Louisiana: The State We're In; 440

and It was 10 months ago that the Department of Natural Resources took control of environmental regulation in Louisiana. At least that time they have faced complaints against waste dump operators, investigated charges of groundwater poisoning, faced a major spill of deadly PCPs in the Gulf Outlet Canal, and they are now considering a permit application for the world's largest chemical waste operation.

How is the Department of Natural Resources measured up to the environmental job? Louisiana the state we're in looks for the answer this week. We can't afford to lose our identities, too important to black kids going to 1980, and we feel that gremlin, we can accept white students and gremlin, just like black students attack, and we can still maintain our identity here. Louisiana, the state we're in, with Beth George and Ron Bloam. Welcome to this edition of Louisiana, the state we're in.

We have two reports on this week's program. One will look at how well the Department of Natural Resources is handling the regulation of the environment, and second will have an interview with the President of Gremlin University on the subject of a federal court suit aimed at ending the vestiges of discrimination. The story of the environment in Louisiana these past few years has been a tale of environmental crisis and citizen complaint. Environmental regulation in Louisiana was neglected for a long time in favor of aggressive industrial development, but in the last two years, government and public awareness has grown. Last January, a new state environmental office took over the regulation and safeguarding of the environment, and this week we have a report on how well the system is working. The reorganization of most of Louisiana's environmental programs covering such things as air and water took effect in January of 1980. Before that, environmental responsibilities were divided among a few individuals working in different state agencies, but with public pressure on, the legislature in 1979 passed a law that consolidated most of the environmental responsibilities into the Department

of Natural Resources under the supervision of a newly created environmental control commission. Since reorganization took effect, the Department is faced a number of crises. They have faced public criticism for their handling of hazardous waste operators. They have launched an investigation into groundwater poisoning. They face a major spill of the deadly chemical PCP into the Mississippi Gulf Outlet Canal, and they are now considering an application for the world's largest chemical disposal plant. How has the Department of Natural Resources measured up to the environmental job? That's the answer we were looking for this week. Well, I think any time you enter into this, you hope it will be better than it actually does when you're really getting involved in it. For the most part, I would have to say that I'm satisfied with our progress, realizing that we have got a long ways to go. As you know, since we have gotten involved in this, it seems as though we've been involved in some controversial or hot issue, and we've been spending a lot of our time dealing

with those rather than the organization of working more towards some ongoing problems that maybe you should have gotten more of our time. As Assistant Secretary for Environmental Affairs, Jim Porter is the man at Natural Resources who is on the spot. It is his responsibility to see that the state gets its house in order on the environment. Do you think it's fair to say looking back on the state's environmental record that it's been a bad track record? I think that there's no way in being fair, there's no other way to evaluate it, but that the state has not recognized the need for environmental control. It has not done that in providing resources to those agencies who ever had those programs to meet those needs, but I think we have done with environmental reorganization is to bring about a way of concentrating the focus of the problem with new legislation, with a new environmental control commission, which is a very high-level commission.

We have many members of major state agencies that serve on that. And all of this has brought about the proper focus to get more resources to change the approach that's been in the past. And that's what we do. I think that's the challenge we have is to bring about that change. Jim Porter believes that substantial improvement has been made in the state's handling of environmental concerns in the past 10 months, but leaders in the environmental community aren't so sure. On the one hand, I'm a little reluctant to be too critical because it takes time to get something like that together and to work. On the other hand, I think a lot of the signs we're seeing indicate that what we're getting is a minor improvement in attention to the problems, but no real improvement in the actual product that the department puts out. What we're seeing, for example, is a more time spent by some of the top-level people in the agency working with citizens trying to understand what the problems are.

