Issue No. 11
Sept. 27, 1982
Page 41	
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency 	
SEm TIMES
A PUBLICATION FOR EPA EMPLOYEES
Personnel 	
October: Key Month in
Performance Management
The year-long period (October
1-September 30) of performance
on which each employee's
appraisal is based requires
both advance planning and a
period of evaluation and
reinforcement after the year
ends •
Basically, the cycle
consists of three major steps:
performance planning, perfor-
mance evaluation, and perfor-
mance reinforcement.
During August and September,
employees and their supervisors
plan for the coming fiscal year.
They agree on Critical Job Ele-
ments and individual performance
standards. They define specific
measures for performance
standards and assign relative
weights to each. By October 1
a Performance Agreement for
the coming fiscal year is
approved. Midway through the
fiscal year, the supervisor
conducts a performance review
and discusses the employee's
progress.
Performance evaluation
comes with the next October,
when employee and supervisor
discuss employee strengths,
weaknesses, personal growth
needs, and accomplishments.
The rating official scores
performance against each stan-
dard, totals scores, and assigns
an overall objective rating.
This process culminates in the
employee's final evaluation.
During November and
December, Merit Pay employee
continued on page 44
Monitoring—A Crucial Task	
(Editor's Note: This is another in a series of articles on
EPA's Office of Research and Development.)
One of EMSL-Las Vegas radiation monitoring stations near
nuclear weapons testing site.
The continual monitoring of pollutants, including measure-
ments of their characteristics and precise interpretation
of that information, is the key to effective environmental
protection programs. Scientifically defensible and reli-
able monitoring data are essential in every step of pollu-
tion control.
Primary objectives of Federal, State and local monitor-
ing programs are to: assess existing environmental con-
ditions; identify trends; evaluate compliance with stan-
dards; and determine the interchange of air, water and soil
pollutants and their subsequent impacts on Hupians and other
living organisms. Monitoring is crucial to determining
humans' total exposure to pollutants.
Responsibility for EPA's monitoring program rests with
the Office of Monitoring Systems and Quality Assurance
(OMSQA) within the Office of Research and Development
which, along with its three monitoring laboratories,
provides research and technical support to other parts of
EPA and to State and local agencies with environmental
monitoring programs.
OMSQA's efforts include the development and standard-
ization of sampling and measurement techniques and equip-
ment, operation of monitoring systems, analysis of pol-
lutant samples, and assessment of the pollutants to which
people are exposed. It also is responsible for the agency's
quality assurance and quality control program. This offers
assurance that the Agency's monitoring data are statistically
valid and legally defensible.	continued on page 44

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42
REGIONAL PROFILES
(This is another in a series of profiles of the Agency Regional offices and
A Report on Region 10
By John R. Spencer
Regional Administrator
The 250 or so people who work for EPA in
Region 10 have the same pride in their
part of the country as just about everyone
else who lives in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon
and Washington. They all enjoy a quality
of life unmatched anywhere in America.
I believe I spoke for everyone last year
when I moved from Anchorage city govern-
ment to become EPA's Northwest Regional
Administrator. At my first Seattle press
conference, I was asked, "Do you consider
yourself an environmentalist?" My answer
to that was: "I am an Alaskan, so I must
be an environmentalist."
I have been a long-time resident of
Anchorage. It is a city that has been a
crucible of rapid change in a State where
residents have a fierce pride in where
they live. I have seen how people have
worked to reconcile the demands for resi-
dential , commercial and industrial growth
with the public's right to health and a
clean environment.
Throughout Region 10 the pressure for
development is relentless and inexorable.
No "barbed wire" mentality can stop it.
At the same time, it is obvious that EPA
has a special challenge to work for orderly
change that will not rob the eight million
people in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washing-
ton of the environmental amenities which
they so justifiably prize.
Since the beginning of this Administra-
tion, EPA has taken a number of important
steps that will improve the delivery of
environmental programs.
Just last August, the State of Oregon—
which had a number of environmental
"firsts" to its credit like its early
cleanup of the Willamette river and its
pioneering implementation of bottle bill
legislation-achieved another remarkable
distinction: it became the only State in
the Union to be given by EPA the authority
to operate a Statewide control program for
the full range of air pollutants. EPA had
entered into an arrangement with Oregon's
Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ)
whereby DEQ would no longer have to seek
time-consuming, step-by-step EPA approvals
every time it took an action to clean up
air pollution in Oregon.
