Release of the Report of the 9/11 Commission in July highlights a generally unacknowledged link between environment and the horrible crimes of September 11, 2001. The Commission, created to “…provide the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11 and to identify the lessons learned” (p. xvi), was not explicitly charged to conduct an environmental and natural resource study, and their Report does not frame the problem as an environmental concern. Nevertheless, through oil, the connections among environment, national security, and 9/11 are clear.

The Marmion Way Corridor portion of the Metro Gold Line Light Rail Transit Project is unique. It is part of the City of Los Angeles's Historic Preservation Overlay Zone within the residential Highland Park neighborhood. Highland Park is centrally located within a larger northeastern portion of Los Angeles that has a population of 300,000, of whom approximately 40% are living at or below poverty level.

Although I have belonged to the International Association of Impact Assessment (IAIA) since the early i99os, it has been years since I attended an international conference. This year was different. I attended the 24th annual conference of the IAIA, which was held between April 26 and 29, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. One of the members of the Board of Directors told me that nearly 1,000 professionals from almost 100 countries were in attendance at the conference.

Water quality trading is receiving great interest as a potential tool for achieving a watershed's water quality goals at less cost. It appeals to both regulators and watershed stakeholders as a voluntary, businesslike approach attracting a category of sources to the table that regulators have been unable to control using traditional enforcement tools—nonpoint sources. Non-point source pollution is a major source of the water quality problems still needing to be addressed in watersheds throughout the United States. Following the remarkable success of the Acid Rain Program's sulfur dioxide emissions trading system, however, expectations have been raised for all pollution trading systems. To date, water quality trading projects across the US have failed to deliver on those expectations because of the predominance of the “offset” trading model in their program design, which is characterized by significant costs in both time and resources to support trades. In this article, we argue that, although critical differences exist between water quality trading and the “cap and trade” model of the Acid Rain Program, water quality trading programs should consider incorporating certain key design elements that have contributed to the Acid Rain Program's success. We describe Idaho's Lower Boise River water quality trading framework as an example of how this can be done.

Landscape aesthetic values can easily be overlooked or undervalued in the environmental impact statement (EIS) process. Public sector projects may underestimate the aesthetic damage they cause, which, if fully considered, could alter the types of projects undertaken or the form those projects take. This article seeks to more persuasively represent the aesthetic damage wrought by a public project by attaching to it a dollar figure. Cost-benefit analysis is often incorporated into the EIS, but for cost-benefit analysis to be valid, all costs and benefits must be fairly represented. To exclude aesthetic value from the analysis on the basis that beauty is intangible or priceless is to assign it a de facto value of zero in cost-benefit calculations. The monetizing of aesthetics is approached by integrating the methods of economic contingent valuation with landscape aesthetic assessment. Economic values and aesthetic values can be reconciled; a demonstration of the integration of methods is provided.

There is the potential to use continuous sampling whole effluent toxicity monitors, based on respirometry, as early warning systems for water contamination. in order to apply these monitors, however, many issues influencing system response and data analysis must be addressed. This study examines the use of a continuous flow-through toxicity monitor (Bioscan®) to (1) determine the sensitivity, accuracy, and precision of the toxicity monitor to different concentrations of a stressing agent (in this case pH), (2) establish operational and maintenance procedures, and (3) examine the consistency in the measured response to a single perturbation. The system precision was sensitive to all the pH pulse perturbations, with stable background variability (1 % to 6%); however, replicated pulse applications demonstrated that the system has lower accuracy (31 % to 38%). The response consistency was limited, with notable differences in maximum dissolved oxygen and recovery time. The initial response time (inclining slope) was relatively consistent. Although this examination should be repeated with other contaminants used to stress the toxicity monitor, it appears that continuous flow-through toxicity monitors like the Bioscan® are well suited for qualitative early alert warning systems for water contamination.

Remediation of aviation fuel present in the subsurface as light non-aqueous phase liquid (LNAPL) occurred from 1982 to 1996 at a facility in an industrial section of a small city in eastern Asia. An undetermined amount of the aviation fuel had leaked from underground storage tanks into the unconfined aquifer for an unknown, but extended, period. The release was discovered in 1981, and 57 monitoring wells were eventually constructed, along with a non-aqueous phase liquid recovery system. The recovery system was operated into the late 1990s, when pumping was discontinued because recovery rates had declined to negligible levels. Monitoring data were collected throughout the remediation period, but because of the large and unwieldy amount of data available, the temporal and spatial distribution of the non-aqueous phase liquid was difficult to visualize and the data were never carefully analyzed. Surfer 8® software was used to generate surface models representing non-aqueous phase liquid thicknesses. The significance of using Surfer 8® for the analyses is that it is an “over-the-counter” basic software package that is relatively inexpensive, very easy to learn, requires no special computer skills, and produces a product that is useful to policy makers and others with limited technical expertise. The surface models made it possible to visualize the effects of hydrogeologic factors on the migration and recovery of the non-aqueous phase liquid as well as other features of the contamination that previously had been unrecognized.