s.Em
Times
NEWS FOR AND ABOUT EPA EMPLOYEES
INSIDE:
~	NAPA Highlights
~	A Worthwhile Suggestion
~	Opportunities for Women
VOLUME 1	NUMBER 12	May 11, 1984
'Careers/ Not 'Jobs/ Goal of New Office
Career development for EPA em-
ployees is a key function of the new
Office of Human Resources Man-
agement (OHRM). The establishment
of this office, according to Adminis-
trator Bill Ruckelshaus, is "crucial to
the ultimate success of the Agency."
In announcing the creation of the
OHRM, A1 Aim, Deputy Administra-
tor, said "we are beginning an effort
which will impact the country's
capacity to manage its environmental
programs for many years. 1 am excited
about the concept."
The Office of Human Resources
Management was created, in part, in
response to recommendations of the
National Academy of Public Adminis-
tration (see story on back page.) Kirke
Harper heads the office staff of about
24, and reports directly to the Assis-
tant Administrator for Administration
and Resources Management, Howard
Messner.
Harper previously was Director of
the Office of Administration, where
he oversaw the activities of the Per-
sonnel Management Division (PMD)
among others. John Chamberlain,
former Deputy Comptroller, replaces
Harper as OA director. The PMD will
remain within the Office of Adminis-
tration and continue to deal with the
traditional personnel functions (proc-
essing applications, maintaining em-
ployee records, etc.).
The three major objectives of the
OHRM are: (1) to establish a system-
atic approach to workforce planning
and management, (2) to develop strat-
egies and programs for employee or-
ganizational development, and (3) to
improve services and programs for
senior executives.
The project most likely to affect
EPA employees early on will be the
reation of a strategy for employee
training to prepare individuals for
After his
swearing-in ceremony
as the Director of OHRM,
Kirke Harper,
his wife and mother,
are congratulated by
Administrator
Bill Ruckelshaus.
advancement in their chosen fields.
According to Aim, the program will
enable EPA to "determine whether we
have employees with the right skills
in the right places to do the jobs
needed in the future. We can also
address—at the front end—what reme-
dies will be necessary to close gaps
between Agency needs and workforce
abilities."
Two advisory committees are being
established to assure outside partici-
pation and oversight of the OHRM.
One will consist of members of the
NAPA panel and the other of federal,
state and local environmental
officials. ~
HRM Defined
Human Resources Management is
defined by the Agency's Human Re-
sources Management Workgroup as "a
comprehensive, systematic approach
to assist the organization in
accomplishing its goals through work-
force planning, policy development,
and personnel program evaluation
aimed at the best use of the workforce
as an organized body and as in-
dividual employees, current and fu-
ture.
"A human resources management
program provides more than the tradi-
tional services characteristic of op-
erating personnel offices. It places im-
portance on the need to integrate 'peo-
ple issues' into the organization and
provides managers with a high-level
mechanism to do so. As managers
plan programs and allocate resources,
they likewise must deal with the issue
of what kinds of people will be
needed to do the job."
The workgroup was established to
explore the idea of creating an Office
of Human Resources Management at
EPA. Chaired by Fran Phillips, the
group analyzed the NAPA report and
evaluated alternate ways of organizing
human resource development activi-
ties. ~

-------
People
Retiree from Region 3: Fred Grant, 20 years, Water Pro-
gram Management and Support Branch.
An Electrical Engineering Technician at Research
Triangle Park, Ted King, receives $1000 for his idea on
renovating a computer room. EPA saved about $27,000 by
following King's advice.
Linda Harvey, Florida Department of Environmental
Regulation, receives a Special Recognition Award for the
coordination of Superfund training courses. Harvey's work
is cited as "an outstanding example of what can be accom-
plished where there is a spirit of cooperation between
federal and state agencies."
Peter Ludzia receives the 1983 Glen Witmer Award at
the Annual Award Ceremony for Region 3. The award—
presented in memory of a Region 3 employee who died
from cancer in 1977 at the age of 27—is given to the em-
ployee who best demonstrates not only outstanding per-
formance but also an additional degree of dedication, en-
thusiasm, and resourcefulness reminiscent of its namesake.
Quality Step Increases awarded to: Michael Stein, Ad-
ministration and Resources Management . . . Michael
Barclay, Solid Waste and Emergency Response . . .
Richard Loranger, Martha Bradley, Randolph Perfetti and
Russell Cook, Policy, Planning and Evaluation.
Continued Superior Performance awards to: Michael
Carpentier and Barry Griffith, Administration and Re-
sources Management . . . Arthur Stern and Judith Nelson,
Pesticides and Toxic Substances . . . John Onley, Policy,
Planning and Evaluation . . . LaVerne Williams, Research
and Development.
Special Act Award presented to: Ernest Jackson, Re-
search and Development.
Correction: The EPA Times apologizes for an erroneous
headline in its April 27 story about the Group Special Act
award to 60 controlled correspondence staff members. The
story was correct; the headline reference to Bronze Medals
was not. Also, Cheryl Bently works for the Science Advi-
sory Board (not Small and Disadvantaged Businesses), and
Sybil Currie, Office of Civil Rights, was inadvertently
omitted from the list of awardees. ~
Ted King (on left) receives Suggestion Award certificate
from Charles Foster, Director of General Service.
Linda Harvey receives award from Lawrence Hyde, Region 4
Superfund Training Coordinator.
Women to Benefit From Federal Personnel Initiatives
Two new programs being implemented by the
Office of Personnel Management (OPM) are designed
to improve opportunities for women in the federal
workforce.
Executive Development
In the Women's Executive Leadership Program, in
a manner similar to the White House Fellows and Ex-
ecutive Exchange programs, 50 women in GS-9 to GS-
12 positions will be selected from agency nomina-
tions to receive executive leadership training. By tar-
geting women with exceptional managerial potential
in these grade ranges, the program is expected to be a
major step towards identifying and developing
women for supervisory, managerial and executive
positions.
De Burton, president of the 700,000 member Feder-
ally Employed Women, will manage the leadership
program.
Part-Time Opportunities
A permanent program for part-time employees has
been established under a new chapter in the Federal
Personnel Manual, which gives agency managers new
tools to expand part-time opportunities for women.
This action stems from an evaluation of the Federal
Employees Part-time Career Employment Act of 1978.
OPM has concluded that part-time opportunities
should be expanded in order to retain women in the
workforce and give them more flexibility to fulfill
both professional and family responsibilities. ~

-------
Agency Activities
New estimates indicate a 60 percent increase in the
amount of hazardous waste thought to be produced by
U.S. industries. EPA reports that during 1981—the first
full year RCRA was in effect—264 million metric tons
were generated. Large portions of this total were mixtures
nf hazardous and non-hazardous wastes.
A memorandum to regional administrators expands and
defines the role of private parties responsible for un-
controlled hazardous waste sites. The memo explains who
will be permitted to conduct investigations and studies,
the principles governing the parties' participation in
agency-financed investigations, and the procedures for
notifying responsible parties when EPA has targeted
specific sites for investigative work.
Federal tolerance levels for residues of ethylene di-
bromide (EDB) on raw grain set at 900 parts per billion—
the same maximum proposed in February. Tolerances
apply to raw barley, corn, oats, popcorn, rice, rye,
sorghum and wheat.
New requirements change the way in which the pesti-
cide ethylene oxide (EtO) is used in health care facilities.
Many items, such as disposable tubing and syringes, can
be sterilized only with EtO.
Conditional registration proposed for the use of the pes-
ticide Larvadex (cyromazine) to control fly larvae in the
manure of egg-producing chickens. Public comment period
runs for 30 days from April 27. New studies suggest no
adverse risks at normal dosages.
The end of sludge dumping in the New York Bight pro-
posed. The undersea canyon 12 miles offshore would be
replaced by a site 106 miles out (off the Continental Shelf).
EPA employees and contractor personnel presented 47
.papers at the 10th Annual Research Symposium on Land
£>isposal Incineration and Treatment of Hazardous Waste.
