FOR EMBARGOED RELEASE Monday, March 16, 1998
Media Contact:
Michael Tebo
(202) 328-5019
[email protected]
U.S. POLLUTION CONTROL: FRAGMENTED, FOCUSED ON THE WRONG PROBLEMS, AND PLAGUED BY POOR INFORMATION
WASHINGTON, DC - A new book released today by Resources for the Future (RFF) documents the progress made in controlling pollution in the U.S. over the last two decades but also finds that there are many unaddressed problems and a pressing need for a major overhaul of the regulatory system. The 336-page book, "Pollution Control in the United States: Evaluating the System," is the culmination of a three-year investigation by RFF's J. Clarence (Terry) Davies and Jan Mazurek. It is the most balanced and comprehensive review to date of the successes and failures of U.S. environmental laws
"Government officials, elected representatives, the media, and the public are increasingly at odds about whether the U.S. pollution control regulatory system is performing satisfactorily," says Davies, director of RFF's Center for Risk Management and former assistant administrator for policy at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). "Some people point to the significant reduction in most air pollutants, the cleanup of major rivers, and other tangible progress in improving environmental quality. Critics point to the inefficiency and intrusiveness of some regulations and the lack of progress in dealing with nonpoint sources of pollution or with global climate change."
"Our book is both an evaluation of the past and a road map for the future," Davies says. "By identifying the parts of the pollution control system that have worked and the parts that are 'broken,' we hope to highlight 'good' policies while encouraging radical change in a system that badly needs changing."
The authors describe and evaluate the backbone of U.S. pollution control programs - the nine major federal environmental laws under which EPA operates control air and water pollution, solid and hazardous wastes, pesticides and toxic substances, and a variety of other possible threats. They also scrutinize the process through which regulations are developed by EPA and other agencies, and the critical role played by the states in environmental regulation.
They base their evaluation on the following criteria: whether the system has reduced pollution levels; whether it has targeted the most important problems; whether it has accomplished its goals efficiently; whether it has been responsive to a variety of social values; whether it compares favorably with the systems of other developed nations; and whether it can deal well with future problems.
"The greatest strength of the U.S. pollution control system is its proven ability to reduce conventional pollutants generated by automobiles and large point sources such as power plants and factories," Davies says. "It is a system that was developed to deal with the problems of the 1960s and 1970s, and it did a reasonably good job of addressing them." (See attached fact sheet on accomplishments.)
For all its successes, however, Davies and Mazurek conclude that the U.S environmental regulatory system is deeply and fundamentally flawed. The system involves detailed and rigid laws that are largely unrelated to each other and lacking in any unified vision of environmental problems or EPA's mission; EPA often is focused on the wrong pollution targets; and all questions of comparative risk are plagued by the inadequacy of information about the nature and severity of environmental problems. (See attached fact sheet on weaknesses.)
"The most important shortcoming - the fragmented nature of the system - is the responsibility of Congress, not EPA or the states," Davies says. "It is Congress that has proliferated environmental statutes, failed to think through how they ought to interrelate, failed to set priorities, and perpetuated the myth of freedom from risk. The resulting fragmentation increases the cost of compliance, encourages cross-media transfers of pollutants, and greatly reduces the effectiveness of pollution control."
While there is no consensus for a remedy, Davies notes that some agreement exists on the principles that should guide changes in pollution control and about the characteristics of a pollution control system for the next century.
"The United States does not need to wait for a consensus to act - to do so would be to wait forever," he says. "Failure to reform the system will be costly to the economy, to the environment, and - therefore - to every citizen."
Funding support for this project was made possible in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Smith Richardson Foundation.
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HIGHLIGHTS OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE U.S. POLLUTION CONTROL SYSTEM
>>> In the last 20 years, the pollution control system has effectively reduced conventional pollutants generated by large sources such as power plants and factories.
>>> The treatment of household or municipal sewage has improved dramatically. In 1988, EPA found that that the number of people in communities receiving secondary or advanced levels of water treatment rose from 4 million in 1960 to 143.7 million.
>>> EPA's regulation of aerosol propellants was the pioneering initial move in addressing the problem of stratospheric ozone depletion. >>> Thanks to the Resources Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the open burning of garbage, a widespread practice before the 1970s, has been virtually eliminated. RCRA has also improved the methods used for handling hazardous waste. For example, land disposal of untreated hazardous waste has been greatly reduced.
>>> The average level of lead found in the blood of humans declined 78 percent between 1976 and 1991, paralleling the reduced use of lead in gasoline.
>>> Reductions in chlorinated compounds, such as DDT, have been achieved. For example, the levels of PCBs found in Lake Michigan trout has declined from a peak of 23 micrograms per gram net weight in 1974 to less than three in 1990.
>>> The system of marketable allowances for emissions of sulfur dioxide from electric power plants contained in the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act saved utilities and their rate payers an estimated $240 million in 1995 without sacrificing environmental goals. It is expected to save more than a billion dollars a year in the long run.
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NOTEWORTHY WEAKNESSES OF THE U.S. POLLUTION CONTROL SYSTEM
>>> The pollution control system is deeply fragmented, involving rigid environmental laws that are largely unrelated to each other, and lacking in any unified vision of environmental problems or the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) mission. Perhaps this is not surprising, given that the system of congressional committees and subcommittees dealing with environmental regulation is complex, the committees do not relate to each other, and there is no coherence to their approach either. These kinds of overlap and inconsistencies among the laws make priority-setting very difficult.
>>> The complex statutory detail is driven primarily by a basic Congressional mistrust of EPA, the primary agency charged with implementing environmental laws.
>>> The wrong problems are being targeted by the nation's environmental protection efforts. The priorities are set primarily by Congress, and EPA has limited flexibility to adjust legislatively-established priorities. For example, EPA is focusing almost exclusively on outdoor air pollution when a large part of the health risk comes from indoor air pollution; nonpoint sources - the runoff from farms and city streets and the deposition of pollutants from the air into water bodies - are now the leading source of water pollution in most areas but neither Congress nor EPA nor the states have done much to address nonpoint sources.
>>> The system is focused largely on how to control pollution rather than on whether environmental quality is improving.
>>> The cost of some regulations exceeds their benefits, costs sometimes are not considered explicitly when establishing goals, and there is minimum flexibility for achieving the goals. All questions of comparative risk are plagued by the inadequacy of information about the nature and severity of environmental problems.
>>> For almost every type of pollution, monitoring data are woefully poor and inadequate to determine whether conditions are improving over time and whether EPA's environmental programs are effective. For example, there are not enough toxicity data on most chemicals to know whether they cause adverse effects; there are not enough monitoring data to know which pollutants people are exposed to; knowledge about how pollutants travel from one part of the environment to another is woefully inadequate.
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Media Contact: Michael Tebo (202) 328-5019
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