News of the Week when regulations involving billions of dollars and hundreds of lives are based on arbitrary guesses in which politics rather than science has the primary role," he says. Copies of the book, "Quantitative Risk Assessment in Regulation/' can be ordered from Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. Prices are $10.9.5 for paperback and $26.95 for cloth-bound. D
White House, private GNP forecasts at odds Even after last week's Commerce Department report that the gross national product declined at an annual rate of 2.5% in the fourth quarter of 1982, the bulk of private forecasts of recovery this year continues to range between 2.0 and 2.5%. That leaves the White House's prediction of real GNP growth of 1.4% this year as the most pessimistic around. Usually, even large differences in economic forecasts reflect no more than different interpretations of data, but Albert T. Sommers, chief economist for the Conference Board, sees disturbing implications in the Administration's low figure. "If the government is right/' he declares, "there will be no question about where the responsibility for such poor performance lies. It will lie with the government/' Only government policy—a return to a restrictive monetary policy, in particular—could cause the economy to perform that poorly, contends Sommers, whose own 2.4% growth forecast is based on current business conditions and anticipation of continued accommodation by the Federal Reserve Board. A restrictive policy would drive up interest rates, choking off recovery in the housing and auto sectors so important to the chemical industry. "The latest forecast incorporates expectations that monetary policy will pursue an anti-inflation course in 1983," he says. "It means that interest rates will rise if recovery accelerates at any point in the year, and it apparently expects rising interest rates to stop the acceleration." Few economists expect the Feder8
January 24, 1983 C&EN
al Reserve Board to return to a restrictive policy, however. And, as John Ortego of Chase Econometrics points out, even if it did, there usually is a lag of six to nine months between a tightening of the money supply and the expression of its effect on the economy. Sommers, Ortego, and others say the White House forecast may be nothing more than a political ploy geared to public opinion before the 1984 elections. But, as Sommers worries, the forecast also could indicate a target. "Stunningly," he says, "the government forecast seems to expect a continuation of the policy gridlock responsible for 1982. It even seems to want it." D
EPA counters criticism of its cleanup program A recent Congressional report has found a sharp erosion in the Environmental Protection Agency's hazardous waste enforcement program. And in a vitriolic denouncement of that report, the agency's top enforcement official, Robert M. Perry, has r e s p o n d e d that it " i g n o r e d the agency's many recent accomplishments . . . and chose instead to exhume many of the same, tired, old criticisms which we have answered time and time again." The report, "Hazardous Waste
Dingell: cavalier attitude at EPA
Enforcement," is the product of seven hearings held between September 1980 and April 1982 by the House Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations of the Energy & Commerce Committee. Committee and subcommittee chairman John D. Dingell (D.-Mich.) says that the decline in the number of cases referred to and filed by the Justice Department under the Superfund law and the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act "suggests a cavalier attitude toward criminal enforcement on the part of EPA's top management officials." Taking umbrage at that suggestion, Perry replies that EPA, for the first time, has in place "an effective, fully staffed criminal investigation program." Dingell says it took nearly one year to hire the 25 investigators, even after funds became available. On the matter of investigators, the report recommends that Congress consider legislation giving them authority to carry firearms and to make arrests. This recommendation flows from the subcommittee's review of the New Jersey Interagency Hazardous Waste Strike Force (the first federal/state effort set up to investigate and prosecute violations) and from its exploration on organized crime's role in New Jersey's waste disposal industry. The subcommittee charges both New Jersey and EPA officials with mismanagement "in the administration of their hazardous waste enforcement p r o g r a m s . " For N e w Jersey, the report cites a lack of prompt response to complaints, delays in conducting investigations, and unproductive and mishandled investigations. For EPA, the panel points to a reorganization of the enforcement program that led to confusion, and to the agency's philosophy of "nonconfrontational voluntary compliance." To the contrary, Perry says, the new philosophy has fostered spectacular successes. In an 11-point recitation of events, he cites the August 1982 Chem-Dyne (Hamilton, Ohio) negotiated agreement, the Velsicol Chemical Co. settlement for cleanup of several sites in Michigan/and a close EPA/state effort on compliance and enforcement of RCRA, among others. D