April 3-5, in Ft. Mitchell. Kentucky. The symposium was
sponsored by the Solid and Hazardous Waste Research Di-
vision of the Municipal Environmental Research Labora-
tory and the Energy Pollution Control Division of the In-
dustrial Environmental Research Laboratory.
More stringent controls of wastewater and storm water
pollutants from oil refineries are agreed upon by EPA, the
Natural Resources Defense Council and the American
Petroleum Institute. Revised regulations will be proposed
reducing allowable discharges of total chromium, hexava-
lent chromium and phenolic compounds.
A subsidary of Ford Motor Company agrees to create a
$460,000 fund to delineate contamination at the Ringwood
mines and landfill in New Jersey.
Allied Corporation agrees to complete a remedial in-
vestigation and feasibility study to assess hazardous waste
contamination of soil at the Allied Chemical-Ironton Coke
site in Ohio. The company will pay $35,000 to EPA and
$29,000 to Ohio as reimbursement for past site in-
vestigations. ~
Around EPA	
Robert L. Booth is selected as Director of the Environ-
mental Monitoring and Support Laboratory in Cincinnati.
Booth has been Deputy Director since February 1976, and
Acting Director since August 1980. A former Public Health
Service commissioned officer, Booth will be responsible
for planning, developing, organizing, directing and im-
plementing a national program to monitor methods and
quality assurance techniques for isolating and identifying
pollutants in water and solid wastes.
Headquarters employees interested in taking a course
from the USDA Graduate School should call 447-5885 for
information and schedules. The summer session meets
June 11 to August 22 and offers courses on over 500 sub-
jects.
A revised EPA acquisition regulation and Contracts
Management Manual are issued to conform with the new
government-wide Federal Acquisition Regulation that took
effect April 1. ~
Senator John Chaffee converses with A1 Aim and some of the SESers who attended a luncheon sponsored by the Office of
Human Resources Management. Luncheons such as this are part of a program to enhance "esprit de corps" and job satisfac-
tion among senior level EPA employees.

-------
Personnel Changes Recommended
There will be major changes in the
Agency's personnel management and
budgeting systems if recommenda-
tions of the National Academy of Pub-
lic Administration (NAPA] are fully
implemented.
NAPA began an assessment of
EPA's programs last summer at the
request of Administrator Bill Ruckel-
shaus. The independent six-month re-
view examined virtually every EPA
installation. Interviews were con-
ducted with personnel at headquar-
ters, every regional office, and four
laboratories. Officials of other federal
agencies, union representatives, and
members of Congress were consulted.
A seven-page survey of attitudes was
completed by 1,033 employees and
supervisors.
Frank C. Carlucci chaired the ten-
member NAPA panel performing the
study. A former Deputy Secretary of
Defense, Carlucci is currently
president of Sears World Trade, Inc.
Other distinguished members of the
panel include John W. Gardner, the
founder of Common Cause, and
Robert W. Fri, president of Energy
Transition Corporation and a former
Deputy Administrator and Acting Ad-
ministrator of EPA.
Selected highlights of the report are
quoted below:
Impressions and Concerns:
•	". . . EPA has attracted a bright,
aggressive, talented and committed
workforce . . . The strong overall com-
mitment of EPA's career employees to
its mission has been of critical im-
portance to an Agency that is in-
herently difficult to manage.
•	"Environmental protection is a
permanent public responsibility. Ac-
cordingly, we support steps in the di-
rection of permanence and stability at
EPA."
•	. . the Environmental Protec-
tion Agency should be protected from
the vacillations in management and
approaches to public policy that have
taken place in recent years and . . .
encouraged to pursue a permanent
mission that transcends partisan poli-
tics.
•	"EPA . . . resembles a university,
except that its campus covers the Na-
tion and it must carry out its assigned
missions in the unrelenting glare of
public scrutiny.
Frank Carlucci, head of the NAPA panel,
looks over the panel's report with
Administrator Bill Ruckelshaus.
