Celebrating EPA's 50th Birthday | Law & Nature S1E4 | EarthX - video Dailymotion

EarthX Media

EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/   Our focus is on the US EPA, operating for over 50 years. We discuss what the agency has accomplished, what it might accomplish, and how else we might further its mission of protecting the environment.   About Law & Nature:  Discussions of Environmental Law & Policy developed by the EarthxLaw Advisory Council   Law & Nature promises lively discussions by environmental thought leaders on legal and policy issues of critical importance to environmental protection.  This series is developed by the EarthxLaw Advisory Council, a blue ribbon board of prominent environmental law practitioners brought together by EarthX to assist in developing programs and facilitating dialog on environmental law and policy.   EarthX  Love Our Planet.  The Official Network of Earth Day.    About Us:  At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.     EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.       EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/    Follow Us:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthxmedia/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/earthxmedia  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EarthXMedia/  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@earthxmedia  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EarthXMedia      How to watch:   United States:   - Spectrum  - AT&T U-verse (1267)  - DIRECTV (267)  - Philo  - FuboTV  - Plex  - Fire TV    #EarthDay #Environment #Sustainability #EcoFriendly #Conservation #EarthX

Transcript

00:00:00Hi, my name is Jeff Sivins. I'm senior counsel at Haynes & Boone. For the past 45 years I've

00:00:10been an environmental law practitioner, and for the past 30 I've been an adjunct professor

00:00:16at the University of Texas School of Law. I'm appearing today in my role as chair of

00:00:24the EarthX Law Advisory Council, and our program today will focus on the United States

00:00:30Environmental Protection Agency, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary. And today

00:00:37we're going to talk about what EPA has accomplished, what it might accomplish, and how else we

00:00:44might further the objectives of the EPA to protect human health and the environment.

00:00:50To discuss this topic, there's no better person than today's guest. It's my pleasure

00:00:55and privilege to welcome William K. Riley. Welcome, Bill.

00:01:00Thank you, Jeff. Thank you. Very happy to be here.

00:01:04We're particularly fortunate to have you here. Bill served as EPA administrator under George

00:01:10H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1993, and we're excited to have him not only because of what EPA accomplished

00:01:20then, which includes the Clean Air Act Amendment of 1990, the last major piece of federal legislation

00:01:27in the environmental arena, except for the Toxic Substances Control Act recently, but

00:01:35also because of his experience. Bill served under four presidents, two Republican and

00:01:43two Democrat, and he also worked with NGOs and with industry and academia. These experiences

00:01:52make Bill's perspective all the more insightful and make this conversation all the more illuminating.

00:02:00I'll tell you a little bit about Bill. He graduated from Yale, got his law degree from

00:02:05Harvard, then served in the Army as a captain from 1966 to 1967, returned to school at Columbia,

00:02:14where he received a master's in urban planning there. Bill, why don't you pick up your story

00:02:21from there and tell us how you acquired your passion, your interest in the environment

00:02:28and protecting the environment, and how your experience led to your appointment by President

00:02:33Bush as EPA administrator.

00:02:36Well, thank you. Thank you for that nice introduction, too. My father thought that I was overeducated,

00:02:42Jeff, so I'm not dwelled on the time I spent in schools. I remember he said to me once,

00:02:49when you're about 40, I think you'll have this down, and you can move beyond education.

00:02:56Well, I think that my interest largely began with visits to a farm, which my father had bought

00:03:07in 1940, and the experience of looking at the hedgerows, which in those days surrounded most

00:03:14Midwestern farms. This was in downstate Illinois. The hedgerows were full of foxes and pheasants

00:03:21and birds of all sorts. I can remember looking at them. I would climb up in the barn where we

00:03:30stored the corn, the corn crib, and just generally see the foxes playing down in the cornfields.

00:03:37Farmers didn't like it particularly because they knocked down some of the corn stalks,

00:03:41but I got a kind of romance about land, honestly. My father had one about the sea. He had grown up

00:03:49around the sea and started his life on the sea, on the Old Fall River line. He was 16 years old.

00:03:56He was working on a ship there. We would go back every year, and he would take me out to a harbor

00:04:05in Newport, Rhode Island, and just get this wanderlust with the regret that he was in the

00:04:12in the Middle West, 1,200 miles away from the ocean. I think I put it together, and it was a

00:04:19romance, and I think your emotions always come first, and then you get rational, and you learn

00:04:26about things, but I've really traced my roots to those experiences. So after you left Columbia,

00:04:36picked up your degree in urban planning, what did you do, and what happened next that led you to EPA?

00:04:44Well, I worked for a law firm in Chicago between the time I graduated from law school and went

00:04:52into the Army, and I worked there. I went there because it was considered one of the most

00:05:00impressive and effective land-use counseling firms in the United States,

00:05:06and so when I got out of the Army, it turned out the Nixon administration had been elected. John

00:05:13Ehrlichman was a land-use lawyer. He was the principal domestic advisor to President Nixon

00:05:17and an environmentalist, and he turned to my old boss, Richard Babcock, who was a great land-use

00:05:25lawyer, an iconic one known everywhere, for advice. He said, if you were to have a national

00:05:33land-use policy act drafted, who would you get to do it? And Babcock, according to the story I was

00:05:39told, said Riley. Interestingly, Babcock had managed Adlai Stevenson's campaign in Illinois,

00:05:45so the land-use fraternity overcame partisanship, and I found myself invited to join the new Council

00:05:52on Environmental Quality as the person to write that land-use law. As it turned out, I wrote the

00:05:57Coastal Zone Management Act, and then I did a number of other things while I was there. For

00:06:01two years in the Nixon White House, I was the one who wrote the first regulations for environmental

00:06:08impact assessment and then explained them to the various federal agencies. I always had a

00:06:13land-use orientation, and that was my focus to begin with, and it still is important to me.

