Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 2, 1995                   TAG: 9508020032
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GOING TOO FAR IN REVERSE

Nor does air that is safe to breath. Or streams that are safe for fishing and canoeing.

But House Republican leaders managed to twist enough arms this week to resurrect 17 riders on a major spending bill designed to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing regulations governing drinking water, lakes and streams, automobile emissions, sewage, wetlands and pesticides in foods. These were attached to an appropriations measure that would cut the EPA's budget by one-third.

Enough Republicans - more than 50 - broke ranks with their leadership last week to strip the restrictions from the appropriations bill. That was good. Unfortunately, their leaders were able to get the riders back on. These may well die in the Senate, where Appropriations chairman Mark Hatfield already has asked his committee to take out legislative language that is not supposed to be part of appropriations bills. That would be good, too.

Proponents of the effort to hobble the EPA say regulation of air and water standards should be left to state and local governments. But environmental damage does not stay neatly within lines drawn on man-made maps. And setting all safety standards locality by locality, or even state by state, sounds about as practical as herding cats.

The congressmen also argue that particular EPA regulations are too restrictive and expensive, and the administration of them is often foolishly arbitrary and cumbersome. On this point, they are right. But the law should be improved and updated, not gutted.

Environmental regulations need to be more helpful in promoting the prevention of pollution rather than its more costly cleanup and disposal.

The rules need to be more flexible in allowing businesses and regions to find the cheapest means of achieving standards and desired outcomes.

The regulations need to take cost-benefit analysis more into account. They should be reconstituted into closer affinity with actual, relative risks to the environment and public health.

They need to rely far more on market-like incentives, far less on centralized commands and controls.

And they do need to undergo, in many cases, a devolution of authority to state governments.

Overhauling rule-making and reducing bureaucracy are not, however, the same as slashing the EPA and destroying its ability to do its job. And the reforms should come only after legislative committee hearings, extensive debate and empirical study.

A careful and open weighing of pros and the cons, absent the wilder scare stories, is a better guide to reform than extravagant ideological enthusiasm, an example of which was House Majority Whip Tom Delay's description of the EPA as "the Gestapo of government."

Environmental protection remains an important priority for most Americans, who do not see it as a Republican or a Democratic issue. People want regulations to be more practical and flexible. But, no matter where they live or what their party affiliation, they want to be able - without fear - to breathe the air and drink the water.