But unfortunately, the people who were down within the agency are the same people who were making the decisions when those agencies were spread all over state government. And they've never seen a good, solid state program run. They don't know how to do it. The people at the top are well-intentioned, but have no experience either. And so as a result, what we're getting is a lot of the same kinds of decisions, which sometimes we can succeed in turning around at the upper levels within the department. But we're not seeing the kind of consistent quality performance that I think this to the people of the state deserve. Ross Vincent is president of the Ecology Center, a New Orleans-based environmental group. And he says there are still lots of conflicts of interest within the agency. One of the things that we argued when the reorganization bill was first proposed was that, in effect, all it did was change the names at the top of some letterheads. And that's exactly true. We've got serious deficiencies in state legislation that have not been corrected. And we've got an agency now responsible for protecting the environment that had its origins

and the functions of state government designed to promote oil and gas development. The mineral board, the conservation, the oil conservation department, those were the original parts of natural resources into which these new environmental protection functions were put. So we've got a kind of a fox in the henhouse situation with Vincent also says there is a lot more reorganization to be done, noting that some programs are still divided between the health and natural resources department, and that even within the natural resources department, there are old divisions which don't coordinate efforts. But state representative Manny Fernandez, who wrote the reorganization bill, and it was responsible for most environmental legislation, says the state's progress looks good. There are going to be some things we're going to have to do to streamline their operation a little bit more and still allow access to the public hearings. One thing we have done, one thing in the environmental control commission reorganization has done, it's taken the decision making process from out of bureaucrats offices and placed them squarely in the public eye, and I think that's where they belong.

In the process, however, we have used a great deal of time and a great deal of energy on the state level, but I think that going through this growing up period for us has been a good one, and that we'll see some even more tangible results in the future. One thing reorganization has done is increase the legislative funding for staff and programs. Last year, with the divided environmental program, there were some 70 people involved. This year, under reorganization, there are 170 with 50 more openings yet to be filled. But even with the increases, staffing still remains a major problem for the agency. We think the state is definitely headed in the right direction. One of the problems is the increased staff that's needed to carry out a good aggressive environmental program, for example, the present-air program has between 20 or 30 people. From the models that EPA has across the country, it looks like the state should have between 120 and 140 people. So even though the legislature may authorize additional staff, it takes a year to two

years to train them. So I would say Louisiana is lagging behind the rest of the country. I talked with the EPA officials who came in here this week, who were discussing the air monitoring situation. I asked them what they thought of reorganization and the new structure for the state. And they said, it looks good, it's a nice framework, but it's still woefully understaffed and underequipped. That's true. I think the original administrator, Miss Harrison, came down last week and met with the governor, and I was not present, but I'm told that by the original administrators, she didn't hold back, she told it like she saw it, and that they do feel we were understaffed. We recognized that. When you come into our program, and you see in an air activity that we have for statewide about 30 people, a 800,000-hour budget, and many times we don't not like to compare

ourselves to Texas, but you normally, that's a good comparison, you look at the city of Houston and they had twice as many people for that city as we had for the whole state. You look at the state program and they had three or four hundred people with a 12 million hour budget. Well, the people that are here may have been doing the best they could with 30, but they certainly, but the time you get through fighting all these fires, they get in a bad front of light with EPA because they're not able to meet ground output requirements and that sort of thing. So you can only do so much with the staff, and I recognize that. I think I said it from the very onset that I can see that there is certainly a more need. At the same time, you've got to balance this with not trying to establish an empire, you know, just getting more than it's actually required. How the state's environmental staff is utilized is also a concern to critics. They worry that too much manpower is used processing permit applications while serious pollution

problems go ignored. And the critics are also concerned that agency decisions focus only on technical detail while ignoring social consequences. That most of the people in the state agencies who are required to make these hard choices on a day by day basis still still think they're making technical decisions, not political decisions. And they still see people who come to the agency, concerned citizens, as intruders. As most of them are not technically trained, they don't understand the jargon, they see them as outsiders and intruders. And until that attitude changes, public confidence in the agencies are going to continue to decline. And if they don't have public confidence in support, they're going to get chewed up in the legislature every time they get in trouble. And certainly, I'm finding out every day that there are politics involved in much of what we do. From my standpoint, and from the standpoint of the law that we operate under, we have an obligation to develop regulatory programs that we feel will kind of go down the middle. We're not trying to make them so stringent that a facility can never be located, but