Organization and Legislation:
•	. we recommend against con-
version from [EPA's] current status
within the Executive Branch to a
multi-member commission purported-
ly independent of Presidential direc-
tion. The electorate supports environ-
mental protection and EPA is far more
likely to benefit from having the
President directly responsible for its
performance than from any illusory
insulation from partisan politics.
•	"At a time when the general pub-
lic understands that environmental
problems comprise a seamless web,
the Agency is left to administer stat-
utes that do not reflect the inter-
relationships between land, air, and
water.
•	"Congress, the President and EPA
should work together to overcome the
fragmentation of the Agency's basis in
law and accountability to Congress. . .
Progress toward a comprehensive
protection statute may be slow, but it
is worth the effort.
Personnel Management:
•	"Throughout all of the Agency's
activities—in research, enforcement,
air and water pollution, hazardous
waste management, and external
affairs—assuring continued high-
quality performance on the part of
EPA employees is critical to Agency
effectiveness. To provide incentives
for that optimum performance, the
Panel firmly believes that EPA per-
sonnel and human resources activities
need to be substantially enhanced and
given greater emphasis within the
Agency.
•	"... we urge the creation of a
new position, Director of Human Re-
sources, reporting directly to the
Assistant Administrator of Adminis-
tration and Resources Management, to
emphasize that career development
involves much more than routine per-
sonnel services.
•	"We further recommend that EPA
undertake a comprehensive and coor-
dinated career development and ex-
ecutive development effort on behalf
of its employees.
•	"Many EPA employees are cur-
rently prisoners of their career spe-
cialities and their geographic location.
A fundamental objective of the Agen-
cy's career development and training
should be the removal of barriers to
functional and geographic mobility.
Senior Executive Service:
•	"Our concern is to encourage and
enable EPA to attract and retain com-
petent professional managers who will
achieve the consistent, stable adminis-
tration that we believe the Agency
needs.
•	". . . personnel services, functions
and communications activities with
SES employees need strengthening. . ..
[and should be] specifically assigned'
to a senior officer within the jurisdic-
tion of the Director of Human Re-
sources.
•	"We urge that the number of
Presidentially-appointed/Senate-
confirmed positions at EPA be cut
back to be more in line with compar-
able agencies.
Research and Development:
•	"The Agency inherited laborator-
ies scattered across a dozen states . . .
The R&D activities are fragmented . . .
The R&D organization does not make
sense.
•	". . . we favor concentrating
EPA's multi-discipline research activi-
ties at the Agency's Cincinnati, Ohio,
and Research Triangle Park, North
Carolina, centers, with center di-
rectors reporting directly to the AA
for R&D in Washington.
•	"We believe that R&D should
have its own budget, should be di-
rected to concentrate on broader prob-
lems and pursue science beyond the
narrow needs of individually funded
programs, and should constitute an
integral function of the Agency." ~

-------
™.Em
Times
NEWS FOR AND ABOUT EPA EMPLOYEES
SPECIAL
WDR ANNIVERSARY
EDITION
Clbrary
Environmental Protect*
Washington, D. C. 20-
May 22. 1984
Keeping Our Environmental Perspective
This week marks the anniversary of Administrator Bill Ruckelshaus' return
to the helm of EPA. Special activities in celebration of that event included
a visit with headquarters employees at a brown-bag lunch along the banks of
the Washington Channel (see photos) and a speech before the National Press Club.
In his remarks, Ruckelshaus spoke of the changes in the environmental situa-
tion since he first addressed the Club, and of the need for maintaining per-
spective when evaluating the "crises" of today. Excerpts of the speech follow:
". . .1 consider myself uniquely fortu-
nate to have become a recidivist in my
present job, and to have been given some
of that rare perspective in connection with
our nation's efforts to protect the environ-
ment ... It's nearly impossible to
understand our current environmental
_Aiituation or to form an intelligent view of
^fhat we still must accomplish without a good
understanding of where we've been.
". . .A little over thirteen years ago
. . . air pollution was obvious and perva-
sive and immediately threatening to public
health in many places. In fact, one of the
first things EPA did as an agency was to get
a court order shutting down the factories of
Birmingham, Alabama, to avert a threatened
health disaster. In 1970, sixty million
(Continued on back)
A
Riverside
Social
Videotapes of Ruckelshaus' remarks to employees have been sent to each Regional Office.

