ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROLS Should Be Turned Over to the States

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), May, 1999 by David Schoenbrod

This proposal suggests that many Federal programs should be largely eliminated, with a remnant still operated by the Federal government. For example, it no longer should regulate the storage and disposal of hazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The effects are almost entirely intrastate. On the other hand, there would be unacceptable interstate harm if wastes from one state were dumped illegally in another. The Federal government could continue to provide a system to track hazardous waste shipments to the proper disposal site. The system could be mandatory for interstate shipments, with states given the option of requiring it for intrastate shipments.

EPA objections

I first suggested such a radical reduction in the national role for pollution control at a conference attended largely by EPA officials and former EPA officials (whose law practices are built upon their knowledge of the agency's inner workings). They reacted as if I had released a mouse under their chairs. However, they posed only three arguments, each of which reveals much of what is wrong with the Federal environmental aristocracy.

First, they maintained that many state pollution-control agencies are short of staff. Of course, their concept of the "work that needs to be done" is based on their belief that the cascade of words from the Federal chain of command actually is useful. Much of Federal environmental officials' time is spent telling state and local officials what to do and checking that they do it.

Under my proposal, a large portion of the EPA's 18,000 staffers could be dispensed with. Perhaps some of them could be sent to the states, but that may not be necessary once the Federal chain of command is gotten rid of. Even now, state and local governments mount the majority of enforcement actions.

The EPA loyalists further argued that it takes the national government to stand up to locally powerful industries. Sometimes, of course, the neighbors of a plant are reluctant to see it regulated to the point of purity for fear that the company will go bankrupt. The Federal environmental elite wants the power to "bomb the village to save it" (to use Vietnam War-era parlance).

A plant also might get its way because it has local political leverage. The implication is that the national government is controlled by the nationally virtuous. Yet, concentrated interests can buy "access" in Washington just as they buy "clout" on Main Street. The difference exists only in the minds of those who wish to see the center of power stay where they have their power--in the District of Columbia.

While the state and local political playing fields are not perfectly level, at least people know the score. It would be hard to find an Arkansan who does not know that the Tyson poultry company has clout in Little Rock. At the Federal level, though, the workings of concentrated interests are shrouded by the remoteness, size, and complexity of the Federal government.

Finally, the EPA loyalists claimed that state governments are not competent to produce sound regulations. Because the former EPA officials took part in writing the agency's contributions to the Federal Register, they would seem to be throwing stones from a glass house. EPA regulations and guidelines are opaque, arcane, elliptical, repetitive, and evasive. EPA staffers blame these problems on legislative and administrative constraints. Be that as it may, the Federal environmental protection house still is glass, regardless of who built it.