on the other hand, we have where there are standards that they are certainly will provide protection for the environment and the health and safety of the citizens of the state. We are restricted by our own law and the regulations to look at certain issues. And the mere fact that we go down into that there is a motion there, we're going to listen to that. We're going to listen to what people have to say, but at the same time we're trying to zero in on some technical issues that would be a problem or to cause a problem for that community. And it's difficult many times to work that line. But the fact that we're strictly in the state agency and we're against the citizens is just certainly not true. I think most everybody who works in these programs is dedicated to an end result of seeing a cleaner environment. Now, how we get there is the issue. There are still many stumbling blocks to a cleaner environment. As it is waste bits must be cleaned up, but the process is slow.

Cleaning up municipal sewage now dumped into our rivers and streams will cost a billion dollars. And automobile drivers face mandatory inspections for their cars if air pollution continues at present levels. And we have only begun to study the effects that chemical pollutants have on the states alarmingly high cancer rate. Add to that one other problem for the environmental affairs agency, credibility in every environmental crisis that apartment is handled this year. It is failed to convince the public that the state's former policy, a policy of benign neglect of the environment, has changed. Many people look at our past track record, the state's past track record, and they're not impressed with it, and they're very reluctant to believe even under a new scheme, even under a new administration, even under a new code of laws, that the state will do much better than it has done in the past. And simply, it then is upon our shoulders to encourage and to show and to demonstrate to the people of this state that the department, that the environmental control commission does have credibility, that we're seeking to do a good job, that a good job will be done

and then I think that the public attitude will then begin to change and say, yes, we're really doing something at the state level and things aren't getting better. What about that matter of public confidence? Do you think people have very much confidence in the environmental enforcement capabilities of this state? Well, I know they don't. I mean, at least certainly all the people I deal with, and I mean, all the people I deal with don't. My impression is that just because interest in the environment is growing and more and more people are becoming knowledgeable, more and more people are also becoming disappointed in the way the state's performing, what will it take to turn it around? The key, I think, is leadership. Somebody has got to turn around the attitude of the people within the department. Secondly, they've got to get the staff they need, they've got to get the equipment they need, they've got to get the money they need, and thirdly, they've got to begin recognizing that their primary function is not to facilitate industrial development, their primary function is to protect public health and safety, and they still don't understand that. They still operate as if their job is to keep the lid from blowing off, to do just what

it takes to keep the major disruption from occurring. I mean, even though we've seen some, the kind of improvement we've seen, for example, in the last few months, has been improvement related to the response of the agencies when issues become highly visible, almost without exception, the issues that the department has chosen to confront head-on are the ones that have been raised first in the news media. If local citizens don't do the homework and get their act together and learn all the technology in the law, and then go to the news media and have it make the news, the DNR, low-keys it, or doesn't deal with it at all. And they've got to start, they've got to start being the aggressors, they've got to start identifying the problems, they've got to start initiating the enforcement actions instead of running along behind EPA and tagging on when the federal agencies do it. They've got to begin creating an impression, a serious impression on the part of people

who care about their health and about the environment that, in fact, they know what they're doing and they intend to do the job well, and they haven't done that yet. It takes time, I think, we're going to have to see that the state is providing the resources that we need, we have the equipment, we keep abilities and the laboratories that are required, we have good quality assurance programs that nobody can question, but the federal government believes in, because they've been here. That will come with time, but for us to expect it in the next few months, I think, is just wishful thinking. Or even the next couple of years. And I would hope that we could start to build this within the next few years. And I will be very disappointed in thanks that probably I may have failed in a very critical area if I am not able to build that credibility. And both, as we noted in that report, most of the record of this environmental administration has been taken up putting out those environmental crises, fires of one sword or another.

