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...Superfund issue has exploded into a nasty struggle over power and poli cy that has shattered the once proud agency and deepened doubts in some quarters about the Reagan Administration's commitment to environmental protection. Last Monday, President Reagan tersely fired Rita Lavelle, the EPA official who oversaw hazardous waste programs, after she refused to resign at Gorsuch's request. Lavelle's ouster provided a glimpse into the bizarre infighting and bitter policy battles that have given the agency under Gorsuch the ambience of a Borgia palace on the Potomac. Appalled by allegations of perjury, conflict...
...embarrassed White House moved to contain the image spill, launching its own probe of the EPA and proposing a compromise to try to settle the contempt case against Gorsuch. But it could do little to muffle the echoes of earlier Capital scandals: whining paper shredders, charges of lying under oath, mysterious erasures on subpoenaed documents, leaked memos and harassment of whistle blowers. Problems began for Lavelle soon after she assumed the $67,200-a-year EPA post ten months ago. Ambitious but short on administrative skills, "she came into the agency like a Mack truck," said one former EPA official...
Lavelle further weakened her position by feuding openly with Robert Perry, EPA's general counsel. Their first big clash came last spring, when Perry urged her to avoid a conflict of interest in the case of the Stringfellow Acid Pits dump near Riverside, Calif., a high-priority EPA target site where 32 million gal. of toxic wastes had been dumped during 17 years. Before joining EPA, Lavelle had worked for the California chemical company Aerojet-General Corp., where she developed a public relations campaign to counter pollution charges against the company. It was a job that kept her busy...
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...