00:06:19That's interesting. So you were involved in the CQREGS, the National Environmental Policy Act.

00:06:26Can you tell us a little bit? I think it would be useful for the viewers to understand

00:06:32under what circumstances an environmental impact statement might be triggered and

00:06:37how it requires that you consider alternatives, but not necessarily make a decision

00:06:42based on which one you think is the most environmentally protected.

00:06:47Well, you just covered the key element of it, Jeff. The history of major infrastructure,

00:06:54major projects, which is really what the Congress had in mind when they drafted the

00:07:00law on impact statements, impact assessment, they had always been conceived basically as matters of

00:07:08engineering, cost, effectiveness, efficiency, transportation projects, things of that sort,

00:07:15but notably absent was any systematic consideration of the environmental impact of

00:07:20those projects. By the time of the first Earth Day, 1970, that was no longer quite acceptable

00:07:29or justifiable. We've had a number of experiences with rivers catching fire and big oil spill in

00:07:38Santa Barbara. The country had become different. As someone put it, if you were not a friend of

00:07:46the environment on Earth Day, 1970, you kept quiet about it. The country really had transformed

00:07:54itself into one of major impatience expectation. I think though some of the protests were negative,

00:08:04car burnings and things of that sort, essentially confidence and hopefulness,

00:08:09and whether it was judges and lawyers, professors, kids, students, there was a genuine sense of, I

00:08:17think, common enterprise. I remember at the time thinking, what else but the environment

00:08:23could do this? It's a wonderful cause that can bring us all together.

00:08:27So let's talk about that then. The Environmental Protection Agency was created under 1970 by

00:08:35President Nixon, and you mentioned some of the factors that may have led to the creation of EPA,

00:08:40but can you talk a little bit more about how EPA was created and what the administration

00:08:47hoped to achieve through the creation of EPA? Well, the extraordinary thing about the creation

00:08:55of EPA and NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is that the

00:09:03president was responding to a groundswell of interest and finding a way to channel it into

00:09:09an administrative response. He was not personally a committed student or aficionado of the environment,

00:09:18but he had read the mood of the country and was doing something that was not something probably

00:09:25that was close to his heart in the way that foreign policy was. He had seen that the

00:09:31environment was number three in the concerns of the public in 1968, after the war in Vietnam and

00:09:37the economy, and he said to his people, get out front on the environment. Well, it soon became

00:09:43clear that the various elements of the government that dealt with aspects of the environment were

00:09:48scattered all over the place, different agencies, agriculture department, interior department,

00:09:53health department, and he decided to appoint a commission that was to look into making more

00:10:01efficient the whole environmental enterprise, and they proposed the establishment of the Environmental

00:10:07Protection Agency and gave it the authorities of pesticide regulation, which had been an agriculture

00:10:13water pollution control, which had been an interior, and so forth. That really started it off.

00:10:21There were great expectations for it, and we had the great good fortune to get, as the first

00:10:28administrator, Bill Ruckelshaus, a young former legislator in the state legislature, national or

00:10:35I think majority leader as a very young man, who was then assistant attorney general. He became the

00:10:43administrator. He established the independence, the integrity, and of course, he was famous, the

00:10:48Saturday Night Massacre, when Elliot Richardson and he both resigned rather than take

00:10:54orders to fire Archibald Cox, the special investigator. Very, very interesting. So, EPA was created

00:11:02in 1970, and you joined it as administrator in 1989. What about the first 20 years of EPA?

00:11:12What did the agency accomplish by the time you were here? Well, I think the significant

00:11:19accomplishment was to establish the history of an independent agency with integrity that was

00:11:31seriously dedicated to the administration of the laws, which was not always easy.

00:11:38And the auto industry, when the Clean Air Act was first proposed, said that this would be the end.

00:11:43They literally said this, this would be the end of the combustion engine and of the auto industry

00:11:49in the United States. In fact, when I proposed the Clean Air Act amendments in 1990, 1989, I remember

00:11:58the chairman of General Motors said to me, we're not going to make the kind of exaggerated claims

00:12:04we made before. What we're going to say is that what you're proposing is going to add

00:12:08$700 to the cost of the average car. And that was the debate we had. It was a perfectly reasonable

00:12:13one. But the Clean Air Act of 1970, postulated technological advances that were not yet fully

00:12:23proven. The catalytic converter was a good example. But basically, they simply said that the auto

00:12:30industry had to achieve them. And to the great credit of the industry, they did. Well, what we

00:12:36now have is traceable back to those years, we have a automobile fleet that is many times the size it

00:12:44was in 1970, with just a fraction of the aggregate emissions pollution from those cars. I think it's

00:12:52one of the great achievements of the country and the VPA and frankly, of the industrial sector of

00:12:58the automotive industry. The other great achievement of EPA, in my view, in that period was

00:13:04the investment and the construction and effectiveness of wastewater treatment plants.

00:13:12Throughout the 70s, and much of the 80s, EPA was dispersing about $2 billion a year

00:13:19to local governments around the country to clean up their water. And the fact that the fish have

00:13:25returned to the Hudson and Lake Erie is not dead. And so many of our bucolic streams and rivers

00:13:34now are clear. At least more than half of them have been restored to the point of fishable and

00:13:40swimmable. As Ruckelshaus famously said in one hearing when he came back the second time as EPA

00:13:47administrator, we can't yet say that all of our waters are fishable and swimmable, but at least we

00:13:53can say they are no longer flammable. So the way it works then is the federal government sets sort of

00:14:01a floor and then states need to satisfy that floor, those requirements, but they do have flexibility.

