On the 8th of August, the President signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The result? Probably the best demonstration in years that making legislation is very much like making sausages. If you don't like gory messes, avert your eyes, hold your nose, and get out of the kitchen.

With this issue, Environmental Practice and the National Association of Environmental Professionals (NAEP) begin a new relationship with Cambridge University Press as our publisher. We are delighted to be part of the Cambridge collection of journals and we believe that NAEP members and other subscribers will receive better benefits from our new arrangements.

Environmentalists (not entirely the same as environmental professionals, but with significant common interests) recently learned that their program for reform was dead. This perhaps startling news came in late 2004 via an essay, “The Death of Environmentalism,” by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus.1 Not surprisingly, the message was not universally accepted, and some leading environmentalists reacted quite defensively.

Hurricane Katrina passed over the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast approximately 10 to 15 miles from New Orleans on August 29, 2005, and the challenges facing everyone, including environmental professionals, escalated to levels seldom encountered. New Orleans ceased to exist as a functioning city and the coastline for miles lay devastated.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed into law by Richard M. Nixon on January 1, 1970; this year marks its 35th birthday. NEPA was the first of the major environmental statutes passed during the Nixon and Ford administrations. Its requirement that the environmental consequences of actions be evaluated before implementation has been copied by a number of states, some municipalities and tribal governments, and over 100 other jurisdictions around the world. We believe this is an appropriate time to look at some of the issues surrounding NEPA and make suggestions regarding future directions.The authors acknowledge the contribution of ideas by Helen Ingram, University of California, Irvine; Jo Ann Beckwith, Michigan State University; and Jon Allan, CMS Energy Corp. The Editorial Staff is grateful to Michael R. Thomas, Environmental Practice Advisory Board, for his role in obtaining this manuscript. A portion of this article first appeared as a letter to the editor in Science 307:674 (February 4, 2005).

Wind turbines, biodiesel vehicles, and a rainfall simulator were displayed in the shadow of the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Under a large white tent, students from across the country demonstrated new product designs in areas including energy, the built environment, agriculture, ecosystems, transportation, materials and chemicals, information resources, and water.

The complexities of environmental challenges stress our understandings because current theory and research tools are often too discipline-bound to permit holistic assessment of the interrelationships, interfaces, and overlaps that exist in the environment. Too often, teams of talented faculty members from a number of departments come together to apply for a grant or to establish a new footprint and discover that the transaction costs of understanding one another and believing in each other's theories are challenging, to say the least. In addition to the difficulties for faculty members, there is the profound challenge for administrators. Douglas J. Crawford-Brown, Director of the Carolina Environmental Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, admits that “deans often fight such programs because they often report to a provost rather than being ruled by those deans.” Dr. Crawford-Brown points out that these crossdisciplinary programs upset the balance of power in the university system (Crawford-Brown, 2005). Needs for broader understandings, coupled with political realities, challenge environmental programs nationwide.

Hurricane Katrina passed over the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast approximately 10 to 15 miles from New Orleans on August 29, 2005, and the challenges facing everyone, including environmental professionals, escalated to levels seldom encountered. New Orleans ceased to exist as a functioning city and the coastline for miles lay devastated.

For decades, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has considered dredging the Hudson River to remove polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The cost would be hundreds of millions of dollars initially, and over a billion dollars cumulatively, for limited PCB “hotspot” dredging. The USEPA now has postponed dredging to 2007, allowing time to consider whether dredging constitutes the best use of funds. For example, would greater health benefits be obtained more inexpensively by presenting each household along the Hudson with a treadmill? Would greater per capita benefits be obtained by establishing a research institute addressing local epidemiological issues?

To inquire about reviewing one of these books, contact the editorial office (SEM 3127, The Evergreen State College, 2700 Evergreen Pkwy NW, Olympia, WA 98505, (phone) 360-867-5955, (fax) 360-867-5430, (e-mail) [email protected]).

As figuratively as chess simulates military combat on a game board, land mines actualize consequences of combat on wartime battlefields and beyond. Global activism for years has protested land mine use because of its nonmilitary human consequences, but land mines also have environmental consequences. Though eclipsed by the human consequences, the environmental consequences of land mine use are patent, widespread, and unarguable: killing flora and fauna, obliterating habitat, and retarding ecosystem recovery in blast and fire zones. Such consequences legitimize environmental professionals' concerns about land mine use, just as the environmental consequences of potential nuclear warfare legitimized rigorous study of (clearly more severe) “nuclear winter” effects.

Hurricane Katrina passed over the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast approximately 10 to 15 miles from New Orleans on August 29, 2005, and the challenges facing everyone, including environmental professionals, escalated to levels seldom encountered. New Orleans ceased to exist as a functioning city and the coastline for miles lay devastated.

