With water safety in question, monitoring program a hit.
Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard State water officials are making house calls to rural well users this spring as part of a plan to clean up groundwater contamination in the southern Willamette Valley. Though a relative newcomer to the area, Marla McClean welcomed a checkup...

Environmental retreat.
Byline: The Register-Guard Over the past two years, the Pentagon has bullied Congress into granting it exemptions from environmental laws under the patently false pretext that what it calls the "national defense mission" is incompatible with sound environmental practices. Now, the Defense Department wants to...

Shuttered mines still spewing poisons.
Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard MINING'S TOXIC LEGACY Part one of a five-part series THE SERIES TODAY: The Formosa mine in Douglas County is an old-style mining mess that was created barely a decade ago by foreign investors. MONDAY: Federal and...

Love Canal "clean-up"?
While the Bush administration considers the recent completion of toxic waste clean-up efforts in Niagara, New York's Love Canal neighborhood to be an environmental success story, Lois Gibbs (see "Be Safe! Lois Gibbs' New Campaign Urges Caution on Toxic Chemicals," Currents, July/August 2003) begs to differ. Gibbs,...

Briefly.
Byline: The Register-Guard Reception for chief scheduled for today A farewell reception for Cottage Grove Fire Chief Ken Johnson will be held from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. today at the Fire Hall, 233 Harrison St. Johnson's last day is Friday. He's leaving...

Letters in the Editor's Mailbag.
Byline: The Register-Guard Mannix has good record The painful, controversial struggle in Salem over the budget crunch is more evidence that our state is in desperate need of first-rate leadership. This begins with our governor, and would be achieved by the election of Kevin Mannix....

Coming up for air: environmental insurance needs to broaden its base if it is ever to grow beyond a limited specialty. A broader view, however, will take time to catch on because of the gap in understanding between agents and brokers.
From the start, the concept of environmental insurance created significant challenges for underwriters, not least of all the moral hazard the idea that potential polluters would have little incentive to adopt preventive measures, thereby increasing the likelihood of losses. In overcoming that obstacle, environmental insurance became a specialty product...

Alliance for a Clean Waterfront: restoring an urban shoreline.
San Francisco's Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood is a study in contrasts. Home to both the largest concentration of African-Americans in the city and the highest percentage of homeowners, it is also home to numerous environmental hazards, including an aging sewage treatment facility, an outmoded and filthy power plant, and dozens...

'Arranger liability' under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA): judicial retreat from legislative intent.
Although it is easy to sympathize with the courts' intuitive desire to hold liable parties whose egregious and tortious actions have posed environmental hazards for the rest of society, we must also recognize the constraints of the statute that Congress has...

Classifying CERCLA claims: a critique of Pinal Creek v. Newmont Mining.
I. INTRODUCTION Last year, in Pinal Creek Group v. Newmont Mining Corp. (Pinal Creek),(1) the Ninth Circuit decided an important issue of hazardous waste law--what cause of action is available to a potentially responsible party (PRP) who has cleaned up a hazardous waste site and wishes to...