The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency is, in my view, this nation=s guardian of the environment and public health. The agency he or she oversees is so important that I will soon introduce a bill to make it a cabinet level department.
The Administrator of EPA can literally save thousands of lives by strengthening a single clean air rule. The Administrator can protect all of the nation=s drinking water by taking a single action to ban one fuel additive. The Administrator can protect all of our children by restricting the use of a single pesticide.
The Administrator can ensure that low-income and minority populations - those who are disproportionately affected by pollution - are brought a cleaner and healthier environment by making civil rights a top priority in every program at EPA.
But the Administrator must have a very strong sense of purpose and engage in a nearly single-minded pursuit of these goals if he or she ever hopes to achieve them for the American people.
Why?
Because in any administration - whether Republican or Democratic - the EPA Administrator often runs into tough opposition within that administration when dispatching his or her charge of protecting the public health and the environment.
The Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Transportation, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget - none of these officials have as their primary charge the protection of this nation=s environment and public health.
If the issue is MTBE, the Secretary of Energy may argue that you can=t ban it because it will disrupt the fuel supply.
If the issue is clean air, the Secretary of Transportation and OMB may argue that you can=t tighten standards and protect thousands of lives because it costs too much. The debate on that air standard will probably be about how much a human life is worth.
The OMB Director typically has a different view from the Administrator.
If the issue is pesticides, the Secretary of Agriculture may tell you not to restrict a pesticide that=s harming our children because farmers may have to use a less effective alternative.
It is the job of the EPA Administrator to argue with her colleagues in the cabinet. It is her job to firmly pursue the protection of the environment and public health in those debates. To be sure, the rest of the cabinet will do the same with respect to their agency=s mission.
I also want to note that I have serious concerns about some of the environmental approaches President-elect Bush advocated on the campaign trail and in Texas.
In particular, President-elect Bush and his Interior Secretary nominee Ms. Norton have said that voluntary approaches to environmental protection are preferable to strongly enforcing the mandatory requirements of our environmental laws.
For example, for years while Ms. Norton was the Attorney General of Colorado, she was locked in a dispute with EPA over Colorado=s Aself-audit
law.
The law basically said, if a polluter came forward and reported a pollution violation, the State wouldn=t enforce against it. The law also kept all information about the violation secret, so that the public couldn=t find out the extent of the violation or the remedy.
EPA rightly thought this was a spectacularly bad idea. The agency said this State law was contrary to the federal environmental statutes Colorado was charged with implementing, and threatened to revoke Colorado=s ability to implement those laws. EPA was only able to resolve the dispute after Ms. Norton left her post.
The point of this story is this: our federal environmental laws don=t say - Acomply if you can.
You won=t find that in the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act or the Clean Air Act.
Those laws set requirements and they provide for civil and criminal penalties if those requirements aren=t met.
That=s the philosophy enshrined in our laws. It is the role of the EPA Administrator to give effect to that philosophy. It is the role of this Committee to consider whether it is a good idea to radically change that philosophy.
In the 1970's, we wrote our environmental laws with these firm requirements and penalties for a reason. It was because our air was increasingly too dirty to breathe and our rivers were catching fire - such was the legacy of voluntary approaches to environmental protection.
I am, for one, very skeptical that voluntary approaches will bring this nation=s people a cleaner and healthier environment.
In closing, I look forward to your testimony today. I will have a series of questions I would like to ask and submit for the record.
Thank you.