800R84104
EGUARD J. HAHLEY
Ptl-211
REMARKS OF THE HONORABLE WILLIAM D. RUCKELSHAUS
ADMINISTRATOR, UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
NATIONAL NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION
RENO, NEVADA
SEPTEMBER 27, 1984
Good morning, and thank you for the generous invitation
to share some time with you at your annual meeting here in Reno.
As you may know, I am now serving my second term as Administrator
of EPA. My decision to return to Washington plainly astonished
many of the Agency's staff. They had been predicting for months
that the President would never find a new Administrator with the
right qualifications—namely, someone smart enough to do the
job but dumb enough to take it. Given the controversy that
surrounded EPA at the time, I have to admit that only a fool
or a statesman would have agreed to occupy the office. And
while a consensus may have grown up in support of the former
interpretation, I myself cling steadfastly to the latter!
Your theme at this convention is credibility—presumably
yours as newspaper people. If I may, I'd like to discuss credi-
bility as it pertains to a different party—a national agency
engaged in protecting the environment and public health. For as
necessary as credibility is to a purveyor of truth through the
press, it is just as essential to an agencv like EPA, which seeks
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to determine how much health or environmental protection the
public should buy and at what price. Our authority to make and
enforce our decisions, so necessary to society, is not based
solely on congressional mandate; it is also founded on the
public's willingness to continue to delegate to EPA the power
to make these delicate choices for them. That delegation will
ultimately be withheld if we are not trusted to exercise it
fairly. In short EPA, to function, must be credible.
The environmental challenges America faces today are truly
formidable. With growing frequency, new scientific evidence
suggests that substances once thought safe may cause long-term
harm in such frightening forms as cancer and birth defects.
With measurement instruments of increasing sophistication we
are now able to detect the most minute concentrations of the
suspect chemicals, and we are discovering these substances in
our environment with increasing regularity. The questions for
EPA are many: Are these chemicals dangerous in the concentrations
in which we are finding them? How dangerous, to how many people,
and over what period of exposure? And, in light of other
risks to which society is inescapably exposed, to what extent
should one particular threat be isolated and controlled as
opposed to another? These questions, needless to say, call as
much for judgment as for science in the search for an answer.
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Among the chemicals that cause the most concern are the
necessary waste products of our industrial society. As a
regulatory agency, EPA is required to define which chemicals
must be controlled, to stipulate the extent of their control,
and to authorize disposal methods appropriate to each class of
waste. Beyond this, we must come to grips with the legacy of
decades of neglect in the form of abandoned hazardous waste
dumps that litter our landscape and threaten to contaminate our
ground water. This means finding and sorting these dumps by the
degree of risk they pose to public health and essential natural
resources. And it means committing public funds to long-term
engineering projects of a type rarely if ever before attempted.
Now that is a daunting agenda. And it requires an inspired,
committed, and energetic group of public servants to address it.
Fortunately EPA is blessed with such a workforce. Further, I
am convinced by three additional facts that we can do this
job and do it well. First, EPA has done great deeds before.
The record of the Agency in reversing a national trend toward
more conventional gunk in our air and water is a fine one. And
while it is fashionable nowadays to think of our early efforts
as aimed at the "easy" part of pollution, a review of my working
papers from 1970 reminds me that in those days conventional
pollution of the Nation's air and water seemed to us then just
as daunting a proposition as the control of toxic pcllutants
does now.
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Second, we now enjoy the professional partnership of
States, whose environmental programs have grown up in the past
thirteen years. Today States, not EPA, manage by far the
majority of the day-to-day work that makes for adequate
environmental protection. Add to these advantages the third
factor, an abiding public consensus that the cost of environmental
quality is an investment worth making, and we have the conditions
for continuing progress.
There is, however, one enormously important factor working
against further environmental success. That is the matter of
credibility. For EPA adequately to pursue the public interest,
we must regain the "benefit of the doubt" that allowed us to blend
facts with judgment in writing the rules that led to cleaner air
and water. EPA is made up of people—people who certainly do not
claim to know all things; nor are they entirely ignorant. But these
days EPA's people are being squeezed between two views of the role
of a regulatory agency in securing safety frn-n toxic substances.
One group says that EPA must presume knowledge where there is only
a question, and regulate possible threats to public safety
-whether or not they are proven and even though we lack adequate
means to secure absolute protection. The other view suggests that,
lacking complete knowledge of the threat and a proven means of
protection, EPA should withold judgment and temporize on solutions.
