=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #392
—June 2, 1994—
News and resources for environmental justice.
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CABINET STATUS WON’T HELP EPA
by James Handley [1]
Many environmental advocates in the past few years seem to have
set their sights on the holy grail of cabinet status for EPA.
But from my experience as an enforcement attorney at EPA, cabinet
status would do little to reduce EPA’s profound woes and might do
much to exacerbate them.
The essential problem in environmental protection is to convert
from a way of life that consumes ever more resources and produces
ever more pollution, to a sustainable one that recognizes
boundaries. Unending growth is cancer, and it means certain
death. Al Gore recognized this; he devoted several chapters of
his book EARTH IN THE BALANCE to making the case for
sustainability, although he never quite revealed how to
accomplish it. Any action to move us in the direction of
sustainability is opposed by those who are invested in our
growth-oriented, war-based economy. As a result, each and every
environmental decision becomes a political struggle between
well-heeled interests and those whose vision is a sustainable way
of life. Science is virtually ignored in the process.
Examples abound in every one of EPA’s programs. For instance,
EPA has never been able to effectively regulate pesticides
because whenever it has attempted to do so the House
Appropriations Committee has threatened to cut EPA’s budget. For
the past two decades, the committee has been chaired by
Congressman Whitten of Mississippi, whose campaigns were heavily
financed by agricultural chemical interests. Whitten has declared
at various times that regulation of pesticides is a “communist
conspiracy.” Two years ago Whitten was succeeded by Congressman
Natcher of Kentucky who for similar reasons, seemed to share this
view. Thus, despite enormous scientific evidence of health and
ecological damage, and economic data that show organic farming
may be more profitable and more productive, EPA has been unable
to do its regulatory job. Despite EPA’s regulatory inaction,
many farmers are learning that organic farming is profitable and
more sustainable than dependency on expensive petrochemicals.
But for the most part, EPA has been an obstacle rather than a
promoter of this trend.
In the RCRA [Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the federal
hazardous waste management law] program, each decision about how
stringently to regulate a waste stream represents a new battle
field. The Office of Solid Waste has made a practice of inviting
industry to advise the agency on regulation. The result is not
too surprising: if a regulation would impose too high a burden on
an influential industry, it is relaxed, delayed or simply not
implemented. Five years ago, after President Bush promised to
implement the Basel convention, an international agreement that
would restrict exports of hazardous wastes from industrial
countries to non-industrial countries, we worked furiously to
develop implementing legislation. The recycling and metal
recovery industries protested that restrictions on waste exports
would prevent recycling of U.S. waste abroad, and so the EPA
workgroup carved out a recycling exemption despite concerns that
sham recycling could be used as a pretext to avoid protective
restrictions. Even after all the compromises, EPA’s proposed
legislation was buried at OMB because of industry objections that
any control of hazardous waste exports would interfere with free
trade. The U.S. remains one of the few industrial counties that
has not ratified the Basel convention, although that may finally
be changing.
In Superfund, where I have done most of my work for the past six
years, the sites that get cleaned up first are those ripe for
development. Although decisions are couched in terms of risk, in
reality this plays a very secondary role. When prime waterfront
property is involved, EPA finds a way to finance cleanup, and
that’s exactly what’s happening to the Ports of Tacoma and
Seattle. But when powerful mining interests destroy the health
of working class people, EPA has looked the other way. In the
1970s high silver prices induced greedy owners of the Bunker Hill
smelter to operate it beyond its capacity. They pushed the
smelter so hard that they burned the baghouse that was intended
to trap airborne lead emissions. The fire dispersed lead dust
throughout the Coeur d’Alene valley and caused brain damage to
exposed children living there. The mine and smelter owners are
very politically influential: no criminal prosecutions have ever
been initiated, and the civil suit seeking payment for clean up
has proceeded so slowly that the major contributors, including
Gulf Resources, have been able to shuttle their assets out of the
country. EPA is left in bankruptcy court competing with
pensioners of the mining companies for the remaining assets.
The point of these examples is this: EPA is far too susceptible
to the influence of powerful and wealthy industrial interests.
