Reauthorization of the Clean Water Act: The Dawn of Environmental Legislation under the Clinton Administration

An examination of the apparent leading bill before the United States Senate to reauthorize the Clean Water Act, entitled the "Water Pollution Prevention and Control Act of 1993", or Senate Bill 1114 (herein referred to as "S. 1114" or the "Bill"), reveals legislation consistent with many of the provisions of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. The Clean Air Act Amendments appear to be viewed, at least by the authors of S. 1114, Senators Baucus (D-MT) and Chafee (R-RI), as a precedent for a number of approaches to environmental legislation. These precedents include an extremely detailed permitting program, concentration on the elimination of toxic constituents of discharges or emissions, pollution prevention, and a schedule of permit fees intended to shift the burden of funding the regulatory program to the regulated community and away from the taxpayer. S.1114 would impose on dischargers to surface waters (and indirect dischargers to publicly owned treatment works) many requirements to which permittees under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), established in the Federal Water Pollution Control Act amendments of 1972, were never subject. These new-generation regulatory devices include provisions for forcing technological advance in wastewater treatment without necessarily considering the economic impact on the industry, and prohibiting the use of certain substances in an industry's processes, irrespective of the industry's ability to treat and remove the substances from its effluent. There is a great deal of emphasis, directly or indirectly, on pollution prevention or source reduction of pollutants. Such an emphasis has led to the perception in the regulated community that this bill is far more intrusive into business decisions and process than its regulatory forebears. The Clean Air Act Amendments were a radical departure from the traditional means of industrial pollution control. Many of its more controversial provisions are now being tried out in S. 1114, for water, the other principal environmental medium for waste transport. What are the provisions which have regulated community observers standing up to take notice? This piece selects and summarizes several of the components of S. 1114 which would be sweeping in their effect on regulated industries. It proceeds through S. 1114, describes some of those sections which will have an significant effect on regulated industries, and explains the impact of the selected provisions

Pi-Extended Ethynyl 21,23-Dithiaporphyrins: A Synthesis and Comparative Study of Electrochemical, Optical, and Self-Assembling Properties

21,23-Dithiaporphyrins were synthesized containing pi-extending ethynyl substituents at the meso positions. These porphyrins displayed highly bathochromic and broadened absorbance profiles spanning 400–900 nm with molar absorptivities ranging from 2500 to 300,000 M^–1 cm^–1. Electrochemically, these ethynyl dithiaporphyrins undergo a single oxidation at 0.44 or 0.57 V and reduction at −1.17 or −1.08 V versus a ferrocene/ferrocenium internal standard depending on the type of functionalization appended to the ethynyl group. DFT calculations predict that the delocalization of the frontier molecular orbitals should expand onto the meso positions of the ethynyl 21,23-dithiaporphyrins; shrinking the HOMO–LUMO energy gap by destabilizing the HOMO energy. Indeed, the DFT results agree with our optical and electrochemical assessments. Finally, differential scanning calorimetry combined with cross-polarized optical microscopy and powder X-ray diffraction was used to assess the ability of these porphyrins for long-range order. For the ethynylphenyl alkoxy 21,23-dithiaporphyin, birefringent, soft-crystalline-like domains were observed by polarized microscopy, which are marginally sustained by a low-level of crystallinity detected in the XRD, suggesting that long-range ordering is possible. Overall, ethynyl 21,23-dithiaporphyrins are able to harvest much lower energy light and possess lower oxidation and reduction potentials compared to their pyrrolic analogues, which are desirable properties for applications in organic electronics