SERft InSight POLICY PAPER
This supplement to EPA /n5/ght contains up-to-date policy information from the
Administrator/Deputy Administrator to all EPA employees.
August 1994
EPA 175-N-94-003
The Common Sense Initiative: A New Generation of Environmental Protection
Below is an address by Administrator Carol Browner
at a Center for National Policy Newsmaker Luncheon
on July 20, 1994:
It is a pleasure to be here to discuss the future of
environmental protection, to share my vision of
what we need to accomplish in the generation to come
and, in so doing, to draw on the lessons of the past,
and finally, to describe a new Clinton Administration
initiative that represents the future of environmental
protection.
In this room today are people who bring a variety
of perspectives to the task of environmental protec-
tion. Some are involved with grassroots environmen-
tal groups and see environmental policy from the
community's point of view. Some see environmental
policy from a business point of view. Some see it from
the regulatory perspective. But despite the diverse
viewpoints we represent, we all share a belief that we
must preserve and strengthen the principles of
environmental protection—but we must change the
means by which we achieve these protections. There
is much to be proud of in the accomplishments of the
past 25 years, but it will take a new generation of
environmental protection to meet the challenges of the
next 25 years.
Twenty-five years ago, in response to widespread
public concern, our nation created, literally from
scratch, the most advanced system of environmental
regulation in the world. Our nation created the
Environmental Protection Agency, state agencies,
federal laws and regulations, state laws and regula-
tions. In the course of what is really a very short
history, we have made tremendous progress. We have
succeeded in solving some of the more obvious
problems. We no longer have rivers catching on fire.
Our skies are cleaner. And U.S. environmental
expertise and technology are in demand throughout
the world.
But the past 25 years have also left us ••with-difficult
problems—a complex and unwieldy system of laws and
regulations, and increasing conflict and gridlock.
"When our country began to pass environmental
laws in the early 70's, we did it issue by issue, crisis
by crisis. I will never forget a photograph of flames,
fire, shooting right out of the water in downtown
Cleveland. It was the summer of 1969 and the
Cuyahoga River was burning. An angry nation was
called to action,and the Clean Water Act was passed.
How can anyone forget the discovery of thousands of
leaking barrels of toxic chemicals that had been buried
under the community of Love Canal? Again, a shocked
country responded. The Superfund law was passed.
Our Toxic Substances Control Act passed soon after
we watched farmers taking contaminated cows out to
the pasture and shooting them to death. And it was
the contamination of the New Orleans drinking water
supply that spurred passage of the Safe Drinking
Water Act.
By necessity, environmental regulations grew up on
an emergency basis, crisis by crisis, pollutant by
pollutant. The result: we have 16 major national
environmental laws overseen by some 74 Congres-
sional committees and subcommittees. We have
thousands and thousands of environmental regula-
tions on the books. Too often, our environmental
activities have been compartmentalized, law by law,
pollutant by pollutant. And too often, instead of
preventing pollution, we have simply shuffled and
shifted pollution from one place to another—from land
to air, from air to water, from water to land.
In response to early air pollution regulations,
factories put scrubbers on their smokestacks to control
sulfur dioxide emissions. The scrubbers did a good job
of taking the sulfur dioxide out of the air. But they
created another problem: what to do with the scrubber
waste? The way our regulatory system worked, that
pollution could legally be discharged into a river or a
lake, or turned into sludge and buried in a landfill.
That's precisely what happened. In exchange for
cleaner air, we polluted our rivers, polluted our
groundwater, contaminated our land. We hadn't
..really .protected mir environment. We hadn't pre-
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vented pollution. We had only shuffled and shifted
pollution.
During the era when James Watt was Secretary
of the Interior and Anne Gorsuch headed the EPA, the
problems grew worse. Conflict and gridlock became
firmly entrenched. Some in industry took the Anne
Gorsuch/James Watt ideology as a license not to
comply with environmental regulations. Environmen-
tal groups sought to fill the vacuum by filing one court
suit after another, charging the government with
failure to enforce and implement the laws. Court
orders and court-directed activities became a major
instrument of environmental policy.
And Congress, rightfully perceiving a lack of
commitment to implementation of environmental
laws, and responding to the legitimate concerns of the
public, saw no alternative but to spell out every detail
of, not only what EPA must do, but also what business
must do. The average length of an environmental law
grew from 50 pages to 400 pages.
The result of all this fragmentation and conflict?
Too little environmental protection at too high a cost.
Increasing frustration with the process of environ-
mental regulation. Some of this frustration is abso-
lutely legitimate. But there are those who are
capitalizing on legitimate frustration with the process
and using it to fuel a backlash against environmental
protection itself—to call for a rollback of public health
protections.
