EPA needs more than soul-searching

It is not possible to please all of the people all of the time, and if the wildly divergent comments received during a recent online discussion are any indication, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should not expect to win universal support for its newly drafted public involvement policy. But because public involvement is here to stay, having a policy that better defines the rules of the game is at least preferable to the chaotic and highly politicized status quo.

For ten days in mid-July, the government agency “listened” as several hundred citizens shared their thoughts and ideas on how to improve public involvement in EPA decision-making. The online gab-fest featured a panel of experts and the usual stakeholder suspects (industry representatives, environmental groups, small businesses, local governments and various other special-interest groups), as well as a cross-section of citizens whose views crisscrossed the ideological map. At one end of the spectrum, the EPA was urged to put the needs of “natural persons” ahead of “artificial corporate persons.” At the other end, the agency was told that it would remain at odds with the public “as long as it is run by druids” (that is, zealots who worship trees and sacrifice people).

As might be expected, the “druids” provided most of the colour on the daily threads. One individual argued that industry representatives were not “legitimate participants” in EPA policy-making. One environmentalist cynically described the public participation process as a plot designed to waste his time through endless meetings and other formal procedures. Instead of leading demonstrations and forcing real change, activists are made to disappear “into a vortex of paper which will swallow them and their energy with no real world results.” Another participant urged the EPA to focus its efforts on enforcing bio-diversity laws, as advocated by the United Nations, in all states and regions across America. Others wanted the EPA to take on their pet cause, such as banning pesticides or creating pedestrian-based communities. And a few participants ventured into territory best described as dangerously beyond weird.

On the other side of the fence, citizens had plenty to say about the EPA’s lack of consultation and co-operation with local and state governments and with local citizens affected by its decisions. The agency was warned that the public consultation process could be hijacked by sophisticated special-interest groups to the detriment of local communities. It was urged to base its decisions on sound science, “not politics,” and to translate technical jargon into layman’s language so that all citizens could assess the information provided to them in public hearings. The EPA also was told that it needed better data to manage its programs effectively. One group, which has analyzed EPA reports since 1988, stated that the agency’s abilities to assess risks and establish risk-based priorities “has been hampered by data quality problems, including critical data gaps, databases that do no operate compatibly with one another, and persistent concerns about the accuracy of the data in many of EPA’s data systems.”

What was harder to find during the ten-day session was any praise for EPA’s management of past and current programs. Indeed, industry and environmental groups were often united in their criticisms of specific EPA clean-up projects. In previous years, both groups were horrified when the EPA spent US$130 million on an egregiously bungled “cleanup” of the Summitville mine site in Colorado. The firm hired to do the job caused more pollution problems than existed in the first place. Public documents show that as much as US$75 million was “the result of outright fraud, bid-rigging, billing irregularities, overstatement and over-billing of costs, and manipulative contracting practices.” Meanwhile, all industry offers of assistance were rebuffed.

The EPA is now under fire for mishandling other high-profile Superfund programs, including one in Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene River basin. This project began as a relatively small cleanup of the Bunker Hill mine site but was expanded in 1998 to the 1,500-sq-mile river basin, against the wishes of local citizens and elected leaders of all levels of government representing the state of Idaho. Industry critics questioned the EPA’s competence and challenged its plan to seek damages solely from mining companies because the government had, in the past, encouraged production from mines in the region for wartime and other strategic purposes. Environmental groups mostly complained about the EPA’s lack of transparency and accountability.

The EPA clearly needs reforms that go well beyond retooling its public consultation process. It needs more technocrats and fewer bureaucrats. It needs more scientists and fewer lawyers. It needs to consult more with local governments and elected community leaders, and less with well-heeled special-interest groups. It needs to do small jobs well before tackling bigger ones. And it needs more, not less, industry involvement if it is to accomplish its environmental goals in a scientifically sound and technically competent manner.

Corporations have already cleaned up and reclaimed more disturbed and contaminated land better, and at far less cost, than the EPA’s Superfund could ever hope to achieve, given its present rate of progress. And industry could do more, were it not for liability concerns tied to the EPA’s rush to seek remedies in the courts rather than on the ground, where they are needed most. As it stands, the EPA spends only twelve cents of every taxpayer’s dollar it receives on improving the environment. Legal and administrative fees eat up most of the remainder. America’s environment deserves better than the EPA’s 12% solution.