How will the agency addresses the long-term problem of how you manage an environment alongside of an industrialized society is something that we've yet to see? Two things that seem to be common to the people we talk to in preparing this story, though, or the agreement that the agency is still under staff, and that credibility will be a problem as it enters the second year of its reorganization. Environmental regulation is a tough problem and will be watching the department's performance in the coming months. Well, Ron, along with the environment is a difficult issue. One of the issues that consistently has any list of concerns in Louisiana is a state of education. Several weeks ago, we had a report on the issues involved in the federal court suit that could drastically alter higher education in Louisiana. The United States government is suing the state to end what they call the vestiges of a dual system of colleges and universities. There's hope that an out-of-court settlement can be reached, although two separate plans, one from the Board of Regents and one from Southern University, were sent to the Justice Department. To get a handle on some of the difficult questions, this suit poses for both predominantly black and predominantly white schools, we've talked to a number of college administrators.

This week, we interviewed the President of Gremlin University, Dr. Joseph Johnson. President Johnson, with the Justice Department, receiving various consent agreements that have been sent to them, considering the problem of desegregation, is there a difference between the way, say, grambling is addressing this and Southern University? I know that Southern's sent along a separate agreement. Well, as you know, Southern has its own system. Grambling is a part of the Board of Trustee System. Gremlin had submitted, even before Southern, based upon working with Northeast Louisiana and the Louisiana Tech, we submitted to the Board of Regents and it should be at the Justice Department exactly what we felt that we would have to have at Gremlin State University in order to enhance the school.

That's what the suit is all about. It's about enhancement. It's about past discrepancies. What are you going to do to bring Gremlin and Southern up to par with other schools in the state? And unless the state and unless various boards addressed themselves to that problem, then I think we've got a problem. I think Louisiana has a golden opportunity, unlike many other states, to do something that has never been done and that's to come up with a plan of enhancement for Gremlin and Southern. When we talk about enhancement, I guess I get disturbed when we talk about enhancement in Gremlin to bring white students to Gremlin. I don't call it enhancement, enhance Gremlin because it's right and because of the students that's already there. And when you do that, then I think the rest of it will take care of itself. So that's what the suit is all about. It's about enhancement. It's about past discrepancies and there's no doubt in anybody's mind that there have been discrepancies as far as Gremlin and Southern are concerned. And Johnson, we're not only talking about enhancement, though, aren't we talking about

desegregation? Well, this is true, but I think the point I'm trying to make is that when enhancement will come desegregation, for instance, if there are certain programs at Gremlin, let give you an example. Gremlin, in my opinion, we do not have what you might consider to be a distinct program. Louisiana Tech is engineering, Northeast as a nation. We need a distinct program, a distinct professional program in that area of the state whereby students will have to come to it. That's what it's all about. If we're given these programs, if we're given the facilities, then I think that it will go hand in hand. Students will come. For instance, we feel that in North Louisiana, if there's a law school, Gremlin would be the rightful place to have a law school, if there's a law school. The creation of new and exclusive programs at some universities may result in conflict, because too often each university jealously guards its own kingdom.

But Dr. Johnson, this misses that problem, saying, Gremlin must look to the future from a perspective that includes past discriminations. We can't worry about, at Gremlin, the kind of problems that the state are facing at this particular time, because if we had been given an opportunity, it's no telling what we might be doing at this particular stage with that university. We may be the only institution up there. If you start talking about productivity based upon the resources that we've had, I don't believe it's a comparison. Well, President Johnson, when you went to Gremlin, you didn't have the opportunity to go to another school. The statistic I've heard this year is the fact that the majority of black students attending universities in Louisiana are now attending formerly all white schools. Is this accurate and what does this reflect? I disagree with that. I'm going to tell you the reason I disagree with it, because you see, we always get the number of statistics about how many black students are going in.

