The movement of pesticides within a mixed land use catchment

Although the application of UK non-agricultural pesticides (mainly herbicides) comprises only 3% of the total amount used, similar concentrations of agriculturally and non-agriculturallyderived pesticides are routinely detected in surface waters. This has led to concern regarding the contamination of drinking water resources at concentrations above the statutory limits of the EC Drinking Water Directive (ECDWD), and the consequent risk to human health. Before the risks to drinking water resources can be fully assessed, it is important to understand and subsequently predict the chronic and transient levels of herbicide occurrence in receiving surface waters as a result of their normal application. The factors which influence herbicide transport to the aquatic environment from sites of application, particularly from the wide variety of application substrates, are not fully understood. This project addresses this lack of knowledge through an eighteen-month programme (January 1992-March 1993) of storm event herbicide monitoring on a mixed land use catchment at North Weald (Essex) which periodically received applications of common agricultural and non-agricultural herbicides including chlorotoluron, isoproturon, diuron, simazine and atrazine. To support the field monitoring programme a robust multi-residue pesticide method was developed for the simultaneous determination of the previously mentioned compounds from storm water. This was based on liquid-liquid extraction into dichloromethane and high performance liquid chromatography using photo diode array detection. The pesticide runoff data from agricultural land agreed with similar experiments carried out in the UK. The ECDWD was frequently exceeded in baseflow conditions and more frequently during storm event periods. The extent of the exceedance was found to be related to the period which had elapsed between the herbicide application and the timing of the surface water sampling. The range of application losses for the agricultural data-set was 4.0xlO-4-O.204% (median; 4.6x10-2%). The range of peak storm event concentrations was 0.03-10.0jJg/1 (median; 0.34pg/I). Similar exceedances of the ECDWD were observed during storm and non-storm conditions for discharged waters from the urban land area of the catchment. For the urban runoff data-set, the range of application losses was 0.01-45.1% (median; 0.28%) and the range of peak storm event concentrations was 0.2-238.4pg/1 (median; 0.7pg/l). The results of the monitoring programme show that the underlying factor that differentiated between the fates of herbicides applied to the North Weald catchment was the difference in the application substrate properties. Specifically, the hard surfaces, where low infiltration capacity promotes the generation of relatively high volumes of surface runoff and where poor retention behaviour exists, allow applied herbicides to be readily transported in storm event runoff to receiving surface waters. The simazine, isoproturon, chlorotoluron and diuron runoff data produced during the monitoring programme were successfully modelled using the fugacity-based Soilfug model. In the case of chlorotoluron, this model s performance was compared with a statistical model produced using multiple linear regression analysis, which showed the former approach to be superior since it required less input data and was not site specific

Krazy Kat (review)

Artists have from time to time over the years found the sure knowledge that law and lawyers are an essential part of human life. But mostly they have worked without understanding. Thus, Daumier and Rowland and Hogarth bite, and when we grow stale or slow on our great tasks it is good, though unpleasant, to get such strong teeth sunk into our legs. Dickens bit, too, and bit with effect. Dreiser bit deeper, but he bit with less skill and so with less effect. And there was a French dramatist who I read when I was young who used inexorable Law as a modern substitute for the Fate of Greek drama. He also had no effect

Remarks on the Theory of Appellate Decision and the Rules or Canons about How Statutes Are to Be Construed

One does not progress far into legal life without learning that there is no single right and accurate way of reading one case, or of reading a bunch of cases. For (1) Impeccable and correct doctrine makes clear that a case holds with authority only so much of what the opinion says as is absolutely necessary to sustain the judgment. Anything else is unnecessary and distinguishable and noncontrolling for the future. Indeed, if the judgment rests on two, three or four rulings, any of them can be rightly and righteously knocked out, for the future, as being thus unnecessary. Moreover, any distinction on the facts is rightly and righteously a reason for distinguishing and therefore disregarding the prior alleged holding. But (2) Doctrine equally impeccable and correct makes clear that a case holds with authority the rule on which the court there chose to rest the judgment; more, that that rule covers, with full authority, cases which are plainly distinguishable on their facts and their issue, whenever the reason for the rule extends to cover them. Indeed, it is unnecessary for a rule or principle to have led to the decision in the prior case, or even to have been phrased therein, in order to be seen as controlling in the new case: (a) We there said.. . (b) That case necessarily decided ... These divergent and indeed conflicting correct ways of handling or reading a single prior case as one determines what it authoritatively holds, have their counterparts in regard to the authority of a series or body of cases