The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Critique of President Carter's environmental message

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Jim Lehrer is off tonight. Yesterday President Carter sent to Congress an encyclopedic environmental message. Tonight, with the new EPA Administrator, Mr. Douglas Costle, with us in Washington, we look at Mr. Carter`s environmental promises and how they collide with reality.

Let`s take a look at the highlights of what Mr. Carter proposed, first in the area of controlling pollution and protecting the public health. The President paid special attention to toxic chemicals, ad ding $22 million to next year`s budget for their control. He also urged coordination of research and regulation, speeding up the process of setting pollutant standards, and improving enforcement of water pollution control laws. And he asked the EPA to set standards to control suspected carcinogens in drinking water.

Citing the fact that only four. occupational health standards have been developed since 1970, the President gave high priority to the development and enforcement of new health standards.

Repeating his desire to strengthen the Clean Air Act, President Carter urged support of administration amendments now before Congress. To further the cause of water quality, Carter favored imposing penalties on companies that do not meet schedules for abating pollution. He also stressed the importance of comprehensive state and local planning to control water pollution.

Finally, in the matter of solid waste disposal, the President called for recommendations that might lead to higher prices for materials to reflect the cost of their disposal. And he directed the White House to begin using recycled paper.

Is this an environmentalist`s dream, or simply a few choice bones meant to pacify the environmental lobby? One of the most prominent organizations in this field is the Environmental Defense Fund, which celebrates its tenth anniversary next week. Its Executive Director is Arlie Schardt. Mr. Schardt, is this an environmentalist`s dream? Is this everything you`ve always wanted?

ARLIE SCHARDT: Pretty near almost everything that an environmentalist could have wanted. I think that this message has come just in time. It represents about a 180-degree turnaround on the part of the White House after eight years of ignoring these very, very critical issues that pertain directly to our health and to the future of our economy. Now, is it an environmentalist`s dream, or is it a laundry list or what? It`s tremendously comprehensive, but I don`t think that it`s in any way impossible to achieve. I think it`s a basically common-sense proposal that`s recognizing facts the scientists and economists have known for a long time, and President Carter is calling for action on them.

MacNEIL: There is not a large element of wishful thinking in this?

SCHARDT: I don`t think so. You know, there`s been a change in the environmental movement over the last five to ten years, and that is it`s become a very sophisticated operation. It`s not just a bunch of nay-sayers any more, it`s not just a bunch of people saying, "Don`t do this, don`t do that." The premises of the environmental movement at this point are based on very sophisticated scientific studies, economic studies and so on, and in many cases it`s a matter, I think, of just shattering some of the old myths and Carter is recognizing some of these old myths and setting out to abolish them.

MacNEIL: Is the most significant thing in this message its comprehensiveness and the fact that it was uttered at all by the President?

SCHARDT: I think that`s number one: just that a President is doing this because a President is the leader of the country and he`s got to educate the people on a lot of these issues that have been ignored for so long. I think the comprehensiveness is of major importance, and I think another important factor is that right off the bat, the very first thing that the message gets to is what is clearly the main obstacle to environmental reform, and that`s been the myth that environmental progress is going to harm the economy or is going to cost jobs, when in fact the opposite is true.

MacNEIL: A member of your legal staff is quoted today as saying that Mr. Carter is not putting his money where his mouth is. Is he giving government agencies like EPA the resources to enforce all this?

SCHARDT: Well, we hope that he is. We`ve been encouraging, as you may know, since the start of the administration more funding to enable EPA to get the level of staff -- of scientists and attorneys and so on -- that it has to have to carry out this enormous mandate. I think Mr. Costle was an excellent choice for that job, and I think that if he is given the ability to get the resources that he needs that he can carry them out.

The criticism this morning, by the way -- I`m the last one to knock the press, but -- that was in the context of an interview that lasted about a half an hour, and it was an expression of strong sup port for the program; but Bob Rauch, our attorney, who being interviewed there, was simply trying to point out that definitely the need for more personnel is a major need for EPA and we`re doing everything we can to urge that resources be made available to EPA to do their very, very big, important job.