00:14:10How do they go about achieving that? That's right. That's right. They have a significant

00:14:16amount of flexibility. And in fact, if you look at the system, the most important elements of it,

00:14:24the innovations, have come from the states. If you look at wetlands regulation and protection,

00:14:31Wisconsin was a pioneer. Waste management, hazardous waste management, New Jersey was in the

00:14:37forefront. Air pollution, it was always California, Southern California. And California required the

00:14:45right to request a waiver from federal approaches, largely because it had the most egregious problem,

00:14:52but also because they had the most aggressive innovation. And I granted nine waivers to the

00:14:59state of California, even to do some things that we didn't think they could do, such as require that

00:15:04all 10% of all vehicles be electric. Well, in that early date, that was not something that

00:15:11either the market would support nor the manufacturing numbers justified. But we said,

00:15:16go ahead and try. They did. And we and my staff had been corrected. It hadn't worked. But California

00:15:24now has pioneering cap and trade legislation to regulate carbon dioxide. And those experiments

00:15:31teach you something. And often other states watch closely how they're implemented and follow

00:15:38the leaders. So that's interesting. There had been some controversy regarding the Trump

00:15:44administration and California regulations for cars. And it's interesting that a number of the

00:15:50car manufacturers have been supportive of California and the initiatives that they've

00:15:55developed. My wife and I were watching West Wing last night, replays of West Wing, obviously.

00:16:02I love it.

00:16:04That particular episode, interestingly, talked about the independence of EPA and whether to

00:16:10what extent the president could impact the report. In that case, it was to cut out a paragraph on

00:16:17coal and the issues that it presented. And I recall in my law school, early in my law school

00:16:23career, our court project was whether President Nixon had the authority to impound funds that

00:16:30were intended for environmental protection. Perhaps you can talk a little bit about when

00:16:36you say that EPA is an independent agency, how independent is it of the executive branch and

00:16:43the president since it's a part of that? You know, part of the environmental community has

00:16:48always wanted EPA to be treated like the FCC or the SEC, both of which are genuinely independent

00:16:56enterprises. The president can't pick up the phone and tell FCC to regulate or to permit a

00:17:04radio station or a TV station. And SEC has the same independence, a commission that is appointed

00:17:10by the president, but finally exercises authority, according to their statute, without involvement by

00:17:17the White House. EPA is not that. The president can direct an EPA administrator to do certain

00:17:24things, not everything. But the reason it is more subject to political control, essentially,

00:17:33is because it has such a huge reach. I learned when I was being considered for confirmation

00:17:43that I had some stocks that, not a lot, I think I had about $60,000 worth of stocks and

00:17:51board fees that I had accumulated. And there was no way that I could have kept any of them,

00:17:57because banking, airlines, automobiles, they're all heavily implicated in the environmental

00:18:08regulatory apparatus. So an EPA administrator has to be free of all of that. Well, as a result,

00:18:17it's considered that, of course, the political leadership, the direction of the country,

00:18:21insofar as we entrust the president to provide it, has to include environmental policy.

00:18:29Now, the president's and EPA administrators and EPA traditions will limit the degree to

00:18:36which the president can involve himself. It has never been seen before that you have had

00:18:42industries wanting to improve their efficiency, lower their pollution, and the White House not

00:18:48permit that, which is essentially what President Trump tried to do with respect to the automobile

00:18:54companies that wanted to follow the California pollution standards. But that's unprecedented.

00:19:02And I don't think, given the experience with it, that we'll see it again.

00:19:07Well, you touched on the breadth of EPA's authority, and I think that's interesting

00:19:12for viewers to understand. You mentioned the Clean Air Act. There is the Clean Water Act,

00:19:19dealing with water pollution. There is the Resource Conservation Recovery Act, dealing with

00:19:25hazardous waste and municipal solid waste. Toxic Substances Control Act, dealing with use of

00:19:32chemicals. Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, or Adenoside Act, which deals with pesticide, which

00:19:38is particularly relevant now because they issue emergency use authorizations for disinfectants.

00:19:47Talk a little bit about how broad the scope of EPA's authority is. And in that regard,

00:19:55you might touch on, too, there's been a controversy over waters of the United States and how broad

00:20:01that definition is. How deeply can EPA delve into an individual's personal life and regulate?

00:20:12Well, the waters of the United States is an interesting issue. Wetlands are extremely

00:20:19important to wildlife, and coastal wetlands are the nursery for most of the fish in the sea.

00:20:25The mangroves, swamps, and the rest. But the definition of the waters of the United States

00:20:33is one that is controversial and arguably difficult to set. I can remember once having

00:20:41produced a manual of jurisdiction for the President and the White House and defending

00:20:47it against the Competitiveness Council chaired by Vice President Quayle. And at some point,

00:20:53I was explaining ephemeral wetlands and the whole of the characteristics that go into it,

00:20:59and they're pretty arcane. And he looked over at me and he said,

00:21:04can't we just say when it's wet, it's wet? And that's fair. I once got in trouble with my own

00:21:12staff when I said, look, if it can float a duck, it's a wetland. But if it can't, it isn't. And

00:21:19they said, wait a minute, you know, ephemeral wetlands are only wet a certain part of the year.

