose of this Article to examine that development, to point out the shortcomings in the Act, and to analyze the effort that has …

Legal Aspects Of A Federal Water Quality Surveillance System, Jon T. Brown, Wallace L. Duncan

Michigan Law Review

Collection of water quality data is also important for the purpose of determining the present and future needs for water resources and for the purpose of determining the proper allocation of limited financial resources among those needs. In addition, such data are necessary in order to conduct research studies and in order to determine water quality trends for the purposes of long-range planning.

Perhaps the best way to collect such data would be to establish a national surveillance system designed to monitor the quality of the nation's water resources. Such a national system is currently under consideration by the Federal …

Jurisdiction--Atomic Energy--Federal Pre-Emption And State Regulation Of Radioactive Air Pollution: Who Is The Master Of The Atomic Genie?, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Pending litigation between the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and Northern States Power Company presents a potential federal-state conflict over the right of a state to impose upon operators of nuclear power plants more exacting pollution control standards than those required by regulations of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The AEC issued Northern States Power Company a permit to construct a nuclear power generating plant in Monticello, Minnesota. The regulations under which that permit was issued place a ceiling on the amount of radioactive effluents which can be discharged into the air during the course of the plant's operations. But under …

Effluent Charges: Water Polution Control, Giovanna M. Longo

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Various schemes to abate pollution have been proposed as the answer to the problem: expansion of existing treatment facilities; imposition of heavy penalties on individual polluters; granting tax incentives to reduce pollution; an absolute prohibition on dumping of certain or all pollutants; and the imposition of effluent charges. The particular remedy that is pursued should be selected on the basis of its ability to eliminate the root causes of pollution. Therefore, before an effective solution may be formulated, it is necessary to consider the reasons for the existence of the water pollution problem.

Michigan Air Pollution Control: A Case Study, William A. Irwin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The State of Michigan began its fight against air pollution with the passage of two Acts in 1965: the Air Pollution Act and the Tax Exemption for Air Pollution Control Act. In adopting these acts the legislature hoped to solve the state's special needs for immediate air pollution control, created by the heavy concentration of automobile manufacturers and their suppliers in the state. The fight was to be waged through the efforts of a newly-created Air Pollution Control Commission and its staff. To present an evaluation of the success of these efforts, this comment concentrates upon two case studies of …

Water Pollution Control In Vermont: A System Of Effluent Charges, Hobart Birmingham

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In the final hours of a three month session, Vermont's legislature adopted a water pollution control law which imposes fees on polluters. Control of water pollution has been a popular issue in Vermont-its first comprehensive laws on the subject were passed in 1949 -and this new legislation is designed to be a major step toward upgrading much of that state's water resources. Increasing industrial and municipal water use has resulted in such widespread pollution that the traditional private law of riparian rights provides an inadequate remedy to the problem of unclean water. Consequently, state intervention has become essential to the …

Quasi-Contract-Impossibility Of Performance-Restitution Of Money Paid Or Benefits Conferred Where Further Performance Has Been Excused, J. R. Swenson S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

In a recent Oklahoma case, City of Barnsdall v. Curnutt, an attorney was retained by a city to prosecute a damage claim arising out of the pollution of a stream. The attorney was to receive a 40 per cent contingency fee. The defendant in the action made an offer in compromise of $25,000 which was rejected by the city on advice of the attorney. Before the action was brought to trial the attorney died. The counsel substituted by the city obtained a settlement in which the city received $35,000, out of which a fee of $ 10,500 was paid …