MacNEIL: Thank you. The second major theme of the Carter message was the role of energy in the environment. Recognizing that coal conversion technologies can have unacceptable impacts on health and the environment, the President called for joint EPA, ERDA and HEW review of the hazards of advanced energy technologies. EPA arid ERDA are to develop environmental standards in this area.

On strip mining the President urged passage of the strongest form of regulation now before Congress. The President said it was essential to reform coal leasing so that mining only occurs in areas where it is environmentally acceptable and compatible with other use of public lands. He urged exchange of existing leases to conform to this policy.

Saying that the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act needs strengthening, the President directed the Secretary of the Interior to improve data gathering from industry and data sharing among government agencies in this area. Mr. Carter also directed the Interior Secretary to prepare a comprehensive report on the availability of water for coal and other energy development.

Not everyone is happy with the message, especially business and industry, for whom the costs of this program would be very high. Chris Farrand manages the Resources and Environmental Quality division of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Farrand has seen the issue from both sides. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Water Resources in the Department of the Interior under President Ford, and stayed through the Carter transition period. Mr. Farrand, you were involved in drafting an earlier version of this message. Has it been watered down to please business?

CHRIS FARRAND: I don`t think it`s been watered down to please business, I think it was watered down because the original version had a variety of new proposals in it without any estimates of cost, either in terms of political cost or in terms of cost in the President`s budget, and for that reason I think it was reviewed and culled, if you will, by OMB and by the White House itself. That`s my view.

MacNEIL: So this is a more practical and politically realistic document?

FARRAND: I think so. It`s still all-inclusive; it`s still, as Mr. Schardt said, a laundry list of environmental goals and aims, but it doesn`t have the number of new initiatives that the earlier drafts seemed to have.

MacNEIL: Is it therefore a message which would make the Chamber of Commerce and its business clients or members happy?

FARRAND: Mixed is the best reaction I guess I could give. Business is concerned, I think, that some of the trade-offs are not carefully measured. We believe that the goals and aims set forth in this document are probably laudable and worthy, and we have no objection with what the administration seems to be trying to do. The problem is trying to weigh those objectives against the other administration efforts in the energy and in the economic area. We don`t think that those trade-off have been adequately addressed, though they are discussed in rhetorical terms; but they have not been measured carefully, in our judgment.

MacNEIL: Well, to put it in very simple terms, in business` view, can Mr. Carter have the increased energy production -- for instance, coal -- that he obviously wants and stricter pollution control that he called for yesterday?

FARRAND: We don`t believe they`re totally compatible. It`s akin to the situation we had in the sixties, perhaps, with the move toward guns and butter at the same time. We think that some accommodation on one side or the other will have to be made.

MacNEIL: Does that mean no?

FARRAND: That means no.

MacNEIL: Senator Gary Hart, who is known as an environmentalist himself, said the real crunch hasn`t come yet. Where, in the Chamber of Commerce`s view, is the real crunch going to come?

FARRAND: I think in two areas. In the water quality area the administration has chosen to maintain the 1983 goal under the federal Water Quality Act. We haven`t yet met the 1977 goal; the business and industrial community is about eighty percent of the way toward meeting that goal, the municipal community is only about forty-five or fifty percent along the way. By that standard they would be almost ten years behind schedule, so to maintain a 1983 goal under those circumstances would seem unrealistic. That`s one crunch.

The other crunch is obviously in the Clean Air Act area. We don`t believe - - and I believe Mr. Costle`s statement implies -- that we can meet both our energy goal -- our mandatory conversion goal, our increased coal production goals -- at the same time without some accommodation from the Clean Air Act.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Other major themes of the Carter message considered our natural resources and national heritage. Concerned about flood control, the President directed all federal agencies to limit construction in flood plains. Likewise, the President urged all federal agencies to refrain from construction in wetlands wherever possible.

To extend environmental protection to public lands mined for gold, silver and other hard rock minerals, Mr. Carter proposed replacing the Mining Law of 1872 with a leasing system. No longer would someone be able to acquire exclusive mineral rights by simply filing a notice of claim.

Noting that America`s private forests were producing at less than half of their estimated potential, the President asked the Secretary of Agriculture to recommend better management methods.