Under the EPA-DEQ arrangement, DEQ will
avoid the procedural delays which in the
nast have frustrated everyone who wanted
cleaner air. The ICQ now does not need to
obtain prior case-by-case approvals of
State permits to prevent significant
deterioration of air quality and to avoid
violations of national ambient air quality
star, ards from new or modified sources of
air pollution. What's more, the EPA also
authorized the DEQ to use a number of
* emission trading concepts—such as
banking, offsets and "bubbles"--to protect
and improve air quality.
I came to EPA convinced that the best
environmental programs are those that are
most responsive to State and local control.
If I needed any additional convincing on
that point, it was provided by EPA's
struggle to administer on its own the
State air pollution control program in Idaho.
Only a few weeks before I became Regional
Administrator, all State funding had been
cut off for the Air Quality Bureau within
Idaho's State Department of Health and
Welfare, leaving it up to EPA alone to
manage all air pollution control efforts
in Idaho. Discontinuing the funding was a
decision of the Idaho legislature. In
large measure, the legislators had acted
out of frustration with duplicative EPA-
State reviews of clean-air actions taken
by the Air Quality Bureau. If EPA wants
to second-guess everything we do, the
legislators seemed to be saying, let EPA
do the job by itself.
We in the Region realized that EPA
couldn't perform the job the Air Quality
Bureau had done and considered restoration
of the program to the State one of our top
priorities. We did the best we could do,
but the money and effort we spent just
couldn't buy the same level of services
that could be provided by State personnel.
During the winter of 1981-1982, the
Region worked closely with Idaho legisla-
tive leaders and successfully convinced
them to restore the State-run program. We
also pledged that EPA oversight would be
kept to a minimum.
We told them that EPA would limit its
reviews only to matters that really count.
It became clear to us that the Legislature
and State government are in touch with the
people of Idaho—they want clean air—and
we would work with them to protect their
environment, not to throw roadblocks on
their path to progress.
In March of 1982, the Legislature reestab-
lished the Air Quality Bureau, and opera-
tion of the Idaho air program is now back
in the hands of the State.
This Administration's commitment to the
elimination of needless EPA reviews and sign-

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43
laboratories that EPA Times is presenting.)	
offs also extends to the State of Alaska,
where finishing touches are now being
applied to the issuance of general water
•pollution control permits for operators of
oil and gas exploration drilling rigs in
Norton Sound and the Beaufort Sea, for
seafood processors and for placer miners.
The general permits would be issued in
situations where all operations would be
using similar equipment in uniform envi-
ronmental conditions with respect to oil
and gas exploration in Norton Sound and
the Beaufort Sea.
By requiring individual permits for each
and e/ery drilling rig, what you wind up
with are permits virtually identical
in every respect, except for the name of
the company and the location of the rig,
at a tremendous cost of having to pay a
lot of people at EPA and the oil companies
to shuffle papers around.
Alaska, despite its many differences from
the other 49 states, is much like the
others in that it, too, is grappling with
the problems of hazardous wastes. Accord-
ing to a recent estimate by the Alaska
Department of Environmental Conservation
(DEC), of the 400 tons per year of hazard-
• ous wastes generated in Alaska, only 36
tons are known to be sent to Arlington,
Oregon, the nearest approved hazardous
waste disposal site. The DEC is currently
drawing up a tracking system to account
for all hazardous materials in Alaska as
part of a regulatory package that will be
more stringent than EPA requirements.
Hazardous waste problems have been the
predominant issue in the State of Washington,
the location of the two Superfund sites
within Region 10.
Even before the Superfund designation
of the Western Processing Company in a
southern Seattle suburb, EPA had moved
against the waste-recycling firm with
compliance orders under the Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act. After a
1981 order (calling for a penalty of
$16,975) failed to bring about correction
of ongoing violations and after Regional
EPA inspectors discovered additional
ongoing violations, Region 10 issued a
second order last June that directed
Western Processing to pay $210,000 and to
come into total compliance with the law.
The scope of EPA's enforcement actions
against Western Processing was recently
enlarged last August with the issuance of
a third order, one that established a
national precedent. The order, which
directed the company to assess the
environmental and health effects of past
practices, was issued under authority of
Section 3013 of RCRA and was the first
such order to have ever been issued
unilaterally by EPA.
We in Regional Office|derive no special
satisfaction from Region 10 being involved
in setting a legal precedent. But, if it
takes a precedent-setting action to clear
up uncertainties about the effect of
hazardous wastes on the environment, or to
remedy a hazardous situation, Region 10
won't hesitate.
Members of EPA's Region 10 staff, like
everyone who lives within our Regional
jurisdiction, demand a clean environment.
The people of Alaska and the Pacific
Northwest are entitled to nothing less.
EPA Cost Cutting Contest
Dr. John Horton, Assistant
Administrator for Administra-
tion, has announced a cost-
cutting contest within the
Office of Administration in
an effort to lend added support
to the President's drive to
reduce government spending.
