Volume
28, Issue 1
Spring 1998
REMARKS
Are Humans Part of Ecosystems?
Oliver A. Houck
Professor Houck's Distinguished Visitor Lecture
advises those concerned about the environment to use signals from nature,
rather than human actions, as a measure of health of our ecosystems.
ARTICLES
Restoring the Rio Grande: A Case Study in Environmental Federalism
Denise D. Fort
Professor Fort recounts the watershed management
experience of the middle Rio Grande, and in this context discusses the
successes and failures of local and national watershed management in order to
better inform future efforts.
Protecting Ecological Integrity Within the Balancing Function of Property
Law
Terry W. Frazier
Professor Frazier addresses the failure of property
law policy makers to take into account the need to balance ecological integrity
with individual liberty and community interests.
Beating Plowshares into Townhomes: The Loss of Farmland and Strategies
for Slowing its Conversion to Nonagricultural Uses
Jeanne S. White
Ms. White examines the threats to farmland and to
farming communities posed by development pressures. She discusses the importance
of farming to communities and the track records of efforts to preserve
farmlands in some specific location in the United States, including programs
utilizing agricultural districts, exclusive agricultural zoning, taxation
methods, and conservation easements.
The 1872 Mining Law and the 20th Century Collide: A Rediscovery of Limits
on Mining Rights in Wilderness Areas and National Forests
Laura S. Ziemer
Ms. Ziemer examines the 1872 Mining Law and its
potential effects on extralateral mining rights within this nation's public
domain lands. She argues that the terms of the Law should be strictly enforced
in order to place significant restrictions on overaggressive mining.
COMMENTS
Separate But Equal: Double Jeopardy and Environmental Enforcement Actions
Katherine C. Kellner
Ms. Kellner discusses the double jeopardy
implications of the ability of federal and state authorities to prosecute a
permitted entity twice for the same permit violation. Ms. Kellner argues that
this runs afoul of the Fifth Amendment when environmental permitting authority
has been delegated to a state because the federal and state authorities do not
qualify as separate sovereigns.
Searching for the Definition of "Discharge": Section 401 of the
Clean Water Act
Alia S. Miles
Ms. Miles examines the hazards of federally
permitted nonpoint source activities and argues that the tools of statutory
construction support a broad interpretation of the term "discharge"
under section 401 of the CWA.
BOOK REVIEW
Making Sense of Growth and Sustainable
Development: Several Responses to Herman Daly's Latest Book
Michael Wenig
In his Essay, Mr. Wenig reviews the latest book by
Dr. Herman Daly, an economist who has been leading the challenge to society's
economic growth paradigm and offering an alternative "steady state"
economic model. Wenig questions the practical utility of Daly's no-growth model
and critiques Daley's views regarding the ethic necessary to support a steady
state economy. Wenig also dissects the "limits to growth" debate in
order to better understand the issues that lie at its core.