Sixty-eight of 189 barrier islands stretching from Maine to Texas remain unspoiled. The President directed the Secretary of the Interior to investigate how to protect them from unsound development.

Off-road vehicles, like snowmobiles and dune buggies, that could damage public lands, could be banned permanently or temporarily under provisions of a new Executive Order.

Citing fragmentation of programs, the President asked the Secretary of the Interior to develop within 1.20 days a proposal to protect our natural and cultural heritage. He also pledged his support for additions to parks, wildlife refuges, scenic rivers and national forests in Alaska. He endorsed some seventy wilderness proposals pending before Congress and recommended some new ones. To preserve wild and scenic rivers, the President submitted legislation aimed at adding portions of eight rivers, totaling 1300 miles, to the nineteen national wild and scenic rivers already protected. And to the two national scenic trails already designated the President would add three new ones.

Regarding wildlife, the President called for accelerated implementation of the Endangered Species Act, simplification and codification of present laws, and increased funding for the Fish and Wildlife Service. Perhaps no organization is so closely identified with America`s wilderness areas as the Sierra Club. Brock Evans is Director of its Washington office. Mr. Evans, what is new in this message, from your point of view?

BROCK EVANS: For the most part, there`s not that much new in it. Many of the proposals, such as those to regulate hard rock mining, for example, have been around Congress for a long period of time but haven`t really got anywhere. A couple of the initiatives -- for example, in protecting the barrier islands and getting involved in the critical problem of regulating abusive forestry practices on private land -- are new. But the new thing about it all, in our judgment, is that for the first time, or certainly for the first time in eight years, it`s all put together in a very strong, positive, comprehensive package. And not only that, but it`s backed up with a specific set of executive actions in the sense of Executive Orders, and also specific proposals to back them up. So that`s what`s new, and this is what we welcome so much about it. We think it`s a very strong, positive, definite statement.

MacNEIL: So they were breaking out the champagne -- if that`s not an environmental pollutant -- in the Sierra Club last night, were they?

EVANS:(Laughing.)Well, we were pretty happy about it, .I must say that, yes, sir.

MacNEIL: What does this message leave out, from your point of view?

EVANS: Well, there were several features, in our judgment, that were disappointing, and we`d hoped they could have done more. For example, the President talked about Alaska and the need to protect lands up there while there`s still time, but he didn`t come up with any specific proposals. As you may know, there are proposals around to preserve up to 120 million acres or so of some of the most scenic and beautiful lands on this entire planet.

MacNEIL: We heard about those exhaustively on a program recently.

EVANS: That`s right, so you know. But they didn`t come up with anything specific; we wish they had. In the case of the redwoods out in California, which are being cut right now as you and I are here talking, he didn`t propose to ask the lumber companies again for a moratorium to stop until legislation which is now in Congress can pass. In the case of toxic substances -- the chemical problem that you mentioned earlier -- we felt he asked for a disappointingly small amount of money to implement this vital program. He asked for $29 million, which is essentially the same proposal that the Ford administration asked for earlier. The Senate is working on legislation to ask for $50 million, and we wish that more initiative would come from here to get going in this very important thing.

So there are some areas that we felt could have been added to and amplified.

MacNEIL: Thank you. The President also found time in his message to mention the urban environment, emphasizing neighborhood preservation and urban homesteading programs, where people buy abandoned houses for a dollar and fix them up for themselves.

And he touched upon the global environment, saying the U.S. would support a ten-year worldwide moratorium on the commercial killing of whales.

He committed the United States to cooperation in international population and health care programs.

Much of the responsibility for developing environmental guidelines and especially for enforcing them belongs to the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, established by President Nixon in 1970. Douglas

Costle is President Carter`s new Administrator for EPA. He was Commissioner of Connecticut`s Department of Environmental Protection from `73 to `75, and then Assistant Director of Natural Resources and Commerce for the Congressional Budget Office before joining the Carter transition team on governmental organization. Mr. Costle, Russell Train, your predecessor at the EPA, said the agency did not have the manpower or resources to police then-existing laws and regulations. What`s the President given you to change that?

