Government
OTA gets encouraging nod from House report House Science & Technology Committee approves of job OTA is doing and calls its work essential, cites room for further improvement Last year was a bad one for Congress' Office of Technology Assessment. Resignations, staff dissension, and palace intrigue shook the young agency as its board chairman, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, sought to bring to it a sense of stability. Now, a year later, it appears stable under director Russell W. Peterson, who last January succeeded OTA's first director and founder, Emilio Q. Daddario. During that period of turmoil, the House Subcommittee on Science, Research & Technology was conducting oversight hearings on OTA. The hearings took almost a year, but now the committee has issued its report on OTA's problems and prospects. In sum, the committee gives the agency an affectionate pat on the rump. It says, in effect, "You're making it, boy. Stick in there." Sticking in there means giving Congress what it often needs from moment to moment and at the same time supplying a kind of cosmic perspective on what technology is doing to human systems. At its most fanciful, OTA is Congress' link to the Renaissance, and, as such, aims to be staffed by Renaissance women and men. Director Peterson uses the word "holistic" to describe the minds of such people. Whether it is in fact on such a holistic trajectory the report doesn't say. But it does note that OTA is doing what it always should have done: identifying priority issues for direct and continuous monitoring, and starting to assess longterm consequences of technologies. And addressing OTA skeptics, the report concludes that OTA's work is "essential, not capable of being duplicated by other legislative entities, and proving itself useful and . . . relied upon." It believes that OTA's original statute needs review but that the agency should be given another few years before seeking amendment to its charter. Such clarifications would have to do with upgrading the policy-making role of the director, working out smoother relations among OTA and the Congressional Research Service and the General Accounting Office, which also advise Congress on technical issues, and deciding whether OTA is to. make actual recommendations to Congress.
The subcommittee thinks the agency needs to establish a consistent working definition of technology assessment because "a number of uncertainties exist" about what the word means. Most of what OTA did during its first four years was policy analysis. There were virtually no long-term studies or assessments of the so-called secondary and tertiary effects of technology. But at the same time, OTA has to stay nimble and be ready to come forth with quick perspectives on technological issues. That becomes easier as a staff matures and establishes continuous time perspectives on major issues (or, better said, learns where the skeletons lie). The subcommittee says funds should be set aside, however, strictly for long-range studies, and OTA should be bold about rejecting "inappropriate" requests from Congressional committees. The report has a few things to say about the makeup and function of the OTA board, which consists only of legislators—six Senators and six Representatives, with chairmen who rotate between houses with every change in Congress. In OTA's original bill, the board was to have been made up of outside, impartial experts. But through the maneuvering of Rep. Jack Brooks (D.-Tex.) during floor debate, OTA was converted in effect to a joint Congressional committee with a big staff. Because the board was thus politicized, then-director Daddario suffered from a form of administrative anemia, leading to OTA's eventual sense of anomie. And because board members were too busy to keep up with day-to-day affairs of OTA, they left it up to staff members to speak for them. Some staff members spoke out of turn and often expressed ideas their bosses never meant. Thus, Daddario and deputy director Daniel V. DeSimone often found themselves in a crossfire between staff members devoted to OTA as an institution and those more devoted to political advancement. The strain couldn't continue. The subcommittee was conscious of all that was going on but had to remain discreet. Now, in its report on this critical aspect, the subcommittee says the board idea may not be too bad after all, since it buffers OTA from attack by legislators who may not like some of its objective work and because a Congressional board would understand the needs of Congress better than any outside group could. Peterson has been given a much stronger administrative hand over the OTA staff than Daddario ever sought, and has been able to marry the technology
assessment concept to staff operations better than Daddario could. But he has that power because the board decided to give it to him. Another board in another Congress could change those directions. It would take a change in the Technology Assessment Act to solidify the director's authority, but the subcommittee doesn't say Congress should do that. Another thorny issue throughout OTA's history has been the outside advisory group known as TAAC—Technology Assessment Advisory Committee. Like unhappy prep schoolers banging their spoons on the cafeteria table, TAAC members seethed and complained about never being listened to. The board gave them an assessment to do—on federal research and development policies—and although there is much huffing and puffing, little light has emerged to bathe that murky subject. Thus, with OTA undergoing its needed cleansing, the question becomes one of deciding the role of the distinguished members of TAAC. The report says TAAC should act as a board for the board in identifying issues to assess, evaluating completed assessments, assessing the OTA budget, appraising OTA methodologies, taking managerial responsibility for any OTA program, and serving as watchdog over OTA's personnel and administrative operations. Still to be worked out is its relationships with committees having little to do with technology or science but which affect the atmosphere around them. Such committees are, for example, the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways & Means Committee, the joint Economic Committee, and various appropriations committees. Just as the current debate over technological innovation is wrapped in fuzzy considerations of tax and antitrust policies, so technology assessment eventually enters the realm of money and values. OTA's staff is weak in both economics and the emerging field of ethics, and Peterson knows this. The panel is kind to Daddario, who has quietly borne more than his share of backstage horsewhipping during and immediately after his tenure. It was he, with the indispensable help of House Science & Technology Committee staffer Philip Yeager, who founded OTA. And it was up to Daddario, as OTA's first director, to move the agency through uncharted seas. Daddario's troubles, the report says, "are not amenable to measurement." But they were amenable to measurement on whatever scales a House committee might choose, and things didn't look good. So Nov. 27, 1978 C&EN
