Environmental
EPA Administrator Russell E. Train said in a speech to the
National Association of Regional Councils that decisions on pressing
environmental and other social and economic issues should be made by
local governments acting on a regional basis and not by the Federal
government or the courts. Speaking in Boston on May 28, Train said:
"In my judgment, far too many decisions in recent years have
ended up in the hands of the courts and the Federal government—not
because they have the slightest interest in treading on or taking
over anybody else's territory—but because the citizens of this
country, frustrated by the failure of States and localities to face
up to their needs and problems, have turned instead to the Federal
government and, increasingly, to the courts As a result, far too
many decisions have become much too far removed from the regular
processes of democratic control."
Train noted that EPA's major legislation is up this year for
Congressional review and that one of the Agency's top priorities is
to fashion with Congress "a more coherent and coordinated set of
environmental programs which can be synchronized far more simply
with State and local plans and programs."
Train said that the areawide intergovernmental approach to water
pollution control under Section 208 of the Water Pollution Control
Act offers "intriguing possibilities" as a national program "put to-
gether and carried out by local authorities acting on a regional
basis." He said that the 208 process involves both planning and
implementation and represents an effective approach "not only to water
pollution, Lut to air pollution and solid waste as well." He said EPA
is studying the possibility of draft legislation to expand the 208
program to include air and solid waste.
The speech is attached for your information and use.
Office of Public Affairs
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REMARKS BY THE HONORABLE RUSSELL E. TRAIN
ADMINISTRATOR, U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
PREPARED FOR DELIVERY BEFORE THE
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REGIONAL COUNCILS
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, MAY 28, 1975
FROM THE GROUND UP:
Making the Federal System Work
I have long looked forward to the opportunity to meet
and talk with the members of this Association, not only
because EPA has been throwing a good deal of business your
way -- and in the process helping, so to speak, to put some
real teeth into the COGs -- but because I am convinced that,
if this country is going to gain the upper hand upon the
environmental and other problems that confront us, it is
at the regional level that the political action and initiative
must increasingly occur.
Nor can I imagine a better meeting ground, as the country
stands on the threshold of its Third Century, than this city
and this region., which have served as cradle and crucible
for so much of our history and heritage. At a time when
all indications are that vast numbers of the American
people are thoroughly turned off of politics and government,
I think it is well to remind ourselves that a set of political
principles and processes, and a system of government -- the
very same ones that we still have -- are precisely what all
the fuss was about, two centuries ago, when the war was over
and the fathers of this country got down to the basics of
building a new nation. We have, in my view, no more urgent
business than to start demonstrating to the people of this
country --or more accurately, to start letting them demonstrate
to themselves -- that, in coping with common problems and
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needs, our political processes and governmental institutions
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are something more than the merely decorative and increasingly
dispensable vestiges of a vanished age, that they are, in
fact, what they have always been: A citizen's best instruments
for deciding public questions^ and dealing with public problems,
in ways that are both fair and effective.
As we do so, we might keep in mind these words that George
Washington once wrote concerning the Constitution:
I think the people (for it is with them to
judge) can, as they wili^have the advantage
of experience on their side, decide with as
much propriety on the alterations and amend-
ments which are necessary, as ourselves. I
do not think we are inspired, have more
wisdom or possess more virtue than those
who will come after us.
The basic structure of our federal system remains as sound
and suited to our needs and conditions as it ever was; indeed
one of its essential sources of strength has always been its
ability, as we have been willing to take advantage of it,
to undergo adjustments to changing conditions without itself
experiencing any fundamental change in character.
It is in that context --of the need to make our
political processes and governmental system work far better
than they have in recent years -- that I would like, this
morning, to take a brief, broad look at the environmental
effort and some of its implications for the federal system.
I want, at the outset, to underscore my conviction that
our major 'environmental laws -- in particular, the Clean Air
and Water Acts -- are good laws. Their primary purpose is to
protect the public health and welfare, and we have made real
progress toward achieving that purpose. We have, in the
process, learned enough -- and, as in most educational
experiences, suffered on all sides a sufficient measure
of pain --to make some very real improvements in both the
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laws themselves and the way EPA carries out those laws. We
must all understand, at the same time, that the evidence
continues to accumulate that the harmful effects of pollution
upon human health and well-being are not only serious, but
even worse than we thought. And in no respect can we
justify, or permit, any change in those laws that would,
in fact, constitute a retreat or relaxation in our effort
to assure for all Americans a whole and a healthy
environment.
As you know, the first major deadline under the Clean
Air Act -- for the achievement of health-related standards
for six serious pollutants -- will fall only a few days
from now, on Saturday, May 31. We will have achieved, on
a national level, none of these standards. We will, on the
other hand, have accomplished -- both nationally and in major
areas of the country -- some rather deep reductions in some
air pollutants and put in place and in motion the basic machinery
we must have to continue to lighten the load of hazardous air
pollutants in the air we breathe. While it is still too
early to report specific improvements as a result of our
efforts under the Water Act, we expect by the end of fiscal 1977
to obligate nearly all of the $18 billion in grants for the
construction of sewage treatment plants, and we are working
on ways to ensure that the American public gets the chance
to enjoy the full benefits of the clean water that its tax
dollars have purchased.
