Abstract
On June 6, 1989, seventy agents from the FBI and EPA, armed with a search warrant, entered the Department of Energy's Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado. Capping a tenmonth criminal investigation, the search exposed evidence of a wide range of environmental violations, including the secret incineration of hazardous wastes, false claims of compliance with groundwater monitoring requirements, and intentional mixing of hazardous and radioactive wastes.1 The Rocky Flats incident is a particularly dramatic but nonetheless accurate reflection of the type of environmental problems created by federal facilities. By the mid-1970s, the federal government had adopted statutes governing almost every major environmental threat, including air emissions, pesticides, and hazardous waste dumping. As the 1990s commence, one great irony is that the federal government continues to be a major violator of its own laws. From the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine to the Feed Materials Production Center in Ohio to the Hanford Reservation in Washington, almost every state in the country faces pollution problems caused by the activities of federal facilities.2 The prob-
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