Whitman tackles EPA enforcement with a smile

Christine Todd Whitman is passionate about the outdoors. She's enthusiastic about bicycling, kayaking, and, above all, trout fishing. "It was on the banks of a little stream that ran through our farm that my father first introduced me to the beauty of nature. I have been hooked ever since," Whitman told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

There is no doubt that Whitman, who as governor of New Jersey led a $1 billion effort to preserve open space, would have been a happy camper if she had been asked to run the Interior Department and to oversee national parks, wildlife refuges, and preserves. But the Bush Administration tapped former Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton as Interior Secretary in deference to Western landowners, whose property-rights cause she has championed.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, Whitman, 54, will need a tetanus shot, not a fly rod, before wading into polluted streams as the nation's environmental top cop. And some critics question whether she is up to the task.

"The EPA administrator needs to be the chief pollution fighter in the country, vigorously standing up for environmental justice and full enforcement of environmental programs that safeguard our health and the natural world," said Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club's New Jersey chapter. "Governor Whitman's record in New Jersey causes us to have

serious concerns about the commitment she will bring to the job." What troubles conservationists is that under Whitman's leadership, the New Jersey resource agency's enforcement staffing declined 30 percent and the pollution fines it collected dropped 80 percent. By contrast, outgoing EPA Administrator Carol Browner touted her agency's enforcement efforts, citing a record 6,027 enforcement actions last year and fines or other payments of $2.6 billion--the third-highest total in the agency's 30-year history, according to one of Browner's last press releases.

Whitman derides such enforcement statistics as "bean counting" and evidence of an outmoded "command-and-control" approach to environmental protection. She has strong backing on that point from President Bush, conservative lawmakers, and state environmental regulators. "That has long been EPA's problem: They tend to see enforcement as a goal in and of itself," said Robert Roberts, executive director of the Environmental Council of the States, an organization representing state regulatory officers. "But enforcement statistics don't tell you anything about the quality of the environment."

Whitman says the quality of New Jersey's environment improved during her seven-year tenure as governor, which began in 1994. She emphasizes the amount of land purchased and preserved; the reduction in the number of days in which water pollution forced beaches to close; the streamlined cleanup programs that encouraged redevelopment of abandoned inner-city industrial sites; and the overall measured improvement in air quality. Most environmental improvements occurred, she says, because her state moved beyond forcing regulatory mandates on industries. "We are instead working to forge strong partnerships among citizens, government, and business, built on trust, cooperation, and shared mutual goals," she told the Senate committee.

She is hoping to bring a similar approach to the EPA. Her goals include providing "flexibility" to states and local governments that want to solve their own environmental problems; setting up "market-based incentives" that will make it profitable for companies to reduce pollution voluntarily; and emphasizing both "strong science" and cost-benefit analyses in crafting policies and regulations.

But it is easier to scrub a hazardous-waste dump clean than to reform the EPA. With 18,000 employees and an annual budget of about $7 billion, the agency is not only massive, but its branches answer to many masters. At least two dozen congressional committees and subcommittees oversee its moves, and dozens of conservation organizations and industry groups scrutinize the agency's every action. "It's really not just one agency, it's a collection of agencies," said William Dickinson, an environmental consultant who worked with Reason Public Policy Institute and other groups on a recent report on reforming EPA. "And any administrator will tell you, it's a bear to run."

Browner came to the EPA eight years ago with a reform agenda that she put aside when conservative Republicans began cutting the agency's budget and programs after they took control of the House in 1995. As she left office, Browner was being denounced by congressional Republicans for championing regulations, such as new air pollution rules, that they said could not be backed by scientific research and would saddle industries with high compliance costs. Almost forgotten in the loud fights over the EPA's regulatory efforts were a host of voluntary compliance programs that Browner nurtured and championed.

Whitman's confirmation hearing provided a reminder of just how volatile environmental enforcement issues will be. When Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-Okla., asked Whitman to provide immediate relief to regulated businesses by practicing what he called "compassionate compliance," he drew a swift rebuke from Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. "Compassionate compliance for polluters is a great idea," Boxer said. "But we don't want it to end with taxpayers' tears."