Dr. Horton said there will
be cash awards in the contest.
Dr. Horton's deputy, Sam
Schulhof, will monitor the
six-month pilot project.
The contest differs from
the EPA Employee Suggestion
Program in that the participa-
tion is restricted to the
staff of the Headquarters'
Office of Administration,
Regional Management Divisions,
and Cincinnati and RTP facil-
ities. However, if the pilot
contest proves successful,it
may be extended to include
all EPA Units.
Teams of seven to ten
staff members are eligible
to participate. Twenty-four
have been participating dur-
ing the first four months of
the contest. Office directors
may participate, but cannot
act as team leaders. Of the
24 teams, ten come from the
Regions,six from the Cincinnati
and RTP facilities, and eight
from Headquarters. Participants
are selected by drawing lots.
To assure maximum benefits
from management and administr-
ation interaction, team members
I continued on page 44

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44
PERSONNEL (continued)	
performance is reinforced
through pay increases and cash
awards. "Pool" managers notify
employees by December of the
final decisions. The cycle is
completed when, by December 21,
employees' paychecks reflect
these decisions.
MONITORING (continued)
COST CUTTING CONTEST
(continued)
must come from different
disciplines in the organization.
Each month the team leader
submits one cost-cutting
proposal. An EPA Awards
Board initially reviews sub-
missions, and later proposals
are reviewed by a Special
Contest Panel that awards
points, based on four criteria.
A combination of overall
quality, breadth, feasibility,
and annual cost savings poten-
tial may earn a proposal a
total of as many as 20 points.
The points awarding panel
consists of 0MB's Budget
Examiner, the EPA Comptroller,
and the EPA Chief of Staff.
Teams placing one, two and
three will be winners of
cash awards of $5000, $3000
and $2000.
Some winner(s) may also
qualify for awards from the
EPA Employee Suggestion Program
(group category). The cost-
cutting contest cash award
will be divided equally among
the team members, with the
leader receiving one and a
half times the amount of
other team members. Each team
will also receive a plaque
inscribed with its names.
The winning teams will be
publicized within the Agency
and in localities of their
residence.
The Acting Director of OMSQA is H. Matthew Bills. The
three monitoring laboratories are located at Research
Triangle Park, North Carolina; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Las
Vegas, Nevada.
EMSL-RTP
The Environmental Monitoring Systems Laboratory at Research
Triangle Park provides monitoring and analytical support to
EPA air programs and other air pollution control organiza-
tions. This support includes:
•	Assistance in responding to environmental emergencies
•	Operation of the quality assurance program for ambient
air and stationary source measurements
•	Development of new monitoring equipment
•	Operation of the EPA Fuel Additive Registration Program
Dr. Thomas R. Hauser is the Director of EMSL-Research
Triangle Park. The laboratory has 117 employees and an FY
82 budget of approximately $12.4 million.
EMSL-Cincinnati
The Environmental Monitoring and Support Laboratory at
Cincinnati develops tests to identify and measure major
pollutants in water and to determine the characteristics of
those pollutants.
EMSL-Cincinnati scientists develop and standardize mon-
itoring techniques to detect viruses and microorganisms of
health significance in drinking water, ambient waters, and
municipal and industrial wastewaters, as well as ways to
measure the effects of waste discharges into surface and
groundwaters.
Robert L. Booth is the Director of EMSL-Cincinnati. The"
laboratory has 86 employees and an FY 82 budget of approxi-
mately $7.2 million.
EMSL-Las Vegas
The Environmental Monitoring Systems Laboratory at Las
Vegas specializes in environmental applications of airborne
remote sensing technology. It also has assumed national
leadership for the quality assurance and monitoring and
measurement aspects of the Agency's hazardous waste Super-
fund and pesticides programs. Its primary missions are:
•	Developing monitoring technologies and approaches for
assessing the impact of pollutants on man and the en-
vironment
•	Demonstrating advanced monitoring systems and techniques
by applying them to special monitoring needs of the
agency
•	Standardization technology for measuring radiation,
hazardous wastes, toxic substances and pesticides
•	Providing monitoring and surveillance services around
nuclear weapons testing sites and at the scenes of
environmental emergencies
•	Operation of remote sensing facilities in Las Vegas
and at Warrenton, Virginia
Glenn E. Schweitzer is the Director of EMSL-Las Vegas,
which has 182 employees and an FY 82 budget of $19 million.
The EPA Times is published every two weeks by EPA's Office of Public Affairs, A-107,
Washington, D.C. 20460, to provide current information for all EPA employees. It is
punched with three holes for binding for future reference.

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