That's not legitimate. To suggest that today we
don't continue to need strong environmental protec-
tion—strong public health and natural resource protec-
tionsr-is wholly irresponsible, because for all the
progress we've made, serious environmental problems
remain. How can anyone seek to undermine environ-
mental protection when hundreds of thousands of
people fell ill in Milwaukee last year from contami-
nated drinking water, and dozens died? How can
anyone seek to undermine environmental protection
when forty percent of our rivers and lakes are still not
suitable for fishing or swimming; when 54 million
Americans—one in five—istill live in areas where the air
does not meet federal air quality standards; when one
in four Americans lives within four miles of a toxic
dumpsite?
I draw three simple but important lessons from the
past 25 years. One, we must recognize that nature
is a system. We must recognize the integration of our
air, our water, and our land. Merely regulating on a
pollutant-by-pollutant basis is not enough. Two, we
must change the process. We must move beyond an
adversarial -process. We must inform and involve
those who must live with the decisions we make—the
'the 'industries, 'tiit people -of -this
country. And three, we have not finished the job. We
must preserve and strengthen the principles of ,
environmental protection, while changing the mey ,•
by which we achieve these protections. *
The initiative we announce today grows out of all
three of these lessons. It builds on the accomplish-
ments of the past to shape a new generation of true
environmental protection for the future.
The Common Sense Initiative is a fundamentally
different system of environmental protection that
replaces the poUutant-by-pollutant-approach of the
past with an industry-by-industry approach for the
future. Government officials at all levels, environmen-
talists, and industry leaders will come together to
create strategies that will work cleaner, cheaper, and
smarter to protect the health of the people of this
country and the natural resources we all share.
Cleaner—because participating industries will achieve
real, measurable environmental protection.
Cheaper—because tailoring environmental protec-
tion on an industry-by-industry basis will save billions
of dollars.
And smarter—because by working together we can
capture the creativity and the ingenuity that have long
been the great strength of this nation—and apply it to
the job of protecting our environment.
Through the Common Sense Initiative, we w""
examine environmental protection in each industry
from top to bottom. We will analyze the overall
environmental impact of each industry. For each
industry, we will arrive at a comprehensive analysis
of the successes, the failures, the problems, the
achievements, the unintended consequences of envi-
ronmental regulation—a blueprint for how best to
achieve real environmental protection.
Let me emphasize that, for the first time ever, every
player with a stake in the outcome will be at the table
—industry, communities, environmentalists, regula-
tors. And for the first time ever, every major topic will
be on the table. If we find new ways to improve our
rules and regulations, I will make those changes. If
we find that the laws themselves need to be changed,
then we will join together in going to Congress to
recommend those changes.
Today I am naming six industries that will be
trailblazers in working with government and with
leading environmental organizations to revolutionize
how we approach environmental protection in this
country. The six industries are: the iron and steel
industry, the electronics and computer industry, the
metal plating and finishing industry, the auto indu&
.try, -the printing industry, and the oil refining
industry.
Among them, these industries -make -up nearly If
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percent of our Gross Domestic Product. They account
for 345 million pounds of toxic releases—1/8 of all the
toxic emissions reported to EPA. They employ four
Billion people. And they represent a cross-section of
American industry. Some are high-tech, others indus-
trial; some are dominated by large companies, others
by small business.
The Common Sense Initiative will move us beyond
the adversarial process by getting everybody on board
and putting everything on the table. We must harness
the expertise of industry—the people who know first-
hand how industrial processes work and who know
better than anyone else how to clean them up. We
must harness the expertise of environmental leaders
and grassroots activists who know the problems that
most concern the public and often the solutions that
will work. We must listen to the expertise of state,
local, and federal government officials who have
struggled for years with these very problems. My
colleagues at EPA have accomplished a great deal
under sometimes trying circumstances and know
better than anyone why and how we must change. In
many ways, the seeds of this change can be found in
individual programs already in existence at EPA.
In each industry, we will assemble a team of
committed partners: An Assistant Administrator of
EPA—for example, the head of the Office of Water, as
well as senior representatives from our air program,
our waste program, and so on. Industry leaders at the
vice president level. Representatives of national and
grassroots environmental organizations, along with
representatives of state environmental commissions,
local government, labor unions, environmental justice
groups, and other agencies that want to help explore
this new direction.
Each team will develop a blueprint based on six
components:
Number 1: A Fresh Perspective on Regulations
and Results. For the first time in the history of EPA,
we will conduct a comprehensive review of every major
rule and every major regulation as they apply to each
industry. We'll explore existing regulations and
regulations that are still in the pipeline. We'll
coordinate air pollution rules with water pollution
rules to make sure our rules work in tandem rather
than at cross purposes. Let's move beyond mere
regulation to true environmental protection. Let's
measure our success not by how many rules we adopt
but by whether a specific industry can achieve
environmental protection cleaner, cheaper, and smarter.