00:21:24I am in the Dry Creek Valley in California right now. And it's called Dry Creek because much of

00:21:30the year it is. But it's important when it isn't. It's a source of water and drainage and all of

00:21:36the rest. We have lost about 90% of our wetlands in most states. And that has significantly reduced

00:21:45the wildlife. It has affected the ecology because wetlands are so important, particularly the

00:21:50coastal wetlands in serving as the first defense against wave action and hurricanes and rising seas.

00:22:00So it's arguably something that's in dispute. It's not an altogether partisan or ideological matter.

00:22:07In some states, they pick up the slack and they do more than the federal government requires.

00:22:12EPA's jurisdiction doesn't go down to the one acre level, for example. It's substantially more

00:22:21than that in granting a permit. And I think that's long been a contentious issue, partly because

00:22:29it's land use. If you look at the air pollution law, 90% of where you and I spend most of our time

00:22:37is indoors. And EPA does not have authority to regulate indoor air pollution. We could do a lot

00:22:45with respect to it. I made, I think, the most important decision about it when I determined

00:22:51after four years of research and epidemiological analysis and testing and control groups and all

00:22:57the rest that sidestream smoke was a class A human carcinogen. That had profound consequences.

00:23:05I remember at the time my staff said, let's prescribe the kinds of technology that is best

00:23:11likely to control for this. And I thought about it and I concluded, no, let's simply give the country

00:23:20information. We don't have jurisdiction to regulate. Let's not look like we're trying

00:23:27to control the whole game. And you know, within a year, 400 and some municipalities across the

00:23:33country had passed laws against indoor smoking. And they continue to do that. And I thought back

00:23:40on how that happened. I had no authority other than to give the information, the scientific

00:23:46information to the country and they did the rest. And I think it was testimony to the degree to

00:23:53which the country trusted science and trusted the Environmental Protection Agency. So that

00:23:59the authority is not always, and my voluntary programs, Green Lights and Energy Star, things

00:24:06like that, they were not compulsory, but a major developer in California said to me, you know, the

00:24:11most effective regulation you ever developed was Energy Star. It's impossible to build any

00:24:19construction of significance in the state of California that cannot promise that it will bear

00:24:25that efficiency standard. And it's not even a law. It's simply accepted in the culture. So much

00:24:31that happens in the environment can be influenced by EPA. And I think of it as the conscience of

00:24:36the country, the green conscience of the country. But it's not all just law.

00:24:43You raised two really interesting points that I'd like to follow up on. The first is scope of EPA's

00:24:49jurisdiction. We talked about waters of the United States and how extensive that might be.

00:24:54But if you dispose of hazardous waste improperly under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act,

00:25:02even though that's on your property, that's subject to regulation. And under Superfund,

00:25:08wherever hazardous substances come to be located, they pose a threat. They can be, you can be

00:25:13required to clean them up. So although there may be limitations on the geographic reach of

00:25:20the Clean Water Act, there aren't those same limitations on other programs.

00:25:26It's very fair. That's very fair. And the interesting thing about the history of hazardous

00:25:34waste was, is that it's not, it was not considered by the scientists, the group I asked when I just

00:25:44took over EPA, tell me, what are the most important threats to the health and ecology of

00:25:50the people of the United States? And to what extent did the priorities of the Environmental

00:25:54Protection Agency, as represented by the budget, reflect that? Well, they concluded that the

00:26:01principal threats were the criteria air pollution, pollutants, and climate change, and

00:26:10coastal seagrasses and mangroves and wetlands, and so forth, that hazardous waste was a second

00:26:18order priority from the point of view of influence on mortality and morbidity. And nevertheless,

00:26:24two thirds of my budget went to hazardous waste. It's an interesting case where the concerns of

00:26:33the people of the United States, which had been very great as a result of findings of

00:26:39waste under schools near Niagara Falls, for example, caused the country to possibly overreact

00:26:48to the hazardous waste issue to its threat. And the law followed. And my boss, President George

00:26:55H. W. Bush promised to give vigorous enforcement to the hazardous waste laws. And when I took

00:27:01office, I did that. And we ended up getting more fines and penalties than in the whole 18-year

00:27:08history of the agency and in industry, as I was told when I went later on the board of DuPont,

00:27:15deciding that, well, with Bush and Riley, that this is serious. We're going to have to do this

00:27:21and not litigate it to keep from doing it. Some great things did come out of it. I remember the

00:27:29chairman of Monsanto telling me that when they analyzed their hazardous emissions coming out of

00:27:36their stacks as a chemical industry, they were astonished to find out how much high value product

00:27:43they had been sending up as waste. And he then committed to a 90 percent reduction

00:27:51in those lawful emissions. And I emphasize lawful. These were not at the quantity or level that I

00:27:58could get at. But I did have a voluntary program called 3350 that aimed to get them down by 50

00:28:04percent. Later, when there was a recession, he called in a couple of economists who were friends

00:28:10of mine and he asked them to analyze whether it made sense because it was costing him money to

00:28:16control to that level. They did their research and asked him, they said, essentially, why did

00:28:21you do this? Why did you make this commitment that went well beyond the law? He said, well,

00:28:25we bet the company on the very best biochemist and scientist coming to live with us, make their

00:28:34career with us in St. Louis, Missouri. And it's what they require. It's what the culture requires.

00:28:42That's how we attract them. And I remember one of the economists told me, he said,

00:28:45we just folded up our book and said, well, you've just answered your own question.

00:28:50So environmental protection and economic development were not necessarily

00:28:56countervailing considerations. They may go hand in hand, as the example you just mentioned suggests.

