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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

Many scholars note the increasing desire of the public to be involved in the policy process. Others observe, however, that public participation in governance is declining. One possible explanation for this is that people do not know the technical and scientific language that is frequently used in these decision processes. Citizens simply lack the information to participate in a meaningful way. This is what is known as the “technical information quandary” (i.e., how citizen desires for increased participation can be balanced against the increasingly technical nature of public policy). Research on public participation suggests membership in voluntary associations or organizations is positively associated with higher levels of technical policy knowledge. Recreation management on the Colorado Plateau provides an excellent opportunity to examine the relationship between membership in voluntary organizations and the level of policy knowledge. In 1998, we surveyed the public living on the Colorado Plateau to ascertain their level of knowledge of technical terms and their level of participation in voluntary organizations. We found that a variety of factors were related to people's membership in these organizations. In particular, our findings indicate that those with higher levels of knowledge were significantly more likely to be members of voluntary organizations and that this knowledge was most likely to come from the organizations. These findings have important implications for environmental managers, as well as for the voluntary organizations themselves.

Natural resource negotiation often involves multiple parties with overlapping interests and issues that can provide opportunities for mutually beneficial solutions. These opportunities can be missed, however, if negotiators are unable to comprehend the facts of a negotiation, understand the interests of other parties, or accurately evaluate the options that increase the size of the negotiation pie. Through structured personal interviews with more than 60 representatives from seven different hydropower negotiations, respondents identified core competencies that help negotiators succeed at accurately comprehending the facts of a negotiation, comprehending the interests of other parties, and fully understanding the available options and alternatives. We categorized those core competencies into three dimensions of negotiation—interpersonal, organizational, and operational.

In Israel, the same governmental bodies and environmental organizations appear repeatedly as environmental disputants. Irrespective of the conflict, they usually hold consistent perspectives and positions. This research offers a methodology for identifying values frames and creating stakeholder profiles to assist negotiators and disputants in finding common ground or trade-offs in resolving disputes. The profiles enable stakeholders to couch their interests and arguments in language (or frames) understandable to other stakeholders. They enable interveners to steer discussions toward trade-offs or reframing of issues. The research is based on interviews with 160 stakeholders in nine Israeli environmental disputes at national, regional, and local levels.

A sound environmental analysis of plans, policies, programs, and regulations can not only streamline the permit process when a specific project is later proposed, but can also identify long-range cumulative and indirect impacts. Washington State regulations direct early integration of state and local nonproject actions, which are defined as the adoption of plans, policies, and regulations. State rules, however, offer little guidance on how, when, and where to integrate the environmental analysis into the planning. As a result, the environmental analysis often does not meet the intent of state law and regulations. In 2001, the Washington State Department of Ecology initiated the development of an optional integrative planning process so that the incorporation of environmental values and issues could be more effectively reflected in local and state government decisions. Pilots covering a variety of plans, policies, and programs were conducted by several state and local agencies. The results indicated that the integration process for environmental analysis improved the clarity and efficiency of proposal development and augmented opportunities for public and agency input. The agencies conducting the pilots also noted that the approach resulted in improved planning documents, particularly in identifying objectives and refining the scope of a nonproject proposal. Although there are substantial benefits from this approach, resistance to this optional integrative planning process needs to be addressed through education, regulation, or other means.

Rapid assessment of land use change at scales ranging from local to global can provide timely, accurate information about land suitability, supporting infrastructure, and regulatory compliance so that developers, resource managers, planners, and decision makers can make critical decisions in the face of uncertainty. One area of concern regarding land suitability is the presence, extent, and quality of wetlands. Federal and state wetland protection legislation and local ordinances have effectively sought to reduce the amount of wetlands converted to other uses or to mitigate for unavoidable removal of wetlands. Identification and delineation of existing or potential wetlands, as well as locations that could serve as mitigation areas, is an important process in environmental planning and development. A method of identifying and delineating wetlands using the technique of rapid assessment at regional scales is presented. This method combines high-resolution remote-sensed and secondary data, including thematic maps depicting vegetation, soils, and surface hydrology in a computer-aided geographical information system. The system provides a co-occurrence analysis in which the presence of existing and historic wetlands can be mapped. Areas identified as wetlands can then be compared with detailed, on-site wetland delineations conducted by professional wetland scientists to check the accuracy of the prediction. Using various combinations of data, prediction accuracy ranged between 75% to more than 80% when compared with on-site delineation. While it is conceded that automated rapid assessment will never replace an experienced professional making a site visit, the technique demonstrates a high degree of accuracy in locating and bounding wetland systems in a cost-effective manner. Further, regional screening tools with a high degree of accuracy can substantially limit more costly and time-intensive fieldwork.

The Curse of Agricultural Abundance: A Sustainable Solution. W. W. Cochrane. 2003. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. 156 pp. $35 cloth.

Coming of age during the Vietnam War, I was a city boy with a tendency toward the counterculture. Staying focused in college was tough. After switching majors six times, I chose agriculture as my course of study, for a selfish reason—I thought the food industry was somewhat impervious to recession and depression cycles and I would perhaps always be employed if I learned about something related to food. I settled in as a student in an Agricultural Business Administration Program at the University of Minnesota, where from 1974 to 1978, Willard W. Cochrane and economist John Helmberger introduced me and other students to agricultural economics. Professors Cochrane and Helmberger would forever change my worldview from self-interest to a more global perspective.

Global Positioning System: A Field Guide for the Social Sciences. J. Spencer, B. G. Frizelle, P. H. Page, & J. B. Vogler. 2003. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford. 224 pp. $29.95 paperback.

Global Positioning System: A Field Guide for the Social Sciences is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the decisions that must be considered prior to fieldwork. The authors discuss locating hospitals or the closest locations of doctors for their social science studies. The decisions for fieldwork are applicable across many disciplines, whether the fieldwork locates wetlands or underground storage tanks. The book forces the determination of the mapping accuracy needed for a project and thus the correct Global Positioning System (GPS) unit. The book explains the multitude of GPS receivers and provides enough information for one to select the appropriate unit. It discusses the many coordinate systems and datums without bogging the reader down.