Amid a clamorous din from both sides, EPA risks losing the
freedom to examine each matter in turn and to make a dispassionate
judgment in the public interest. Our credibility is threatened.
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At first glance, this seems a puzzling development.
After all, in light of EPA's record of achievement over the
past thirteen years, we should be enjoying more latitude in
making these difficult judgments, not less. Despite a population
increase of 30 million people and GNP growth of nearly 39 percent
from 1970 through 1981, both carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide
emissions dropped by more than 20 percent. In the same period
particulate emissions fell by 53 percent. Ten years ago, a city
like Portland, Oregon, exceeded the carbon monoxide standard a
hundred days out of the year; currently it's more like two or
three days. That story has been repeated in countless
metropolitan areas, and that's progress.
As for the water, we have provided high-level municipal
sewage treatment for over 80 million Americans since 1970.
Toxic discharge controls, either already in place or now being
written into permits, ultimately will eliminate about 96 percent
of those poisonous substances that were routinely dumped into the
nation's streams until 1972. Overall, since that time, we have
upgraded water quality in 47,000 miles of our rivers and streams,
promoting a renewal of fish stocks and recreational uses that
has restored national pride in the cleanliness and vitality
of the nation's waterways. Once symbols of national neglect,
the Willamette and Trinity Rivers and Lake Erie now pay tribute
to our earlier environmental determination. An environmental
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disaster such as Cleveland's Cuyahoga River bursting into flames,
which back then galvanized public sentiment to reverse the
spread of environmental contamination, is now unthinkable.
That too is progress.
Yet the question remains: why does it seem that we are
doing better and enjoying it less? True, today's environmental
problems are a bit thornier than yesterday's, the unknowns more
extensive than before, the solutions more complex and expensive;
but EPA is still unquestionably the institution best-equipped
to tackle them. Why, then, when people have successfully
trusted to our discretion in the past, would they deny to EPA
the exercise of that discretion now? The answer, I think,
lies once again in the issue of credibility. These days we
labor with rather less of it than in the past. Two simple
factors account for this. One is a natural development'affecting
all public institutions over time; the other was manufactured
within our own walls.
The first reason is what a mayor might call "The Pothole
Effect." A local official knows that no matter how well-supported
he might be in the community, sooner or later each of his
constituents will discover a pothole outside the door that
city hall had better fix right away. For every pothole not
filled properly and immediately, count one more citizen prepared
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to give the mayor a hard time on the bigger issues. Just so -•
with EPA. Given the degree of concern over the deteriorating
quality of the environment in 1970, EPA benefitted from a pro-
digious outpouring of public faith and confidence. Over the
years we have, by and large, lived up to that confidence; but,
just as certainly, at one point or another we have failed every-
one's expectations at least once. So over time it is natural
that we be questioned harder, and the numbers of our critics mount.
The second reason is based in the public perceptionAthat
politics, not commitment to the Agency's mission, had become
a dominant factor in EPA's decision-making. I do not wish
to belabor the story of EPA's trials prior to my return; that
has received all the attention it is useful to give, and perhaps
more. Still, the lessons of that painful period must not be
lost on future Administrators of EPA.
To me the chief lesson is that even the appearance of
politics playing a role in matters affecting the public health
is fatal to the credibility of an institution like EPA.
Arranging the timing of Federal largesse for political purposes
is an old story in Washington, one that barely rates a line of
type any more. The closer it gets to election day, the greater
the visibility of long-planned Federal grant awards—complete
with attendant ribbon-cutting by Senators or Members of Congress
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pursuing re-election. So long as it is clear that it is the
timing of the award that is being manipulated, and not the need
for the grant on its merits, this practice has come to be
accepted as part of the game by members of both parties and—
dare I say it—the press.
But not for awards affecting the public health. For instance,
when it comes to cleaning up Superfund sites, where public health
may be at stake, the" only acceptable factors affecting timing
can be the degree and immediacy of the threat, the sufficiency of
funds, and the availability of effective control techniques.
I do not suggest that there is no room for a political person
in environmental decisions. In fact, politics plays a crucial
role. Each party has a broad but identifiable philosophy that
defines its approach to public issues. When Americans vote,
they endorse not only a candidate, but the principles that he
or she upholds. Within the broad latitude that each party
affords its members, public officials are expected to act in
conformance with the political principles held by their party.
In this broad, philosophical sense politics should properly
influence how EPA goes about its business. But that is the
extent of it. EPA's business is first and always protecting
public health and the environment. It is not, and must never
be, finagling priorities in a quest for votes.
