THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 2, 1997 TAG: 9612310012
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By JOHN MURPHY
LENGTH: 85 lines
Virginia environmental groups have long been warning of declining water quality in the commonwealth but have lacked the incontrovertible evidence with which to substantiate their claim. Now, thanks to a recent review of the Department of Environmental Quality, the evidence has been revealed. The release of the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission report, judging from initial reactions by politicians and the public, may prove to be an important landmark on the road to improved environmental policy. But we would have done better to have listened to the environmentalists earlier, for over the past several years, while the governor has been telling us not to worry about water quality, and while the DEQ has been neglecting to enforce water-quality laws, a vital resource has been further compromised.
This chapter in environmental policy-making raises an important question: What manner and degree of proof should we require to convince us of environmental peril?
Proof is but one player on the political stage, and more often than not its role is diminished in the wake of interpretation, manipulation or simple disregard. In the current instance, Virginia possessed, within the files of the DEQ, good evidence of an environmental problem. But this evidence happened to contradict the political purposes of the people to whom it was entrusted. When the data were unearthed by JLARC's independent review, the governor did what any good politician would - he shifted the focus. ``I guess what they would prefer, these people who are carping and whining, is we just shut down these businesses . . . and all the people who work for them lose their job,'' he said.
In the public discourse of environmental issues, a disproportionately heavy burden of proof falls on the shoulders of the environmentalist. The status quo is assumed to be OK; the environmentalists must show a harm before any change is made. And so when two noble laureates suggested in 1974 that release of CFCs presented a serious danger to Earth's protective ozone layer, no action was taken. Only when a hole in the ozone layer appeared over Antarctica in the early '80s did we have proof enough to change policy.
Environmental danger is extremely hard to quantify. The gathering and analysis of data are expensive. The information is then often forced into comparison with other policy alternatives via economic models which shortchange the environmental view. So, for instance, rivers are evaluated as either recreation grounds or dumping grounds. Lost in the equation is the enormous complexity of biological systems: Pollution in the James affects not just the river but the wetlands and the Chesapeake Bay. The cumulative pollution from the Bay tributaries flows into the Atlantic.
Marine pollution, if it continues unabated, seriously endangers oceanic life and may, according to oceanographers, result in the death of seas or large oceanic areas, thereby endangering terrestrial species including human beings.
But our failure to confront environmental problems comes not so much because the perils are hard to prove, but because we insist on proving the perils. Our thinking hasn't caught up with our relatively new experience of global environmental crisis. When it does catch up, the burden of proof will belong not to the environmentalist but to the status quo. Before continuing business as usual, we will require ourselves to prove that any given activity does not unduly harm our support system.
In some respects we are already making this shift. Over the past three or four decades, the environmental movement in the United States has spawned innumerable organizations and agencies through which we demand environmental worthiness. Our attitudes have changed markedly: Once the domain of fringe radicals, environmental protection has moved to the front and center of mainstream politics.
During the period since the JLARC report was issued, the Allen administration, between bouts of kicking and screaming, has scrambled to present a better environmental image. Two days after the report, the DEQ conducted a surprise inspection of Smithfield Foods and won a court order forcing Smithfield to inspect its plant daily and report all further spills. Five days later, Governor Allen announced a proposed $19 million program to improve Virginia's water quality.
These are positive steps. But it will take much more than agency reviews and piecemeal programs to constitute the genuine stewardship that will protect our children's future. Profound change will come only when the public believes fervently that the environment is imperiled and must be salvaged - to the point of personal sacrifice of time and money; to the point that we change our individual habits and insist that our government coordinate the change of our collective habits.
When that point is reached, muddled notions of proof will no longer stand in the way of intelligent action. MEMO: John Murphy is an environmental activist. He runs an organic
vegetable farm and landscaping business in Charlottesville.