Word: epa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Senators at Lavelle's confirmation hearing were worried about her ties to Aerojet-one of more than 100 companies negotiating with the EPA over dumping in Stringfellow-and made her promise to stay out of cases involving the firm. Nevertheless, Lavelle did not formally disqualify herself from the Stringfellow case until June 18, and informally kept her hand in after that, according to agency insiders...
...Congress was not convinced. At week's end Dingell's subcommittee voted to widen the Superfund probe by issuing new subpoenas for testimony from Lavelle, Gorsuch and 35 other EPA employees, plus dozens of additional documents. Democratic Congressman James J. Howard of New Jersey, chairman of the House Public Works Committee, demanded an FBI investigation of a recently installed paper shredder outside Lavelle's office that the EPA said had been used to destroy "excess copies" of documents withheld from the House. The EPA told Scheuer that Lavelle's appointment calendars, which he had subpoenaed...
...efforts to foster a different impression, the controversy has only heightened suspicions that her goal, and that of the Reagan Administration, is to slash the agency's budget and staff so deeply that its regulations become flaccid. Environmentalists like to say that during her stewardship, the EPA has been transformed into the "industry protection agency." Morale among employees has sunk so low that the EPA is the most leak-prone bureaucracy in town. "It's not easy to run an agency when the whole work force is either under subpoena or at the Xerox machine," a chagrined Gorsuch...
...financially strapped states to contribute more to cleanup efforts, her proposed 1984 budget slashes state grants by 26%, from $233 million to $172 million. In fiscal 1980, the last full year of President Carter's Administration, 200 civil cases against air and water polluters were referred by the EPA to the Justice Department. Last year 100 were referred. The number of both chemical-company and hazardous-waste-facility inspections has fallen sharply. Efforts to enforce the Safe Drinking Water Act have virtually ceased...
Republicans, already concerned that a foot-dragging EPA would present the Democrats with a potent political issue, found last week's developments distressing. Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont was beating the drums. "We can enforce our environmental laws or ignore them," he railed. "Thus far, the Administration has done everything pos sible to ignore them." Scheuer said he plans to introduce legislation this week to restructure the EPA as an agency run by an independent commission, apart from the Executive Branch...