DATE: Saturday, June 14, 1997               TAG: 9706140002

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B6   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   64 lines

THE ENVIRONMENT WRONG APPROACH TOP VIRGINIA NATURAL RESOURCES OFFICIAL COMPLAINS OF FEDERAL EMPHASIS ON ENFORCING ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS.

Virginia's top environmental official, Secretary of Natural Resources Becky Norton Dunlop, complained to a U.S. Senate committee this week that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency puts too much emphasis on enforcing environmental laws and too little on improving air and water quality.

``I believe the government should be a helpful servant and not a fearful master,'' she testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee during a hearing on federal-state relations in enforcing environmental laws.

Although Dunlop said government should not be a fearful master, she obviously meant fearsome master. A slip of the tongue, no doubt. But she meant what she said about government being a ``helpful servant.'' Her emphasis always is on helping, not on enforcing. The fact that enforcing environmental laws might improve air and water quality appears to have escaped her.

Imagine if government's role in preventing speeding were that of a ``helpful servant.'' At what speed would motorists drive? Whatever speed they desired.

Government should helpfully serve law-abiding citizens but prosecute law breakers.

Environmental laws are important, especially to a region dependent on tourism.

Yet Virginia has enforced environmental laws with all the ferocity of a toy poodle, and that clearly is the way Dunlop and her boss, Gov. George F. Allen, want it.

An EPA official testified that the agency did not repeatedly stick its nose in state's business. The EPA, the official said, became involved in only four cases nationwide in fiscal 1996. And only when it deemed state enforcement of environmental laws inadequate. One of those cases, against meatpacker Smithfield Foods Inc., is scheduled for trial in July, with federal authorities seeking as much as $125 million in fines.

The EPA accuses Smithfield Foods of 5,330 pollution violations. The company says its discharges were allowed under consent orders with Virginia. A Norfolk federal judge said deals with the state do not protect Smithfield Foods from federal prosecution, so the case can proceed.

At the Senate hearing, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., expressed concern about Chesapeake Bay pollution resulting from Smithfield Foods discharges. ``I want (the EPA) to enforce the law,'' he said. News stories, he said, showed ``a weakness, and a willingness by Virginia to cooperate with this polluter.''

When Virginia fails to enforce environmental laws, companies that assiduously obey environmental laws, often at considerable expense, suffer a financial disadvantage in competition with companies that cut environmental corners, perhaps with the helpful blessing of the state.

At the hearing, Dunlop said partisan politics may have spawned the federal lawsuit against Smithfield Foods. If there's any partisan taint, it stems from the $125,000 in political contributions that flowed last year from Smithfield Foods Chairman Joseph W. Luter III to Governor Allen's Political Action Committee.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Louis J. Schiffer emphasized that her environmental section sued Smithfield Foods only after Virginia failed to stop pollution violations.

Dunlop should stop being offended when environmental laws are enforced. They are supposed to be. The environment and law-abiding businesses suffer when they aren't.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu