Word: epa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...dioxin is only one of hundreds of poisonous chemicals that have been seeping out of more than 40,000 industrial dumpsites across the nation And, although many of the exact sites and chemicals have already been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in the vast majority of cases the federal agency has done nothing to stop the pollution. Instead, reports one EPA official, "There's been a cover...
Internal memos and interviews with EPA officials reveal that pressure from President Carter and from regional EPA offices has led to sharp curtailments of the agency's never very energetic enforcement of pollution laws. The chief casualty of this political pressure is the Hazardous Waste Management Division, which has been unable to prevent some 80 billion pounds of dangerous industrial by-products from contaminating reservoirs, drinking wells and rivers. One reason for this colossal failure is the division's miniscule funding, which amounts to less than 1 per cent of the total EPA budget--and is being cut even more...
...environment chief James Tozzi admits that the fledgling EPA program will remain a low priority and that "there'll be no big changes" in the hazardous waste budget until "all the various options are weighed." EPA official Hugh Kaufman observes, "The president wants to hold down the budget. It doesn't come cheap, saving people's lives...
Nonetheless, opponents are willing to permit small test projects of the new energy so that the impact of unknown technologies can be fully measured. Says Terry Thoem, a director of the Denver EPA: "We have been studying shale for years, and now we would like to see some further development on a limited scale to get further data on a shale industry's impact-on water tables, on soil, on just about everything...
...President Jerome Wiesner worries about the effects of the extraordinary amount of paper work required to obtain a federal grant. Usually the scientist, or his university, must fill out endless fact sheets crammed with trivial questions. OSHA wants a copy; the Defense Department requires five or six; HEW, DOE, EPA-all of the burgeoning flock of federal alphabet agencies-can and do demand a full response to their questions, or the grant is withheld...