The Clean Water Act turns 30: celebrating its past, predicting its future.

In celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the nation's most successful pollution control statute, Lewis & Clark Law School and the Northwest Environmental Defense Center hosted a national Clean Water Act conference October 17-18, 2002, in Portland, Oregon. The conference featured nationally prominent scholars and practitioners, who provided entertaining glimpses into the history of the Clean Water Act, stimulating comments on the present state of the Act, and predictions for the future. It also featured workshops on the basics of the Act, water quality, wetlands protection, enforcement, and citizen suits.

This symposium issue would not be possible without the thoughtful insights of the many speakers at the thirtieth-anniversary conference. Those speakers included Robin Kundis Craig, Robert W. Adler, Nina Bell, Michael C. Blumm, Derb Carter, Jr., Neil Cartusciello, Robert Dreher, Fred Hansen, Jim Hecker, Craig N. Johnston, Susan F. Mandiberg, James Moore, Mark Morford, Patrick Parenteau, William Rodgers, Stephen Samuels, Eric Schaeffer, Ellen Steen, Bruce Terris, James Waldron, LaJuana Wilcher, and Ann Williams.

The variety and caliber of speakers and topics befitted a statute that has made inroads into nearly every area of modern life. Far from becoming an irrelevant dinosaur sailing smoothly on its past successes, the Clean Water Act contains the tools for continued water quality improvement. From the role of citizen suits in environmental enforcement to the land use implications of total maximum daily loads, the Clean Water Act provides a framework for discussing the legal, political, and regulatory issues of the day. Some of the exchanges that took place at the conference coalesced into the articles that follow, while other articles prepared specifically for this symposium reflect the importance and variety of issues influenced by the thirty-year history of the Clean Water Act. Finally, some articles focus on opportunities for new legal analyses or expose underused areas of the Clean Water Act.

Environmental Law is pleased to present this selection of articles prepared for the Clean Water Act conference. The first article, by Robert W. Adler, scrutinizes the goals of the Act and seeks to resolve the tensions between the Act's aspirations and its current incarnation. The second article of this symposium, authored by Michael C. Blumm and William Warnock, places the Clean Water Act in its historical context and examines some of the regulatory choices made in the Act's thirty-year history. The implications of a recent Supreme Court decision involving the Clean Water Act in the context of other Supreme Court jurisprudence provides the starting point for the third article of the symposium written by Robin Kundis Craig. The fourth article, by Craig N. Johnston, illustrates the practical and regulatory difficulties of integrating the Clean Water Act with another environmental statute--the Endangered Species Act. Finally, Susan Mandiberg exposes some of the disjunctions between criminal law, mental state, and criminal enforcement of the Clean Water Act, and provides an appendix of recent decisions that affect criminal enforcement of the Act.

The editors of Environmental Law would like to thank this year's symposium authors for your contributions and dedication to the topics you present. It was a great honor to work with you, and it is our privilege to present your articles.