DOUGLAS COSTLE: He`s given us 600 new positions this year, and has left the door open for me to come back, as I have a first-hand chance to assess the needs of the agency in implementing these new laws, to ask for more where it is in fact required. And it`s the first generous increase in personnel and dollars to go with those personnel that we`ve seen for EPA in the last four years, so that by itself is a significant breakthrough.

MacNEIL: You have no sense yet, though, of its adequacy to do this job. Will that depend a lot on how much of this actually gets enacted into law?

COSTLE: To some extent, but not in all cases. For example, the toxic substances portion of this is now a matter of law, and we`re going through our first year of staged implementation of that law. And the early stages of it, we feel, we are in fact adequately budgeted for, but I think no one`s under any illusion that this program isn`t eventually going to grow. It may, in fact, in a decade be the driving force in all of EPA`s programs. There`s just increasing concern about the possibility of silent epidemics from the presence of toxic chemicals in our environment in a very ubiquitous, all-present way, and we need to get a handle on that. And Congress labored for several years to get a bill out, did last year -- it`s a good bill -- and this year we begin to implement it.

MacNEIL: Perhaps the simplest observation on this huge message is that it would appear to laymen like ourselves to run into direct conflict in some cases with the President`s energy message of last month. What is your own feeling on that -- let`s take the case of coal and the President`s desire to increase industry`s use of coal in which, of course, high sulfur content is a pollutant. You testified in the Senate today. How do you see these two things colliding, and where is the trade-off and how is it possible?

COSTLE: We`re convinced -- and we took a fair amount of time since taking office to take a hard look at this -- that in fact they`re compatible; that is, for the most part we will be able to accomplish that conversion to coal if we`re willing to pay the price to put the controls on the burning of that coal so that the total emissions coming out of coal burning in fact will not exceed public health standards. As the President said when he released his energy message, there are likely to be some areas of the country where there is already so much in the air, and we foresee so much difficulty getting it down to public health standards as it is, that you may not in fact want to burn coal, for public health reasons. But we have a strong feeling that that will not be a large number of areas, that coal conversion that the President has called for in his energy message was worked out very carefully with us, and we think by and large it is doable.

MacNEIL: There`s another example of this possible conflict in the news today. The House of Representatives this evening is debating the Clean Air Act and Mr. Carter`s proposal to give the auto makers another year before the new emission controls have to be in force. How does that square with the call yesterday for stricter air pollution enforcement?

COSTLE: The real background of that is that Congress last year failed to act on amendments to the Clean Air Act. Both houses actually did vote a bill; they went to conference, they came back from conference and the bill was filibustered to death, so as a result of that filibuster, which was carried out successfully in the Senate by a handful of members, we got no Clean Air Act amendments and we lost thereby a year and a half. And each day that now goes by we lose more time, so our concern in proposing the auto emission schedule was to try to get as much of this lost ground regained and to move just as expeditiously as we could; and our conclusion and engineering judgment was that the schedule that we proposed was just about the tightest, in fact, that anyone could reasonably expect. So it was really a matter of trying to play catch-up ball and trying to do it as quickly as possible.

MacNEIL: You`ve heard what the others think: where do you expect the crunch to come in the Congress on this Chinese menu of environmental proposals?

COSTLE: It`s likely to come in a number of areas. This is the first environmental message since 1973, and I think there has been some concern as to whether this country has lost its will to deal with these problems. I tend to disagree with Mr. Farrand, earlier; I think we know a lot more now than a lot of businessmen are willing to concede. We`ve had a lot of time to think about these problems, but any kind of change, particularly if the change involves cost, if it involves changing basic ways of doing things, is bound to be a crunch to someone. And the environmental problems are so pervasive that they affect everything everybody does, and it means that we all have to change in some way; and in many instances we will have to pay more for things. But I think the judgment that that message expresses is that as a nation we cannot afford to lose our resolve. We set sails correctly seven, eight years ago when we created EPA, and the time now has come to deliver; and no one should be surprised that we`re getting down to the hard job of actually implementing those laws.

MacNEIL: Mr. Farrand?