-------
people were on sewage systems that discharg-
ed raw sewage—two million tons a year of
organic wastes—into surface waters, around a
quarter of a million tons of toxic heavy
metals, and tens of thousands of tons of
other toxic chemicals into the same waters.
"... pollution was pervasive and ob-
vious ... No one can forget the Cuyahoga
River in Ohio bursting into flames. Many
responsible scientists were predicting the
death of Lake Erie. In Pensacola Bay, they
used to report fish kills in square miles of
dead fish. Vast areas of the Atlantic Coast
and the Great Lakes shoreline had been
closed to swimming and fishing . . . despite
the warnings, we used over 30 million pounds
of DDT; DDT residues in human tissue were up
to eight parts per million and the bald eagle
and other birds of prey were headed for
extinction in America as the pesticide des-
troyed their eggs. Wetlands continued to
vanish to the developer; Florida alone lost
169,000 acres and California lost nearly 50,000
acres in the decades between 1950 and 1970.
"It is in retrospect remarkable that al-
most all of my first speech in 1971 was a
defense of the environmental ethic. This
is another point of perspective: the immense
mental distance we all have come in our
attitudes toward the environment . . .
[EPA] demonstrated that the ideals of Earth
Day, which many in 1971 considered a vaporous
fad, could be made to work . . .
"The problems that led to the formation
of the new Agency in 1971 are largely under
control . . . Between 1970 and 1981, although
we added 30 million people to our population
and increased the GNP by almost 36 per cent,
estimated particulates emissions declined by
53 per cent, sulfur oxides declined by 21
per cent and carbon monoxide declined by
20 per cent. Lead levels decreased
nationally 64 per cent between 1975 and
1982, as the use of leaded gas declined.
The trends for ambient levels of almost
a-ll^cities have also been steadily
declining. A decade ago, for example,
Portland, Oregon, could expect to have
a hundred or so days when the CO count
was in excess of the ambient standard.
Currently it's more like two or three
days.
We have provided municipal sewage treatment
yfor over 80 million Americans since 197 0.
Most industries have installed water
pollution control technology, and as a
result, organic waste discharges from
industry have been reduced by 38 percent.
When the controls mandated by our recent
effluent guidelines are in place, discharges
of toxic pollutants will have been reduced
by 96 per cent from 1972 levels.
And the environment has responded. There
is fishing and water recreation again on
many major rivers that people thought were
lost forever. Over 99 per cent of the
streams nationwide are designated for uses
equal to the "fishable-swimmable" goal
mandated by Congress in the Clean Water
Act. We've improved water quality on
47,000 miles of streams since 1972. Lake
Erie did not die. There are fish in the
Trinity River at Dallas, once written off
as a sewer. Over 22,000 acres on the New
Jersey shore have been re-opened for shell-
fishing ... I suppose the most symbolic
achievement of all has been the return of
the bald eagle; we have convincing scientific
evidence that endangered populations of our
national bird have come back much more
quickly than expected, and that this
resurgence is strongly correlated with the-^.
ban on DDT.
"... Given reasonable goals we can
make reasonable progress against them.
The major sources of air and water pollution
we identified in 1971 are under control.
Note that this does not mean that they are
gone. Control of industrial and mobile
sources of air pollution and water pollution
from manufacturing and sewage are still the
subject of perhaps the bulk of EPA's ordinary
activity, but they no longer enter the
popular consciousness as overwhelming
problems.
I don't mention these achievements to pat
EPA on the head, nor do I wish to suggest
that the environmental challenges now be-
fore us, such as hazardous waste and toxic
chemicals, are in any sense trivial. But
these are real improvements, and they
should generate public confidence that we
can handle serious environmental problems.
Occasionally we should stop flagellating
ourselves as a nation for problems unsolved^,
and recognize that we are moving forward asW
mankind has always progressed—one step at
a t ime.

-------