editorial Environmental agency idea makes sense Administration proposal may not banish bureaucracy, but it may well remove some damaging conflicts of interest
T
he announcement that the Nixon administration is considering a proposal to establish a new environmental “superagency” hardly caught the country-and certainly not official Washington-completely by surprise. For some time it has been apparent that the administration is struck by the inefficiency attending fragmentation of responsibilities for the environment among many government departments. Senator Hugh Scott (R.-Pa.) has counted more than 90 separate federal environmental quality programs, 26 quasigovernmental units, and 14 interagency committees, all sharing in various (and often ill-defined) ways, responsibility for environmental efforts. In February, Senator Scott introduced into the Senate a bill ( S . 3388) which would establish an Environmental Quality Administration to consolidate many of these functions into a single agency, and Senator Edmund Muskie (D.-Me.) has also introduced a bill with the same intent (S. 3677). Mr. Nixon’s apparent intention is to effect a reorganization by executive order, something that he has the power to do without the need for legislation if Congress does not veto the plan within 60 days of its introduction. Whether there will be Congressional objections-indeed, whether Congress will actually get to consider the proposal-remains to be seen at the time of writing. but it is certain that powerful interests have already been offended. This administration proposal involves removing several large agencies from government departments whose secretaries must surely have fought doggedly to retain their people and funds and the power that these resources represent. The plan would transfer to the new agency (tentatively called the Environmental Protection Administration) air pollution and solid waste management programs from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, water pollution programs from Interior, pesticide research and standard setting from the Food and Drug Administra-
tion, pesticide registration responsibilities from Agriculture, and radiation monitoring from the Atomic Energy Commission. Together with a companion proposal to transfer eight other agencies into an Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the reorganization proposal would severely cut into the size of several departments, notably Interior. What is most remarkable about the administration plans-if indeed they turn out to be plans and not just a case of a new idea being run up the flagpole-is that they do not stop at a consolidation of air pollution, water pollution, and solid waste management programs. Fragmentation of these three functions has been repeatedly criticized and their consolidation into one agency probably is inevitable, anyway; certainly this is provided for in both Scott’s and Muskie’s bills. But the unexpected strength of the Nixon proposal (one which Senator Muskie’s bill also contains) is that it aims at removing the conflicts of interest within government agencies that have too often in the past hindered adoption of truly objective environmental protection measures. Is it, for example, really fair that the AEC should both promote the use of nuclear energy and be charged with the responsibility for setting radiation standards? Obviously, the administration thinks not. Even if it is perhaps asking too much to expect a newly created governmental superagency to avoid the bureaucracy that has plagued its component parts, it is at least encouraging to think that the proposed reorganization recognizes the need for objectivity in setting and enforcing standards for protection of the environment. On that basis the reorganization makes a great deal of sense and the proposal deserves serious Congressional and popular consideration.
L’olume 4, Number 7, July 1970 537
