Word: burford
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Imaging, for example being forced to admit that you earn your keep at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and respectfully humble yourself before a boss who is none other than Anne Burford. Jokes from the in0laws could wear thin after a short time...
...week the Agency had to spend over $30 million to buy the entire town of Times Beach. Mo., to protect its 2500 former inhabitants from poisonous dioxin, a suspected carcinogen. With 14,000 dumps to monitor and clean up, the EPA has its work cut out for it. Yet Burford has been remarkably reluctant to begin the task in earnest...
...Burford's inability to clean up America's hazardous wastes may stem from a number of sources. She may have been thwarted by Superfund administrator Rita Lavelle, whom Burford recently fired for her connections with chemical-industry polluters. But many insiders see Lavelle as Burford's scapegoat. Burford herself may have business or personal links amounting to a conflict of interest: the EPA recently awarded a $7.7 million cleanup contract to a company accused of being a polluter in its own right--a company represented by Denver attorney James Sanderson. Sanderson, who is currently being investigated by the FBI, recently...
...most likely--and frightening--explanation is that Burford is trying to dismantle the EPA. Her plan to slash federal support of state pollution-control efforts and to cut federal programs by up to 55 percent reveals her hostility to a nationally run system. Her adherence to Reagan's New Federalism is hardly surprising, but her inefficacy underlines the problems inherent in that philosophy...
Whether intentionally or not, Burford is not doing her job, controlling and cleaning up pollution. If she will not follow the Congressional mandate which created the EPA she should resign, leaving her agency free to clean itself up and recommit itself to making America safe...