00:29:04Yes. And also at some point, Monsanto resolved several Superfund site conflicts, which had been

00:29:11matters of contentious litigation for some time. And I asked the same chairman, I said,

00:29:19what did you do? You must have done something. And he laughed. He said, I did. He said,

00:29:24I took the issue out of the hands of our lawyers and gave it to the engineers.

00:29:29And it turned out there were solutions and we implemented them within about six months.

00:29:35Well, I want to return to that point. I'll use a little bit about hazardous waste and Superfund.

00:29:43To me, hazardous waste regulations are so arcane and difficult to apply. For example,

00:29:51I tell my students, a hazardous solid waste doesn't have to be hazardous, doesn't have to

00:29:56be solid, and it doesn't have to be a waste. And if you start with that premise, then you realize

00:30:02how difficult it is to understand how these regulations apply. But statutes like Superfund

00:30:09are pretty straightforward. If you have hazardous substances that pose a risk,

00:30:14you may need to address them. And that is one area where the Trump administration has been fairly

00:30:20aggressive because that's something that people can see and feel and sense, as opposed to things

00:30:27like climate change, which are a little bit more difficult perhaps to get your arms around.

00:30:33So the Superfund cleanups have been significant. There have been concerns that

00:30:40economically disadvantaged communities are more impacted by pollution and by Superfund

00:30:46sites than others. Can you talk a little bit about environmental justice and how that might apply?

00:30:54One of my proudest achievements at EPA was to create the environmental justice

00:31:02segment or section. We called it environmental equity then. And

00:31:09that really was a response to the discovery that in certain parts of the country,

00:31:17particularly, as I recall, Indian reservations, but also in so many other places where there

00:31:25were concentrations of chemical activity, refineries, steel mills, and the rest,

00:31:31the people who were most exposed to the pollution, largely as a result of economics and the kind of

00:31:36property and housing they could afford and could bid for, were minorities and the poor.

00:31:43And it seemed to me that where you had concentrated pollution of an extraordinary

00:31:50level, you should look carefully at why that was and work hard to affect it. I remember once when

00:32:00I discovered that the highest incidence of gastrointestinal illness in the United States

00:32:05was along the Texas-Mexican border, where there were so many colonias that had people living

00:32:13without clean water, with no sanitation, and it should not have surprised us. But we did,

00:32:21in the first North American Free Trade Agreement, allow for $50 million, and Governor Richards

00:32:28masked it, to address that problem. Well, that was essentially an environmental justice

00:32:34investment. Same token, in an Indian reservation I visited, they were getting a huge amount of

00:32:41untreated waste from Albuquerque in the city, and I gave to the Indian tribes, and then I visited

00:32:47these sites, extraordinary authority under the Clean Water Act. I was authorized to do it if I

00:32:54determined that they had the administrative legal engineering capability to do it. And I remember

00:33:01sitting with the editorial board of the Albuquerque newspaper and people upbraiding me and saying,

00:33:07you realize you've given these Indians the possibility of imposing two to three billion

00:33:12dollars of cost on the city of Albuquerque. And I said, well, look, you've got, against

00:33:19their interest, two senators and a congressperson, all they've got is me, plus the law.

00:33:28And I said, you take a look at the kind of water you're delivering them, they're not going to make

00:33:33you pay two, three billion dollars, but they're going to make you clean it up, and it's about time

00:33:37you did. And my biggest defender in that, and I didn't have a lot, frankly, there were not people

00:33:42in the Congress, in fact, the private views that they've expressed to me were, some of them

00:33:47disturbing about the giving so much power to Indian courts and things of that sort. John McCain

00:33:56and I had a, he was ranking on the Indian Affairs Committee, and I remember after spending an hour

00:34:03with him, we went out to meet the press. And I thought it would be perfectly likely that he would

00:34:07do what so many senators feel or congresspersons feel that they have to do, which is to say one

00:34:14thing publicly and another privately, tell you later they had to do it. He completely defended

00:34:20me. He said, look, the administrator had these powers. He said he not only had them, he visited

00:34:25the sites. He saw the pollution himself, and he inspected the capacity of the Native Americans to

00:34:33manage this issue. I'm not going to criticize him. I think he did the right thing. So I always had a

00:34:39great deal of affection for John McCain, and he became a good friend on other issues as well.

00:34:44But that was an environmental justice decision is what that was. And when you look at the Navajo

00:34:50reservation, one of the biggest today, and you see that they are told to wash their hands to

00:34:57cope with COVID, well, 50% of their households don't have running water. Scandalous that that

00:35:05is true, but it is true and not a surprise that they have the highest incidence of COVID-19

00:35:11in the country. If we called each of the major tribal reservations states, they would be the top

00:35:20five in terms of incidence per 100,000 population in the country. There's an environmental justice

00:35:27priority of the first order. So I want to return to a point that you made earlier,

00:35:34because I think it's particularly important for us today. You talked about the role of science

00:35:39and how public education could lead to changes that result in a better environment just by people

00:35:48becoming aware. And I suppose you could say that Rachel Carson's Silent Spring educated people and

00:35:56eventually resulted in the creation of EPA. Talk a little bit, if you would, about the role of

00:36:02science and how do we get people to agree as to what the facts are? There's been some controversy

00:36:11over transparency and EPA's use of independent studies. How do we develop good science? How do we

00:36:22make the public aware of it and accepting of facts? The American Academy of Arts and Sciences recently

00:36:31surveyed the country, and I was very pleased to see, I'm a member of the American Academy of Arts

00:36:38and Sciences, that the United States population is very respectful of science and of scientists.