In this regard, I am happy to report that EPA's New
England Regional Office, headquartered here in Boston, has
tjen working with the outdoor recreation offices of the states
within the region, as well as the Regional Office of the
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Bureau of Outdoor Recreation of the Department of Interior,
to synchronize their outdoor recreation and open space
programs with the clean up of the Region's rivers and lakes
under the Water Act. They have agreed, among other things to
coordinate the opening this summer of major treatment plants
at Fitchburg, Massachusetts, with plans by the Nashua River
Watershed Association to develop a Greenway along the river.
Both nationally and through its regional offices, EPA will
seek as strenuously as it can to encourage, assist and engage
in joint efforts with other federal, state and local agencies,
and with citizens groups, to secure for the people of this
country a full and fair return on their investment in cleaning
up the nation's waters.
But if we are making progress under these laws, and if
their basic strength must not be impaired, there is a great
deal we can do to improve both their structure and the ways
in which we carry them out. We are beginning, I think, to
make some very real headway along these lines, and I have
every confidence that, before the year is out, we shall --
with the help of the Congress -- have fashioned a more
coherent and coordinated set of environmental programs which
t
can be synchronized far more simply with state and local
plans and programs.
We are, for example, taking a long, hard look at whether
-- or to what degree -- EPA should undertake a combined grant
assistance program that would integrate all of its planning
and management efforts. Our options are limited by the fact
that, while money is authorized for some of these programs,
such as the Section 208 areawide waste treatment management
planning, no money is authorized for other programs such as
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air quality maintenance, nonsignificant deterioration and
indirect source review. I am determined, however, that in
the coming months we do all that our current legislation
will.allow to pull our efforts together and that we work
with the Congress to secure the legislative changes we
need to achieve even greater coherence. As you know, our
major legislation is up this year for Congressional review
and revision, and one of our major priorities is to suggest
and support changes that will strengthen our ability to
coordinate our efforts with yours.
In the meantime, we have reached an agreement with
the Department of Housing and Urban Development upon the
coordination of the land use-related provisions of EPA's 208
and HUD's 701 grant programs. We hope soon to reach a
similar agreement with HUD on the coordination of our air
quality planning activities with the 701 program.
Since I first joined EPA over a year and a half ago, I
have stressed as strongly as I can my view that --in carrying
out the provisions of the Clean Air Act and other legislation --
the Agency must do a far better job of working with the citizens
of this country, primarily through their elected officials at the
state and local levels, not simply after the fact, but in the
very formulation of our regulations, guidelines and plans.
I have, again and again, emphasized the fact that, before we
put together and publish regulations, before we step in and
start telling people where they can or can't build, or where
they can and can't drive, we must -- from the very first --
make them a full partner in the process by which those
'decisions are made.
I would go even farther than that and say that our job,
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as a federal agency, is to make sure that, in fact, there does
exist a process by which they themselves can and will make
those decisions. In other words, when we are talking
about transportation control plans, and indirect source
reviews, and other programs that have very real social,
economic and other impacts at the local and regional level,
EPA's role -- as a federal agency -- must be to do everything
within its power to see to it that there is, at the state,
local and regional levels, an effective, open and equitable
process for confronting these questions, a process that not
only allows but insists upon full public discussion and
decision on the issues and alternatives involved.
I want, to the fullest extent possible, to get EPA out
of the business of putting together and, in effect, mandating
detailed transportation plans for cities across the country,
and of having to review every single major new shopping or
convention center in the country. I want to get the
localities, acting on a regional basis, into the business of
really facing up to these issues. People's lives are pro-
foundly affected by the way these issues are resolved --
not to speak of whether or not they are resolved -- and they
must be given the opportunity, through the political process,
to do their own resolving. But if the ^people affected are
to have a real chance to wrestle with and resolve these
issues, there must be a process -- a democratic, decision-
making process -- that will enable them to do it. And all
too often, at the level at which the problems occur, such
a process simply does not exist.
In this regard, the 208 planning process offers some
intriguing possibilities. It is areawide and includes all
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aspects of water pollution control. It is a national program,
but is put together and carried out by local authorities
acting on a regional basis. It involves not only planning,
but implementation. It has a high degree of public involvement
and accountability, and it ties the planning and'the political
processes together.
It is still far too early to tell if 208 will, in fact,
prove to be as.effective an approach as it promises. But as
my brief description suggests, it does have the basic ingredients
of an effective areawide intergovernmental approach not only to
water pollution, but to air pollution and solid waste as well.
We are, in fact, seriously exploring the possibility of
draft legislation that would expand the 208 program to in-
clude air and solid waste.
It may well be that the 208 process, or something like it,
can help move us toward the point at which wastewater treatment
plans, air quality maintenance plans, transportation control
plans, and the like are integral parts of more comprehensive
land use and growth management plans for localities, for
regions and for states. These plans, moreover, would be
created and carried out through a political process in which
both citizens and their elected officials -- not experts
or appointed officials -- make all the basic choices and
decisions.