Number 2: Prevent Pollution—don't just clean it
up. Make pollution prevention not just an add-on but
a.guiding.princjple inherent in the system. Too many
of our current regulations have the perverse effect of
discouraging pollution prevention. Too often, our
regulations have encouraged industry to meet the
standards— failing to encourage industry to
do better, to exceed the standards. Let's make sure
that normal business practices in every industry are
geared toward preventing pollution.
For example: when we deal with toxic releases in
the printing industry, let's not repeat the problem we
had with the smokestack scrubbers and simply shuffle
and shift pollution. Let's help printers use solvents
that are safer, less polluting. Let's help them use
fewer solvents in the first place, and recycle the
solvents they do use. Today, we're doing just that. The
John Roberts Company, a commercial printer in
Minneapolis, can tell you firsthand how we've helped
them reduce their release of hazardous chemicals-
resulting in savings of nearly $20,000 per year.
Number 3: Make Environmental Information
Collection Easier for Industry and More Accessible
to the Public. We need better information gathering
to inform the public, to inform business, and to inform
the government. Let's use electronic data bases. Let's
integrate the information we receive— the air, the
water, the waste reporting. Let's eliminate duplica-
tion—which will be particularly important to small
businesses.
Number 4: Strong Enforcement. With the
Common Sense Initiative, we will offer sincere,
motivated companies a new, more flexible way to
achieve environmental results. But, at the same time,
a strong enforcement program is vital— so that compa-
nies that are working hard to comply with the law will
not suffer a competitive disadvantage, and companies
that are not motivated to comply will suffer the
consequences.
Last summer, I reorganized our enforcement pro-
gram to achieve strong, tough enforcement and help
companies comply with the law. That reorganized
enforcement program is up and running and ready to
work with our industry teams.
Number 5: Improve the Permitting Process— so
that it is responsive to the needs of the public and to
industry. That means greater opportunity for in-
formed public participation and a faster answer for
industry.
Number 6: Stop Stifling New Technology-
Encourage It. In the past, too many of our laws told
industry not only what standard to meet but also the
specific technology they had to use to meet it. Why
limit tike number of -environmental solutions? Why
not encourage creativity and innovation? The result
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will be that, not only will we meet the standards, we
will exceed the standards and achieve true pollution
prevention.
In short, we will look at every way that EPA
intersects with each of the six industries, so that we
can use every tool at our disposal to improve our
environmental performance. I believe we can make
tangible changes in the first year. Other changes will
take more time—but we must begin this overhaul now
—because the successes that are available if we
continue the traditional regulatory path are incremen-
tal at best. The current regulatory system is about
going from A to B to C. The changes we undertake
today are about going from A to Z. I don't believe
anyone in this country—whether an environmentalist
or a CEO—believes that incremental steps will achieve
the kind of future we all want.
I want to close by saying that this is an ambitious
initiative. Many of the people who have come here
today to pioneer the Common Sense Initiative may be
a little nervous about this endeavor. I understand
that. We are all taking a risk in agreeing to do things
in a new way. But we must take that risk, because
only by taking a risk can we make the fundamental
changes that will result in true environmental
protection for this country.
The past 25 years have been marked by extraordi-
nary changes in American society and Americap
industry—the civil rights movement, the women
movement, the environmental movement, new tech-
nology, instant communications—FAX machines, per-
sonal computers. Things that were unthinkable just
a generation-ago are now part of how we live our lives,
part of how most businesses function.
This is the genius of America. Whenever we have
needed to change, we have changed. Throughout
history, empires, kingdoms, and nations have col-
lapsed because they failed to change. But our nation
is built on a proud tradition of change.
Recently I visited the Jefferson Memorial, and I saw
carved there some words that I believe we must take
to heart. Thomas Jefferson said, "Laws and institu-
tions must go hand in hand with the progress of the
human mind." As human understanding becomes
more developed, Jefferson said, institutions must also
advance, and keep pace with the times.
That is what we are doing today. Twenty-five years
from now, our nation will be able to look back and say
that 1994 was the start of a fundamentally new way
of protecting our environment-^of protecting the
health of the people of this country, of protecting our
air, our water, and our land.
This Policy Paper is available on Videotext. As another step toward keeping our Paper-Less Office Campaign
pledge for 1994—15 percent reduction in paper usage—one copy of this publication will be provided for every ten
.employees. Employees are encouraged to .share their copies with others to ensure all have access. If you have
questions or suggestions about the Policy Paper series, contact Kym Burke, Internal Communications Manager,
QCSPA, -en 2Q2,260.Q336.,or Jby JS-istail, (BUSKE.K)
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