00:36:47That is how they respond to polling questions. And that's very important, because if you're

00:36:54administering laws to protect the health of the people, it's such an intimate thing.

00:37:02You have to have their trust. You have to have their confidence. None of us is going to be able

00:37:06to look behind the research on a regular basis to find out whether something that we say is

00:37:13hazardous, say at EPA, is really hazardous, how seriously hazardous it is, whether the cost of

00:37:20regulating it is worth it. Those kinds of questions I posed to the Science Advisory Board at EPA

00:37:27in my first week of tenure. And they did report a statement on risk priorities, as it was called,

00:37:38and both to the ecology and to the health. Well, science is all we have. It's the platform on which

00:37:46consensus can be built. There is no other, other than just general, I guess, perception of what's

00:37:52right and wrong. But that will differ according to where you are and who you are. I think we have

00:38:00to establish that the science can unify us if we trust it. It doesn't mean that because the scientists

00:38:10have said there's a problem that we have to put a lot of resources into solving it, people may decide

00:38:16it's premature. It's not something we yet want to take on, because we have other priorities that

00:38:22are more compelling to us. That's all possible. But we should above all protect the

00:38:28integrity of science, because it is the fundamental unifying platform for decision making that affects

00:38:35everything else. We had an example. We were representing first offshore permits in the Gulf of

00:38:43Mexico. They had applied for permits under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act in 72. EPA didn't get

00:38:50around to issuing the permits until about 1980. And there was a lot of controversy. We had

00:38:55environmental groups opposing some of the permits. We represented industry. EPA had another position.

00:39:03And the way we resolved that controversy was to get scientists representing the environmental groups,

00:39:10the NGOs, scientists representing industry in the same room. We said, you all talk about these issues,

00:39:18tell us what you can agree on, tell us what you disagree on, and we'll go from there.

00:39:22And based on that, we were able to settle the case. And I think oftentimes, if we can agree

00:39:29on what the facts are, then we can figure out what our objectives are and the best way to get there.

00:39:38You know, there's a program at EPA I always loved, Coastal Estuaries Program,

00:39:44during which allowed the administrator to designate 25 different coastal estuaries and

00:39:52provide them extra funds to bring people together to assess the health and the threats to the health

00:39:58of the ecology of the major areas, Narragansett Bay, Corpus Christi Harbor, and Bay.

00:40:08And the extraordinary thing about that was people who did not know one another,

00:40:16or in some cases did not much like or respect one another, came together because they all

00:40:22cared about the bay. And it reminded me of Jacques Cousteau's famous aphorism,

00:40:28people protect what they love. Well, it turns out everybody, environmentalists,

00:40:36polluters, whomever, loves their bay. Chesapeake Bay is the best example around Washington.

00:40:44That will bring people together, and it's protection that would not come together so

00:40:49readily on other matters. And I mentioned that because I think it's a model, and you just

00:40:55described one, where if you sit together and work hard, this happened in California most recently

00:41:02when the cap and trade program was extended with the support of the oil and gas industry.

00:41:08And the spokesperson for that industry credited Mary Nichols, the head of the California Air

00:41:13Resources Board, for the way in which she consulted, she communicated, she was sensitive to,

00:41:23she listened to the industry and their concerns. So there are ways to regulate that are not

00:41:29in your face, that are not simply take it or leave it, I have this power. We need to perfect

00:41:36them in rural America, because a great deal of rural America, frankly, has no patience with the

00:41:43Environmental Protection Agency. And they sometimes seem not to be supportive of the environment.

00:41:49Deep polling that Duke University did some years ago, not some years ago, three years ago,

00:41:56two years ago, Robert Bonney did the research that showed that they have equal concerns for air and

00:42:05water, and a more intimate sense of stewardship of the land than many urban people do, because

00:42:10they're close to it. And they're depending on the cycle, especially the agricultural community.

00:42:15They didn't want to discuss climate change, because they considered it both divisive,

00:42:21and that acknowledging its significance, possibly invited intrusion into their lives and regulation

00:42:27that would be disruptive to them. But they do get it. We've got to find ways to communicate that are

00:42:35not in your face, are respectful, are acknowledging of the very important economic considerations that

00:42:45sometimes environmental regulations get in the way of. It happens. And the manner in which we do

00:42:52that, I think, can help put the country back together. I'd like to focus, if I might, on,

00:42:59you've had a number of significant accomplishments while you were administrator.

00:43:04You mentioned the Justice Program, which is particularly relevant today. But also the

00:43:10Clean Air Act Amendment of 1990 had a lot of innovative market-based approaches that really

00:43:20were quite a bit different than the same old, same old. Can you talk about some of those things and

00:43:26how you all came up with them? Well, the signal pollution problem in the air that George H.W. Bush

00:43:37mentioned in his campaign, was aware of, was a very divisive one. And it was divisive because it

00:43:46affected the regions differently. The Middle West was the source, its power plants primarily,

00:43:54of the acid rain that was disrupting the forest of the Northeast and of Canada, for which it was a

00:44:02major contentious issue, as I was told by Prime Minister Mulroney, dividing the United States and

00:44:07Canada. The acid rain that we were delivering to across their border and affecting their forests

00:44:14and their lakes. Well, that was a hard one to resolve. And the Congress, and particularly

00:44:22Senator George Mitchell, who was a senator from Maine and a majority leader, and was very sensitive

00:44:29to its effects, acid rain's effects on his state and its forest, had been trying to change the law

00:44:36to get acid rain control, the sulfur dioxide, particularly from these power plants, reduced.

