June 16, 1991

Seven years elapsed from the time the Environmental Protection Agency identified the Helen Kramer Landfill in Mantua, N.J., as one of the nation's worst hazardous waste dumping grounds in 1982 until a $55.7 million cleanup contract was awarded. Now that work is under way, the litigation over who will pay is rapidly escalating. The Federal Government is suing 25 companies and New Jersey is suing the same companies and 25 others. A handful of these defendants have sued 239 other parties they say are responsible for most of the waste, including Philadelphia and other municipalities. And most everyone is also suing their insurance companies. Long delays, regiments of lawyers, blizzards of documents, a widespread sense of being unfairly singled out to shoulder others' responsibilities -- this is life in the clutches of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, better known as Superfund. And that's when things are going smoothly, as they have by most accounts at Helen Kramer.

Take out your pencils for a multiple-choice test. The best and brightest forecasters at Wall Street's leading blue-chip firms think that: a. The recession is over, the recovery will be tame and inflation will be low.

The last year Joe Bostick farmed his 5,000-acre plantation outside this town of 2,300 people, he lost $80,000. Deer ate his soybeans, corn and wheat. So Mr. Bostick, whose forebears had farmed this land since it was given to them by King George III in 1769, decided 15 years ago to break with the past. He started a commercial hunting operation.

AFTER three years of planning and a three-month hunt for an endangered species of snake, a developer received approval in May to build a 122-lot subdivision here. The developer, Stephen M. Kasprzak of Waterboro, is building a cluster development of Cape Cods, salt boxes and ranches on 465 wooded acres that adjoin a significant wildlife habitat. They will be priced at $90,000 to $120,000.

AMY RODRIGUEZ will attend the University of Connecticut at Storrs in the fall, with $3,500 in scholarships. Miss Rodriguez, an 18-year-old senior at Brien McMahon High School in Norwalk who holds down two part-time jobs, said she would not have received the financial aid she needed to go to college without the help of the high school's college guidance seminars for Hispanic students. Isabel Villar, the Brien McMahon guidance counselor who coordinates the seminar program, helped Ms. Rodriguez find out about and apply for scholarships, many of which are not widely advertised, the student said.