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Daddario resigned and Peterson is now in charge. The report was largely prepared by three unsung but influential participants in OTA's fortunes over the years: John Holmfeld of the subcommittee staff; Barbara Bacon, long an administrative assistant to Daddario; and Genevieve J. Knezo of the Science Policy Research Division, Congressional Research Service. Wil Lepkowski, C&EN Washington
Energy agency sets tough fuel use rules The Department of Energy will use every bit of authority it has in implementing coal conversion legislation passed by the 95th Congress, says DOE Secretary James R. Schlesinger. He describes proposed regulations issued to implement the Fuel Use Act as "tough and intended to be tough" to ensure that only those new facilities entitled to exemptions get them. Congress left a number of loopholes in the law requiring new electric power plants or major fuel-burning installations with an input rate of 100 million Btu per hour or more to burn coal. However, DOE has managed to tighten many of them in its 400 pages of proposed regulations scheduled for the Federal Register. As Schlesinger puts it, the burden has been shifted to utilities or industries to prove that they should be allowed to burn oil or natural gas in new facilities. The law allows exemptions from use of coal or alternative fuels if such use would be too costly, environmentally unsound, or impossible because of insufficient or unavailable supplies of coal or other fuels, such as solar or biomass, at the plant's location. However, the proposed regulations set very stiff criteria for industries to meet in proving their case. To gain an exemption on cost grounds, a company would have to prove that the cost of using alternative fuels exceeds the costs of burning oil or natural gas at least 50%. The cost comparison must include the capital, operation and maintenance, and fuels costs associated with any particular fuel choice. To gain an exemption on the grounds that use of an alternate fuel violates environmental requirements, a company would have to apply first for all necessary environmental permits and receive a final determination from the Environmental Protection Agency or the state that alternate fuel use would indeed violate environmental requirements. In addition, to gain an exemption based on lack of capital, the incremental amount of capital needed to use an alternate fuel rather than oil or natural gas must be at least 25% or more of the annual capital budget of the parent firm averaged over the most recent three years. If violations of DOE exemption permits are found, Schlesinger says, the penalties could range up to $10 per bbl of oil or $3.00 per million cu ft of gas. 18
C&EN Nov. 27, 1978
Even getting an exemption could be expensive. DOE is proposing to recover, to the extent practical, the costs incurred by the government in performing the analyses necessary to grant or deny an exemption. DOE estimates the cost of analyzing environmental data at $60,000, financial data at $10,000, engineering data at $10,000, and fuel supply and transportation data at $5000. Each analysis will have to be performed for each exemption request. And these figures do not count the company's cost in preparing the extensive data the government will be analyzing. DOE expects to issue proposed regulations governing the conversion of existing facilities to alternative fuels in the near future. And they may come as a shock to the chemical industry, which for the past few years has been converting existing natural gas-burning facilities to oil because of supply uncertainties and as part of longer-term conversion to coal (C&EN, Sept. 26,1977, page 17). Taking note of this trend and of the very substantial amount of U.S. gasburning capacity that has fallen into disuse, Schlesinger says it "will cease. DOE will encourage a turnback to natural gas." He explains that there is no contemplation in the Fuel Use Act that all existing facilities in the U.S. should switch to coal. In fact, he says, "We don't know that we want that to happen." What the Administration does want to
Schlesinger: shift in burden of proof
happen is a decrease in oil imports and an improvement in the U.S. balance of payments. As Schlesinger puts it, "We do not want additional facilities that burn natural gas but, even less, ones that burn imported oil." He believes that there is a trillion cubic feet of natural gas deliverable from domestic sources and says in the short run "we wish to burn as much as we can to hold down imports." D
OSHA, HEW vie to protect laboratory workers The race is on to protect laboratory workers from exposure to carcinogenic chemicals. But research chemists aren't too sure they want all that protection. Some chemists fear that such well-intentioned efforts will interfere with their freedom of scientific inquiry and may be the first ominous step toward government regulation of research. Both the Occupational Safety & Health Administration and the Department of Health, Education & Welfare are currently ruminating over plans to minimize laboratory worker exposure to a long list of substances that have been shown to be carcinogenic in animals. Yet the OSHA approach, part of the agency plan to protect all chemical workers from exposure to carcinogens, is perceived by some scientists to be overkill. The HEW proposal, although cast in the form of guidelines for only its own labs, also is viewed by scientists with a certain amount of suspicion and perhaps anxiety. Subject to the usual administrative proceedings, the OSHA carcinogen plan, of course, would carry the weight of federal regulation. HEW's guidelines, on the other hand, do not, but the potential for widespread compliance is nevertheless real. HEW likely will require that its grantees and contractors, whose numbers are legion, observe the guidelines, according to Dr. David P. Rail, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and chairman of the
HEW panel that is drafting the laboratory safety rules. The first draft of the carcinogen-handling policy was unveiled at public hearings in late September, and Rail says that it probably will be ready for another public viewing by April or May of next year. Rail cautions, however, that HEW is not trying to steal OSHA's mandate as the workplace safety guardian, even though HEW suggests that it should take a leadership role in lab safety. The HEW guidelines, like the overall OSHA proposal, call for certain engineering controls and laboratory practices designed to limit worker exposure to carcinogens. Both .call for periodic medical checkups and maintenance of employee medical records. But they differ in that the OSHA scheme calls for personal monitoring devices for workers, a potentially expensive procedure. Some prominent chemists, such as Dr. John Baldeschwieler of California Institute of Technology, have urged OSHA to exempt research labs from the workplace carcinogen policy because of the cost and possibly stifling effects on research. NIEHS's Rail, on the other hand, tends to play down the cost of implementing the HEW guidelines. He believes that some common sense steps, such as keeping a worker's lunch out of the refrigerator that is used to store chemicals and good housekeeping in the lab, will go a long way toward satisfying safety needs. D