00:44:43Without luck, over 12 years, this campaign that he conducted and others with him, went nowhere.

00:44:51George H.W. Bush, I had actually made a condition of my signing up with President Bush. I look back

00:44:58on it now and I think I had a little hush pause, whatever I was, 48 year old. But I gave him three

00:45:05conditions under which I would take the job. And one was that he really didn't mean it when he said

00:45:09he was going to have a new Clean Air Act. And I went through the three titles, acid rain and ground

00:45:15level air pollution, those are not toxic substances. And he said, yes, that's what I promise. That's

00:45:20what I'm going to do. He was as good as his word. And he was very proud of the statute. It's one of

00:45:25the two great legislative achievements, along with the legislation for people with disabilities

00:45:32that he pioneered, that he signed. The approach that we took, put together the economic interest

00:45:44of the producers of the pollution by saying to them, basically, if you can reduce the level

00:45:54of pollution, and we're going to require that you do so on a scale, and it's a reasonably

00:46:01long time scale. It was over a full 10 years, it was entirely to be implemented.

00:46:08And if you happen to reduce it below the level of the standard we set, which is I think 1.2 pounds

00:46:15of per million BTUs of sulfur dioxides, you can sell the excess of what you have conserved,

00:46:26of the degree to which you have improved upon the requirement of the law.

00:46:31Well, it turned out that for a lot of the newer plants, and looking at some of the technologies

00:46:37that were available, it was possible to do that wasn't possible for all of them. And for those

00:46:42that it wasn't possible, or economically feasible, they could buy permits. So long

00:46:49as the aggregate of pollution from those plants came down, and it had to come down by 10 million

00:46:57tons, very significant reductions. Well, it turned out that we did something also in the law

00:47:06that surprised Congressman Dingell and Senator Byrd of West Virginia, two of our major opponents,

00:47:13in that law. We got the Western senators and congresspeople who had never been enthusiastic

00:47:21about EPA or environmental priorities or protection. We got them to support this law.

00:47:26And the way that we did that was we had a performance standard for coal, essentially,

00:47:34where previously the law had required a 90% reduction in the sulfur dioxide of the coal that

00:47:41was used, which basically made no distinction between whether it was clean coal or West

00:47:47Virginia dirty coal. And that was intentional. I was put there really essentially with the support

00:47:54of Senator Byrd, head of the Appropriations Committee was from West Virginia. We said no,

00:48:01that what meets the standard without any kind of controls is fine. If you're going to use really

00:48:10clean coal from the Powder River Basin in Utah, say, in the Western states, that's sufficient.

00:48:19So it's just performance. It's no longer an artificial or arbitrary statement that you have

00:48:25to transform the content of the coal that you use. That brought a new coalition together,

00:48:33and together with the Northeast and New England and the Far West congressional representation,

00:48:40well, finally, everybody came together. We had two senators, I think. Two senators from

00:48:47Illinois bothered me a lot because I came from Illinois. And maybe 10 or 11, I think something

00:48:53like 87 to 12 senators voted for the Clean Air Act amendments, and the margin was equally

00:49:00overwhelming in the House. Finally, that legislation brought the country together. And

00:49:05you know, we estimated at EPA that the cost of every ton of reduction of sulfur dioxides

00:49:14under regulation would turn out to be $700 or $800 a ton. The electric utility industry estimated

00:49:21it would be $1,200 to $1,600 a ton. It ended up being less than $200 a ton, largely because of

00:49:29this market-based approach, a creation of new incentives and an emphasis on performance.

00:49:38It's an incredible idea when you look back and you think about it. You know, we think about

00:49:43regulation as being in command and control, but this was a real innovation to incorporate a

00:49:49market-based program, a regulatory program that allowed industry to bank emissions and trade them

00:49:59and led to significant reductions in air pollution. And that's formed the basis,

00:50:05hasn't it, for some of these regional greenhouse gas initiatives throughout the country,

00:50:11correct? The whole notion of banks and emissions trading, correct?

00:50:18Well, that's right. And it's ironic that the Europeans at first were very resistant to

00:50:27this kind of approach. And there were some people who insisted on saying, look,

00:50:32you're giving people a permit to pollute. And I remember it would startle them when I said,

00:50:38well, that's the business I'm in. That's what effectively EPA or any permit-granting regulator

00:50:45is doing. Only, you know, if it gets above a certain level, we're charging them for it.

00:50:51And it has to come down. That is something that should make the Republicans who were

00:51:00very, very involved in the evolution of that legislation and supported it generally,

00:51:07most of them, with exceptions for the very high coal-dependent states, which I understand,

00:51:13that's something they should be proud of. And especially the fact that it worked,

00:51:20you know, we asked government to work. Well, here's an instance where it worked.

00:51:26Greg Easterbrook referred to EPA's history a few years ago. He said, along with Social Security,

00:51:36the environment is one of the two great achievements of social policy of the post-World

00:51:42War II era. Well, it's a bipartisan achievement. Right from the beginning, there were Republican

00:51:49senators intimately involved, Stafford and Baker and Chafee in the evolution of a lot of

00:52:01these priorities and of these laws that reflect them. So we need to remind ourselves that

00:52:08it was not always a partisan and divisive issue, and it needn't be now.

00:52:15Bill, to wrap up, you've really had varied experiences, and we touched on some but not

00:52:22others. You headed up the World Wildlife Fund, a significant non-governmental organization.

00:52:30You've worked with any number of industries. You've counseled and advised them.

