THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 25, 1995 TAG: 9511250240
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOHN H. CUSHMAN JR., THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 106 lines
In the past several weeks, the Environmental Protection Agency has canceled hundreds of pollution inspections at factories, water treatment plants and other sites nationwide because of budget cuts imposed by temporary spending legislation.
Senior officials in the agency say that the reduction in inspections, which began when stopgap spending bills reduced the agency's budget last month, is likely to intensify in coming months if Congress imposes even deeper reductions in the agency's enforcement activities.
A Republican-backed bill to pay for the operations of the EPA and other agencies would cut spending on environmental enforcement by more than 20 percent. The House and Senate are expected to vote on the measure next week.
At Frankford Arsenal, an industrial park in Philadelphia, federal inspectors who were tipped off to a possible violation postponed a visit because technicians were unable to pay for travel from a laboratory in Annapolis, Md.
The local fire department visited the scene instead, and found drums of PCBs stored there, a violation that was viewed as very serious. EPA then sent an emergency response official who persuaded the responsible company to correct the problem, officials recounted.
But, said John Ruggero, an EPA official involved in the episode, ``If everyone does not respond until it is an emergency, then there are problems there waiting to happen.''
``Clearly, we are not out in the field as much as we used to be,'' said W. Michael McCabe, the top EPA official in the mid-Atlantic states, which includes Virginia. ``And if we are not out in the field we are not discovering the problems, and we are not able to correct them.''
McCabe said that in his territory alone, hundreds of inspections have been canceled since Oct. 1, and he predicted a subsequent reduction in judicial and administrative actions to bring offenders into compliance with environmental laws.
Several inspections of small water-supply systems were put off, such as a visit to see if a mobile home park in Virginia was complying with an order to build a new water and sewer system, he wrote in a memo to headquarters this week. The agency was unable to inspect facilities where there were reports of significant emissions of PCBs, a very hazardous chemical. Waste disposal and combustion sites were not being inspected, and there had been no inspections of underground fuel storage tanks in the region, compared with eight last year.
Republicans said their view is simple: that there is not enough money to fix every environmental problem.
``Our objective with the EPA is to first, by way of the dollars, get the attention of this agency,'' said Rep. Jerry Lewis of California, who is the House Republicans' point man on the EPA bill. ``They have grown like Topsy and are placing regulation upon regulation. They are in the enforcement business almost for the sake of it, rather than for what they can accomplish.''
The argument over environmental spending will be a prominent feature in the budget talks between the White House and the Republican leaders in Congress.
The two sides agreed last Sunday on a framework for a balanced federal budget in seven years, but the agreement hinged on some conditions.
One was that the budget legislation that emerges provide for spending that President Clinton considers adequate for, among other things, protecting the environment.
Clinton has vowed to veto the EPA spending bill as it now stands, saying that the $5.7 billion it provides to the agency for the 1996 fiscal year is not adequate.
That sum is a reduction of 14 percent from the previous year, and the administration's Office of Management and Budget said this week that the legislation was intended ``to cripple EPA efforts to enforce laws against polluters.''
The bill singles out enforcement for some of the most significant cuts among environmental programs, and several experts said that with less money for travel, lab tests, negotiating settlements or pursuing court cases, the EPA's ability to deter potential polluters would probably suffer.
In all, Congress has proposed cutting enforcement spending to $314 million from $395 million, with much of the reduction affecting the toxic-waste dumps in the Superfund program to repair the nation's worst pollution sites.
``Obviously the program is in for a very rough time, which is particularly unfortunate, because enforcement is the heart of environmental protection,'' said Steven Herman, assistant administrator for enforcement at the EPA.
But Lewis said that if the environmental agency focused its cuts on what he termed ``this very comfortable and often high-priced Washington bureaucracy,'' and protected its field operations, ``in my judgment it will have little or no effect.''
Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., who has steered the bill through the Senate, said that Congress is urging the EPA to eliminate ``low priority'' actions - those ``where there is the least risk to human health and the environment.''
``I don't know what we are doing that I would call low priority enforcement,'' said Herman, the EPA official. ``To this minute I don't have a clue. They have not defined that anyplace.''
Experts outside the government called the reductions in enforcement spending unjustified.
``I think that it will seriously affect the enforcement of environmental laws,'' said Jay Pendergrass, with the Environmental Law Institute, a nonpartisan organization. ``That will likely mean that EPA will not be able to protect the public health, the waters, the drinking water of the nation.'' MEMO: MISSED INSPECTIONS
Small water systems.
Reports of significant emissions of PCBs.
Underground fuel storage tanks in the mid-Atlantic region.
Waste disposal and combustion sites. by CNB