FARRAND: I have to disagree on one point: I think that business is reacting not to the fact that they have a tough job to do; they know that, and they`ve been working toward it. They feel that they`re being penalized unfairly, I think, and forced to make some economic commitments that may not be totally realistic. Let me cite some examples.

To convert coal and meet the goal that the President has established, and yet to apply the best available commercial technology on all plants, regardless of the amount of sulfur in the coal, is going to require an estimated investment of somewhere above $40 billion. It`s not that we don`t want to get to clean air, and it`s not that we don`t want to get to coal; it`s just that we want to do it in a way that isn`t going to disrupt the economy, that isn`t going to disrupt the rate payer who has to pay the utility rates that have to pay off those equipment. We think there might have been a better way to do it. We think that there might have been, for example, a requirement for best available commercial technology on plants in certain areas of the country using certain types of coal, and other standards on other plants. That`s one example.

Let me talk about the water control problem. As I said before, the businesses have cleaned up about eighty or eighty-five percent of the pollution to comply with the 1977 water quality standard. To go the next step, to get to the ninety-five percent level, is going to cost another $30 or $90 billion. And we`re not convinced that enough measurement has been made, enough analysis been made that those expenditures are going to pay off. We agree -- I think the business community in general agrees --- that we have to maintain water quality and air quality consistent with human health and welfare.

MacNEIL: Let me put those points to Mr. Schardt of the Environmental Defense Fund. Your organization obviously watches the Congress very well; there presumably are going to be a lot of members of Congress who reflect that same point of view. So preoccupied as they are with the energy package at the moment, is there any hope of this environmental package going through this Congress this year or next year pretty well entire? What are the political realities of it?

SCHARDT: I think the political realities are very hard ones at this point. I think Congress has demonstrated some foot-dragging - in fact, some outright resistance; we saw that exemplified by what happened to their response to President Carter`s list of water projects, dams and so on, that he wanted to de-authorize.

MacNEIL: Could I just ask you this: how do you evaluate the sort of pro- environmental as opposed to the pro-business, if you like, sentiment in the Congress at the moment -- say, in the House of Representatives? Do you have a sense of that?

SCHARDT: I think there`s a real...

MacNEIL: How many of you guys are there?

SCHARDT:(Laughing.)How many of us guys. I think that there`s a pretty even split right now, and I don`t think you`re going to see the same people dividing up on all of the issues. I think that there`s going to be a lot of picking and choosing because some of these definitely have regional impacts as well as national impacts.

MacNEIL: Mr. Farrand, would you read the Congress that way?

FARRAND: I think the Congress is in a slightly more realistic mood than it has been in the past. Let me cite one example: the strip mine bill that passed the Congress back in 1974 --an attempt was made again in 1976 -- was probably not as good a bill from the mining industry`s standpoint as the one today, though obviously, they still oppose the bill. The fact that the Congress knew they had a President for the bill required them to be a little more careful in the drafting, and I think that they`re being realistic about what they are enacting into statute; they don`t have to fall back on the sort of conflict between the executive and legislative branch that got them out of some binds before.

MacNEIL: Mr. Costle, as I said a moment ago, this message is a kind of Chinese menu of things, it`s so bewilderingly comprehensive. From your having been very close to Mr. Carter on this, what parts of it does he really care most about -- what are closest to his heart, and which are the parts he would really fight for when it comes to the crunch?

COSTLE: The truth is, he feels in fact close to all of them. He`s a man who`s got very real convictions in this area. He`s a pragmatist, he wants practical solutions; he doesn`t want everybody to run off in every which direction. But every one of these items in here has been in some way around for quite a while, and what he`s essentially saying is, it`s time to move on it. And the best way to draw attention to it, to focus on that, is to aggregate it in one document and say, "This really has to be our agenda." And in a way he`s saying this is our agenda for the next four years. If we can accomplish these things, in fact we`ll have gone a long way toward meeting those commitments.

MacNEIL: I think we have to end it there. We`ll watch very closely and with great interest what happens to this and to the energy message. Thank you all very much in Washington. Thank you, Mr. Schardt, here. That`s all for tonight. Jim Lehrer and I will be back tomorrow night, and other new permitting, we`ll look at. the struggle over the Korean troop pullout: who`s right, the President or the generals? I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.