But before we can arrive at this point -- and I think we must
if we ever expect to come to grips with the problems of growth
in thi*s country --we are going to have to face up to the fact
that fragmentation is not local strength, but local weakness;
that the way to guarantee, not only the greatest degree of
local autonomy, but the greatest degree of local involvement
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and influence in coping with larger than local problems, is
for locaj. governments themselves to join in effective efforts
to deal with those problems. This is, I think, what the Mayor
of a Minnesota city meant when, in testimony on the proposed
Twin Cities Metropolitan Council, he said: "Gentlemen, we
look on metropolitan government as local government."
It is often said that, of all our levels of government,
local government is closest to the petople and their problems.
In most respects, that is -- or ought to be -- true. But to
the degree that problems reach far beyond the boundaries
and resources of any local jurisdiction, then local governments
are not closest, but farthest from those problems. Nor can
they be said to be closest to the people who are affected by
these problems, for they do not serve as effective means for
enabling these people to deal with these problems.
It may well be a fact of life that, no matter how nice
or neat they sound in academic circles, full-fledged regional
or so-called "super" governments are simply not going to happen
in this country. And I, for one, think that's probably a good
thing. But I also think it is a fact of life that the degree
to which local government will have a real say in efforts to deal
with urgent areawide problems will depend, deeply and directly,
on the degree to which they themselves, on their own initiative,
come up with their own effective arrangements for handling
these problems. There would, and there should, be great
variety in these arrangements all across the country. All
of them, however, would have at least two things in common:
First, they would reflect the unique needs, values, traditions
of their different regions; and second, they would be effective,
accountable mechanisms that would allow their citizens to
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really get at areawide problems.
The emergence of such arrangements in good working order
would go far toward convincing the people of this country that,
through their local governmental and political processes, they
can actually do something to attack their most pressing public
problems, It would enable local governments to play a far
stronger and more creative role within the federal system.
And it would, to everybody's relief, bring to a virtual end
the proliferation of state and federal single and special
purpose authorities to deal with areawide problems as well
as the explosion of court cases touched off by efforts to
control growth on a strictly local basis.
To say that the practicalities of politics prevent us
from going in the directions I suggest is simply to confirm the
feeling of those who regard our political processes and governmental
institutions as increasingly incapable of responding to our needs
and resolving our problems. The kinds of problems we are talking
about --of transportation, of air and water quality, of where
and when and how growth should or should not occur, of how to
reconcile the need for housing and economic growth and the need
for a whole and a healthy environment -- these kinds of problems,
as you well know, do not have single or simple answers. They
do not, in fact, call for answers or solutions at all. What
they call for are decisions -- decisions that are reached
through a democratic, decision-making process that gives
everybody affected a chance to really understand and assess
the tradeoffs and to have a full say and fair shake in making
them, that means that we need to get these "decisions" back
into the political and governmental process, and to get the
political and governmental process back into the business
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of making them. That means that we need to forge far closer,
clearer links both between the planning and the political
processes and between the people and those processes.
Nearly seventy years ago, the distinguished American
lawyer and statesman, Elihu Root, issued a prophetic warning
in an address entitled "How to Preserve the Local Self-Government
of the States." He said, in part:
The intervention of the National Government
in many of the matters which it has recently
undertaken would have been wholly unnecessary
if the States themselves had been alive to their
duty toward the general body of the country . . .
The instinct for self-government among the people
of the United States is too strong to permit them long
to respect any one's right to exercise a power which
he fails to exercise. . . . There is but one
way in which the States of the Union can maintain
their power and authority under the conditions
which are now before us, and that way is by
an awakening on the part of the States to a
realization of their own duties to the country
at large . . . ."
It is not oversimplifying things too much to say that,
over the centuries, the relative roles of the levels of
government in this country have pretty much followed this
pattern: (1) if the localities can't or won't, the states
will; (2) if the localities and the states can't or won't,
the federal government will; (3) if all> of these can't or
won't, the courts will. In my judgement, far too many
decisions in recent years have ended up in the hands of the
courts and the federal government -- not because they have
the slightest interest in treading on or taking over anybody
else's territory -- but because the citizens of this country,
frustrated by the failure of states and localities to face
up to their needs and problems, have turned instead to the
federal government and, increasingly, to the courts.
One of the great strengths of our system is the fact
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that it offers more than one avenue for the resolution of
issues and problems. If one alternative doesn't work, the
citizen can always resort to another. To far too great a
degree, however, the last resort has become the first resort,
the extraordinary and unusual measure has become the order
of the day, and the people of this country have increasingly
come to seek satisfaction not through more immediate levels
of government, but through the courts and the federal govern-
ment, and often through direct action outside the established
political processes and institutions. As a result, far too
many decisions have become much too far removed from the
regular processes of democratic control,
I said, at the start, that it is at your level that
the political action in this country will, and must, increasing-
ly occur. If we can, at your level, move toward developing
the kinds of effective, accountable political and governmental
"arrangements" that I have described, then I think we will go
a long way toward putting the people of this country back in
contact and in control of their political processes and their
governmental institutions. We will start making some real
headway against our environmental and other most pressing
problems. And we will be making the federal system work the
way it really should -- from the ground up.
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