How many times have you seen the statistics about how many are coming out? You see, in spite of the number of black students that are going into all of the white schools in the state, Gremlin and Southern still graduate, more black students than all of the schools combined. The 107 predominantly black institutions in America graduate more black students than all of the 3,500 institutions that we have. So it tells me only one thing to go in is one thing, but what is the bottom line? The bottom line is how many are coming out and when they come out, what kind of production are these young people making to society? So it's one thing to go in, but if you don't come out, and that's the statistic that I suggest that people need to look at, they need to look at exactly how many black students are going in and how many black students are actually coming out. And that's where we close that vacuum, you see. We have a lot of students that go to many of the schools in the state, and by the same token, they turn right around and they're at Gremlin and Southern the next couple of years.

Why are they coming back? We had 8.1% increase in enrollment. We don't have that enrollment is very minimal and compared to a number of white students that came to Gremlin. But it simply means that the black students are coming back because there's something happening on other campuses that they're not filling the void that these young people receive. And on these campuses that we're doing at Gremlin State University now, and I'll get me wrong, I'm not a separatist, because I went to the University of Colorado. I think it's good, but I tell you what, I'm glad I got my undergraduate degree. From Gremlin because it prepared me for the minutes, psychological disadvantages that exist on other campuses that I wouldn't have been prepared for, and this is what happened to a lot of young people. So they're not too many people in my opinion, too many campuses that are prepared to teach me the black kids that they have. That's where we come in when we talk about the unique role. We hear a lot about high school students not being prepared for college. We hear about declining ACT scores.

Is this a concern for you as the president of the university that your fund students that simply aren't prepared to handle college programs? I think we must be always prepared at Gremlin to meet these young people many of them where they are, and do whatever we possibly can to move them forward. Now, the high schools and my opinion, many of them, they're not doing the job, there's no question about it. And I think that that's where the basic problem is, and we have to spend so much time with many of the young people who are coming to us without the skills, and then we have to take and try to work with them. But if a young person is willing, then we at Gremlin will certainly work with them, and I know it's kind of a paradoxical situation, but what do you do? Just turn a young person away, or try to meet that young person where he or she may be, and then work with them. And that's what we all about at Gremlin, and not that we don't have. We have an exorbitant number of good students, but by the same token, those young people have a right, because this is America, America, the land of the free, a young person should

have a right in education. And if you do everything that you possibly can, then you can't do any more than that. And that's what we do at Gremlin. Finally, do you think it's possible that an agreement will be worked out between the universities, and you won't have to go to a court suit? When we put it this way, three months ago, I was very optimistic when we met the various presidents, we got together, and we looked at what we had to do. I'm not as optimistic as I was at that particular time. I'm certainly hopeful that we will be unique in terms of the state of Louisiana as compared to other states that no one will have to focus in to doing something that we don't want to, because I think it's going to make for a bad situation throughout the state of Louisiana. But I'm not as optimistic as I was before, because you have so many elements out there working.

Now, when you get that many elements, I think you've got problems, and the people at the Justice Department also felt that they thought it would be very good if we could come up with a plan. But based upon the plan, it was submitted by the regions. There were a lot of things that we submitted, I guess a lot of things submitted that were left out, and the regions were trying to do their job, I guess, and certainly we got to do what we think is best for the institution. So I think it's these types of things, but if it goes to the court, I think the state is going to be in a lot of trouble. I think we may get something we didn't ask for. I mean, everything we've done for the last three months may really be thrown out, and I think the state is going to suffer. I think the institutions are going to suffer. I think bad feelings are going to come about. And unfortunately, it didn't have to be that way. October 15th was the deadline for the Justice Department to respond to the plan submitted by the Board of Regents and Southern. But the attorneys in the case say that they won't hear perhaps until next week, and it was mail from Washington, but they don't know when it will get into Baton Rouge and perhaps that's the commentary on the mail.

We'll have an update on that story and continuing following it as it develops. Next week, we'll have more presidential politics. President Jimmy Carter pays and visits New Orleans in October 21st. And we'll talk with a Washington insider who has some thoughts on his own on how the campaign is progressing. I'm Ron Blohm. Thank you very much, George. The Washington Assistance for the preceding program was provided in part by Kaiser Alumni.