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We cannot change history, and I have acKnowledged that one -
reason for my return to EPA was to help restore its essential
credibility. We have been working very hard on that problem.
To put our strategy in its most succinct form, we are following
the advice of Peter Drucker, the noted management "guru": We are
"doing the right thing" and we are "doing the thing right."
Or as Mark Twain so wryly put it, "Always do right? it will
gratify some and astonish the rest." That is what we are aiming
for, and I have faith that our sustained record of trying to
do right will eventually bridge our temporary credibility
gap.
I want to touch on some of the work we have done in the
last year and a half. Let's start with Superfund. When I arrived
EPA's policy called for the Agency to negotiate settlements with
responsible parties to clean up the most dangerous sites before
applying Superfund money to the task. No longer. Now, when
quick clean-up is indicated, we do it with Federal funds and
worry about who will pay for it later. As of June 30, we had
approved 392 short-term emergency clean-ups to eliminate
immediate threats to public health; 328 of these actions are
already complete. We have reached settlements for responsible
party reimbursement in 125 cases, worth more than $300 million,
and have $123 million more in reimbursements either under
litigation or pending. So we are doing the right thing, and I
believe we are doing it right.
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You may have seen that EPA has removed only six from the
more than 500 sites on our National Priority List or those
eligible for federal funds. In some cases, that figure is portrayed
as an indictment of EPA's management of the program. Let me
tell you what that figure really means. While there is no
such thing as a "typical" Superfund site, more often than not
a major danger posed by the slow decay of long-abandoned hazardous
waste containers is 'that the site is located over an important
aquifer. As wastes leach down through the soil they eventually
penetrate the aquifer, forming a plume of contamination in the
ground water. Poisoned ground water can be catastrophic,
especially if the aquifer is a source of drinking water for a
community. Ensuring that such an aquifer is maintained in a
usable condition can take as long as fifty years. Under those
circumstances, we undertake long-term treatment, but while the
problem remains, we do not remove the site from the National
Priority List.
So, while it is true that only six sites have been removed
from the National Priority List, we have taken appropriate
action at hundreds more. We refuse to fudge the numbers to
give the public a false sense of security. We think that is
the right thing to do.
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Lead. We have made tremendous strides over the years in
removing lead from the environment. In fact, just in the period
between 1975 and 1982, ambient lead—lead in the air—was reduced
by 64 percent. In 1982 we tightened the standard, but we
subsequently found that the additional reductions in ambient lead
needed to protect public health were not materializing. Why not?
Well, about 80 percent of all ambient lead comes from leaded
gasoline. It turns out that too many people were putting
leaded gasoline where it doesn't belong—in the tanks of vehicles
designed to run on unleaded gasoline.
Since one strategy was not working, we substituted a better
one. Recently I announced that the current standard of 1.10 gram
per gallon would be reduced to 0.10 gram per gallon as of
January 1, 1986. In the next few years, with the advent of improved
substitutes for lead in gasoline formulation, it should be possible
to eliminate lead altogether. In the meantime, kids who live in
areas with heavy auto emissions will no longer bear the burden
of poor health occasioned by those who have been saving a few
cents per gallon by misfueling their cars. I think that was the
right thing to do. I also think that we went about setting
this rule in the right way. We calculated the total cost to
all refiners by eliminating lead to be substantial, around
$575 million. But when we calculated the net social benefit we
found that the nation would save around $1.8 billion in reduced
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medical and rehabilitation costs, vehicle maintenance, and fuel
inefficiency. Add the benefits of cleaner air to the bargain
and we snapped it up.
One last, brief example: ethylene dibromide, known—not too
popularly—as EDB. EDB has been use'd for years as an effective,
multi-purpose fumigant for both soil and agricultural commodities.
Its use has saved growers billions of dollars over more than two
decades by preserving food from spoilage and infiltration by
pests. New research, fortified by advanced methods of residue
detection, raised the concern that long-term exposure to EDB
in minute concentrations could cause cancer, genetic mutations,
and reproductive disorders in animals and—by extrapolation—in
humans.
This was a case in which public concern, fanned by a torrent
of emotional and only partially accurate reports, grew to a fever
pitch in a very short time. EDB had been in constant use for
twenty-five years; the dangers ascribed to it are real, but long-
term—problems that might develop only over long periods of regular
exposure. While such risks should not be tolerated any longer than
necessary, there was no reason to believe that taking a few weeks
for careful consideration of all the options would occasion any
measurable additional risk. As it was, the public atmosphere in
which EPA had to review the facts and make a regulatory judgment
was one of broad-scale fear and incipient panic; we had to make
the right judgment, and we had to make it fast.
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The decision we did make was to issue an emergency suspension
of EDB in grain fumigation in order to halt any further use.
This was reasonable since there are effective alternatives to
EBD for that use. We also set a safe tolerance level for
previously treated grain products containing any residue of
EDB. As to citrus and some tropical fruits, we allowed
limited continued use, and set a residue tolerance level that
would minimize risk to the public.
With regard to EDB, I believe we did the right thing,
but I am not so sure we did the thing right. We did do risk/
benefit analysis, and we did involve the public in our pro-
ceedings, sharing with them what we knew, and detailing for
them the factors that went into our decision. But the EDB case
exemplifies a phenomenon that is unsettling and bound to lead
ultimately to bad public policy. It is the "Chemical of the
Month" syndrome. This is the condition in which a potential
public health problem comes to the attention of the press and
is then subjected to such a vortex of sensational reporting
that EPA is forced to take hasty action just to calm public
fears. Sometimes the danger is real and immediate, but in
other cases, it can be either uncertain or remote. The action-
forcing event may not be a genuine public health emergency,
but an artificial emergency generated by well-meaning people
convinced that someone is not acting forcefully enough.
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I don't have the total answer to the "Chemical of the
Month" syndrome. But if it is a sign that the public is not
yet ready to fully believe what EPA is telling them, it ought
to subside as we work to restore confidence in public
institutions. I have firmly committed EPA to share with the
public what information we have in making our decisions. I
have insisted that the public be involved by their thoughtful
comment and participation in the Agency's business on their
behalf. I have stipulated that EPA's doors be open to all
parties to decisions, both pro and con, and that you members
of the press get accurate, detailed answers to your questions.
If, after all, we make mistakes, they will be honest mistakes,
made in the open for all to see. But if, as I hope and expect,
we continue to do the right thing and do it right, I trust
that people will take note of our record, and come once again
to trust us to use our discretion when needed to bes.t serve
the public interest.
As I said at the beginning, the environmental challenges we
face today are formidable. We are operating in an arena charac-
terized by great scientific uncertainty, technical complexity,
and public controversy. At any time a firestorm of concern
might erupt over some new environmental threat that has just
come to the fore. You, as writers and editors, are at the center
of that conflagration. You must find sense in the battle of
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quickly hurled charges and countercharges. You must get on
top of subtle and uncertain scientific findings to simplify
and interpret them for your readers. You must report, fairly
and objectively, whether and to what extent your readers might
be at risk from the substance in question. And you must do
all this on deadline. Yours is a near impossible assignment.
Facing this challenge you absolutely require a credible
witness to whom you can turn and ask with confidence, "What
can I believe? What is really going on here?" If we are living
up to our responsibility to serve the public interest, EPA
should serve as that witness. We may not be the only source,
but we should be a reliable source. I realize that you may
not yet be prepared to give us that confidence.
You and I, the press and EPA, have a symbiotic relation-
ship. You need information from us; we need to communicate
through you. Even in the best of times this relationship can
grow tense and testy. As in a good marriage, each of us has
something to contribute to the union, but we can maintain a
healthy relationship only if we continue to earn each other's
trust. Some time back EPA appeared, at least, to fail your
trust, and it will take time to re-establish the confidence
you must place in us if we are to get our message clearly
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before the public. But that is a goal worth working for,
because the effectiveness of America's efforts to grapple with
the emerging problems of post-industrialization in a free
society hangs in the balance. Without public trust, we cannot
serve successfully the public interest.
So I urge you today to watch us closely. Evaluate carefully
what we say and what we do. Check for yourselves whether we
are doing the right thing and whether we are doing it right.
I believe that if you will be both skeptical and fair, EPA
will once again earn your confidence.
We must both be realistic. This will not be easy for
either of us. Under conditions of high emotion or in times when
political posturing is an acceptable tactic, truth is normally
the first casualty. So I ask one more thing of you. While we
are on probation, I ask you to examine with equal care the
words and actions of those who attach themselves to environmental
issues, either for or against, by an appeal to public emotion.
We are both in the business of truth. Ours is to discover
and respond to it; yours is to verify and report it. By working
together in a spirit of mutual trust, we can both be true to
our trades. I think we will get to that point again soon.
And when we do, we will both benefit from the one thing without
which neither of us can effectively operate: public confidence
in the integrity of our word.
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