00:52:35In sum, what is the role of corporations? What is the role of NGOs? What is the role of government?

00:52:43And what is the role of individuals to try to further EPA's goal of protecting human health

00:52:49and the environment? How can all these different segments work together?

00:52:54Well, that's a big question. But, you know, NGOs are the drivers. They have the edge of the spear

00:53:03that they thrust. And in my time at EPA, in representing the United States with other

00:53:09countries, it was impossible to overlook the fact that in those nations with strong NGO communities,

00:53:15Germany, the Netherlands, they were much more responsive, much more environmentally oriented,

00:53:24much more attuned to listening to environmental claims than those that didn't. Say,

00:53:31say, that's their role. And they will undoubtedly always push and, as I know very well,

00:53:38never be satisfied. It's often been said that EPA lacks a constituency because the industry

00:53:45is threatened by it and is subject to it and has adversary relations with it. And the NGOs

00:53:51never think it's doing enough and constantly complain and criticize for that reason. Well,

00:53:56it's true to that. That's why you have to have a president who understands that

00:54:00that's the game. That's the way it's going to develop. Industry has an extraordinarily

00:54:05important role in terms of technology development. Look at what they did to develop the cars that

00:54:11are as clean as they are today. I look at so many that I've had encounters with or watched perform

00:54:20Mars, investing in new seed and techniques for growing cacao in West Africa.

00:54:31Starbucks helping Central American coffee growers as the climate begins to impact on

00:54:40low, lower level, lower altitude coffee plantations to find new ways of cultivating coffee,

00:54:48new seeds. Coca-Cola in India, developing basically water recycling that means that

00:54:58they're not taking anything from the groundwater, that they're not replenishing.

00:55:07It's full of, the stories are Legion, DuPont, Unilever, and product controls and protocols.

00:55:16Marvelous story I like too about the modern day consumer importance.

00:55:25Asian paper is a very big producer of paper. They made a commitment under a lot of pressure

00:55:34and criticism with the World Wildlife Fund not to take from certain areas where they had been

00:55:42knocking down forest in Indonesia. Well, it turned out that World Wildlife Fund did a DNA

00:55:51analysis of toilet paper being sold in Europe. This couldn't have happened 10 years ago

00:55:57and located precisely the source of that wood product. Well, Asian paper fessed up,

00:56:06said that they really were going to have a clean slate and change their policies,

00:56:11and they did. I think that's shorthand for expectations of companies in today's world.

00:56:17I think sustainability is so important to recruits are going to make to populate their professional

00:56:25ranks. It's what we all want and require and industry has the capacity to give it to us.

00:56:32Let's face it, most of these gains that I described in the environment were finally

00:56:38private sector victories under federal compulsion. They've done it and they can

00:56:46continue to play a very constructive role and they deserve credit when they do.

00:56:51The individual through the marketplace, among other ways, can significantly affect

00:56:56corporate behavior and help protect the environment. Bill, I can't thank you enough

00:57:02for sharing your insights with us today. It was a remarkable conversation and I'm privileged to

00:57:09have had it with you. I'd like to thank the folks at EarthX, Trammell Crow, Bruce Fogarty and Nick

00:57:16Bee, and all the folks at EarthX for making this opportunity available. We hope you will

00:57:24tune in our next show as well. Thank you. I would just add my own thanks to Trammell Crow

00:57:31and to everybody associated with this program and particularly to you. It's really a pleasure

00:57:40to be asked these questions by someone so informed and sophisticated who actually knows

00:57:47the background and I think I've really enjoyed the last hour. It's been my pleasure.

00:57:52It's been my pleasure and also my privilege. Thank you. In every town and city across America,

00:57:59people are making a difference for our planet. For 50 years, Earth Day has served as a call to

00:58:05action for the public to get engaged in their environment. And for 50 years, EPA has worked

00:58:11side by side with communities across our great nation to ensure we leave a better, cleaner world

00:58:17for future generations. Join us this Earth Day as we show our love for the land we call home.

00:58:25Hello, I'm EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. For nearly 50 years, EPA has been an integral part

00:58:32of Earth Day celebrations across our great nation. Over the last 50 years, all of our

00:58:38environmental indicators have improved and they continue to improve. This year, we celebrate half

00:58:45a century of accomplishments, including in 1970, more than 40 percent of our nation's drinking

00:58:52water systems failed to meet even the most basic health standards. Today, over 92 percent

00:58:59of community water systems now meet all health-based standards all the time. America also

00:59:06continues to be a leader in clean air progress, reducing the six criteria air pollutants by 73

00:59:13percent over the last 50 years. In the past three years alone, we have moved 38 areas from

00:59:21non-attainment to attainment of the criteria air pollutants. And EPA's successful Superfund

00:59:28and Brownfields programs are bringing opportunity back to communities. Last year alone, we delisted

00:59:36more Superfund sites than any year since 2001. This year, EPA will be observing CDC guidelines

00:59:46as we take our celebrations indoors and online, and we encourage you to do the same.

00:59:53On April 22nd, follow along with the hashtags Earth Day 2020, Earth Day at Home, and EPA at 50

01:00:02for educational discussions and activities for you and your family. We also invite you to join

01:00:10EPA employees in decorating your windows to mark this important 50th anniversary celebration.

01:00:18Although these are difficult and uncertain times, we can accomplish great things when

01:00:23America works together. Stay home, stay safe, and have a happy Earth Day.

Celebrating EPA's 50th Birthday | Law & Nature S1E4 | EarthX

Category

Transcript

Recommended