In a recent issue of Orion magazine, Mary O'Brien wrote an article emphasizing that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires considering “all reasonable alternatives to the proposed action,” and that this consideration within the context of NEPA “has become the heart of an EIS [Environmental Impact Statement].” When I first read this statement, my immediate reaction was that the environmental consequence (the impact a proposed action has on the natural and human environment) is the “heart” of an EIS, not the more “heady” or reasoned development and deliberation of alternatives. The Impressionist painter Georges Seurat, most famous for his breakthrough painting, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884 (see cover of this issue of Environmental Practice), pushed art to the edge with his pointillist technique (creating images by painting dots of color) and his profound ability to infuse the canvas with light. In this commentary, I describe or “paint” the images of NEPA as embodied not only in the elements of the EIS but also in the images of our being. I also draw similarities between Seurat's artistry in the creation of his masterpiece and the “art” of NEPA practice. This personal view of NEPA is based on 22 years of NEPA practice as well as a lifetime appreciation for the arts.

Duck Creek watershed, a small watershed in east-central Texas, experienced an influx of broiler growing operations in the later half of the 1990s. Preliminary results indicated that year 2000 levels of broiler litter land application do not pose a water quality concern but that a significant expansion of broiler production would more than double ambient phosphorus loads in the watershed. Environmental and economic modeling were used to assess the effects of phosphorus control measures designed to proactively mitigate the environmental impacts from further broiler industry expansion. Results of best management practice (BMP) simulations indicate that ambient phosphorus loads from broiler litter can be reduced by reducing the rate of litter application, by hauling off litter, by adding phytase to broiler feed, and by amending broiler litter with aluminum sulfate (alum). Reduced-rate scenarios were substantially more cost-effective than haul-off scenarios. Simulations of the phytase and alum BMPs produced net economic benefits in addition to reducing phosphorus loads. Model results thus indicated that relatively low-cost BMP options or ones yielding net monetary benefits (e.g., phytase and alum) would protect water quality in Duck Creek in the event of a low, moderate, or even a very significant expansion of the regional broiler industry. Subsequent to this research, the broiler integrator conducted field trials that confirmed the economic benefits of phytase but not alum. Alum addition did not produce the expected economic benefits, primarily because of the regional climate, which differed from that assumed in the analysis.

J. K. Rowling's books about the life and adventures of Harry Potter have stirred the imaginations of and instilled a love of reading in millions of young (and old!) around the world. But what have been the environmental effects of this reading phenomenon?

What is the significance of a round sign emblazoned with a ladybug and the words “Pesticide Free Zone”? At The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, it is an institutional commitment to maintaining grounds without pesticides that dates back to the college's founding. At Seattle University, the signs signify that grounds manager Craig Chatburn has “just cleaned all pesticides from our storage locker.”

This article is the third in the series of brownfields annual conference reviews featured in this journal. “Brownfields 2004,” the 9th annual meeting, took place at the new St. Louis downtown convention center from September 20 to 22, 2004, with an additional day on each end for pre- and post-conference meetings. As a St. Louis native and former biophysical ecology post-doc at the Missouri Botanical Garden, I jumped at the chance to attend my second brownfields meeting, and the first as a reporter for Environmental Practice. Five people collaborated on last year's version of this article. The conference has gotten so large that a single person cannot supply a comprehensive report; nevertheless, there are a few points that can be made. One is my suggestion to make every effort to attend the 2005 brownfields conference in Denver from November 2 to 4, but try not to go alone. Check www.brownfields2005.org for details.

Elemental mercury is put to magico-religious uses, most problematically the sprinkling of mercury on floors of homes in Caribbean and Latino communities. Indoor mercury spills are persistent and release toxic levels of mercury vapor over long periods of time. Surveys in these communities have demonstrated widespread and large-scale mercury sales for ritualistic use, elevated mercury vapor levels in public hallways, increased amounts of mercury in wastewater, and elevated urine mercury levels in Latino children. Yet no clear connection has been drawn between ritualistic mercury use and these elevated levels, nor has any pathology been associated with such use. Social, political, and economic factors have acted to preclude advocacy for these affected communities, whose members are largely unaware of their mercury exposure (frequently secondhand) and of its adverse health effects. Without the political mandate to act, environmental agencies have not allocated the resources necessary for environmental professionals to assess and respond to this latent environmental health disaster. Steps to investigate and respond to this impending public health emergency are suggested, as presently there is no coordinated plan for assessing and remediating the tens of thousands of dwellings around the country likely to be contaminated with actionable levels of mercury vapor.

To inquire about reviewing one of these books, contact the editorial office (SEM 3127, The Evergreen State College, 2700 Evergreen Pkwy NW, Olympia, WA 98505, (phone) 360-867-5955, (fax) 360-867-5430, (e-mail) [email protected]).

In the 1925 “monkey trial,” attorney and three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, the “silver-tongued orator,” prosecuted John T. Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee, for violating that state's Butler Act. Jennings, who was also a fundamentalist preacher, “created” a controversy that remains relevant to environmental professionals. Most, however, seem unaware of its relevance. Under the Butler Act.