As regulatory agencies often do, the agency has been captured by
the industries it regulates. Cabinet level status for the agency
would not correct this and might make the agency even more
political. Can you imagine how much worse the purge EPA endured
during the early Reagan years would have been if EPA had been a
cabinet agency like Interior? They got Jim Watt. And things
haven’t changed much. In the Clinton Administration, reformers
like Jim Baca are quickly shown the door at Interior. If that’s
what cabinet status means, EPA doesn’t need it.
What EPA does need is real INDEPENDENCE. FDR recognized the need
for regulatory agencies to be politically insulated when he
persuaded Congress to create the classic regulatory bodies such
as the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications
Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission, etc. These
agencies are not part of the executive branch but are
administrative agencies with both legislative and executive
functions. They are directed by commissioners whose terms are
staggered so that no one President can change the commission’s
direction too drastically. A more powerful example is the
Federal Reserve Board, whose members are also appointed by
Presidents for staggered terms. The Fed uses economic data and
forecasts to decide whether to raise or lower interest rates or
change banking regulations independent of Congress or the
President. Even where the Fed’s decisions may adversely affect
particular interests (e.g., bond-holders, when interest rates
rise), it acts independently and there is general agreement that
this serves the public interest. Similarly, an Environmental
Commission should be empowered to use scientific data to set and
enforce national environmental policy. For instance an
Environmental Commission would need to set goals and policy for
reducing fossil fuel use to decelerate global warming, to develop
national policies on materials use and recycling, and on energy
use and conservation, and to set population policy. A
science-based national policy on land use planning and
transportation is also desperately needed.
Obviously independent status for EPA wouldn’t solve all of the
agency’s myriad problems. But if the protection of the
environment is to be given the priority that human survival
requires, environmental policy must be much more independent and
grounded much more firmly in science. Cabinet status won’t do the
trick and is a diversion from the real issues.
AN ILLUSTRATION OF EPA’S LACK OF INDEPENDENCE
by William Sanjour [2]
As an example of how EPA kowtows to industry, consider the
Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). In 1986, Congress wrote into
the Superfund amendments the “Community Right-to-Know”
provisions which required companies to file annual reports of
their releases of toxic substances into the environment. Senator
Stafford, who introduced this provision, explained its purposes
to the Senate including: “The inventories reveal geographic and
industrial patterns of environmental release, which health
officials can correlate with records of disease incidence to
seek out possible relationships.” [3]
Dr. John R. Stockwell, a senior physician with the U.S. Public
Health Service and a specialist in preventive medicine, assigned
to the Atlanta office of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, did just that. Dr. Stockwell, who has published many
research studies in learned journals, did a study of the
possible relationship of the toxic releases in the Chattanooga
area with disease incidence. [See RHWN #366.] However, because
of EPA’s fear of industry reaction, the report was suppressed.
Only after it was requested under the Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) did the EPA office in Atlanta reluctantly release it in
1993.
We have recently obtained a copy of an internal EPA memo written
by William Patton, Dr. Stockwell’s supervisor, to 10 EPA staff,
including Patton’s boss, dated April 14, 1993. It reads
(verbatim):
“I just got a phone call from Susan Hazen [head of the TRI
program in Washington] in the Office of [Pollution Prevention]
and Toxics. They are very concerned that the report is going out
especially when the new Administrator [Carol Browner] has just
given specific instructions to them concerning the upcoming TRI
data release: ‘stay away from linking human health effects and
the TRI data’
“I explained we were using this tool as an inhouse targetting
tool and were forced to release it due to FOIA appeals to Hqs.
“I am holding a short meeting in my office today at 2pm to
discuss possible media questions. Ms Hazen was particularly
interested in our communications strategy on this report. She
sounded upset and said they will have to get to the Administrator
about this ASAP.
“Pat Tobin [Acting Regional Administrator] may need a short
briefing before he is called by Browner.”
As pointed out in RHWN #366, EPA’s reaction to Dr. Stockwell was
to try to get rid of him for doing exactly what was intended
under the law. Meanwhile top EPA officials conspire to subvert
the law.
[2] Bill Sanjour has been employed by EPA for 21 years. His phone
is (202) 260-4502.
Descriptor terms: epa; corruption; malfeasance; misfeasance;
sustainable development; pesticides; organic farming; rcra;
hazardous waste; basel convention; george bush; carol browner;
recycling; sham recycling; superfund; tacoma, wa; seattle; coeur
d’alene; bunker hill; silver; lead; air pollution; gulf
resources; jim baca;