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...EPA in Washington is also feeling the pressure of power-jealous bureaucrats in the agency's regional offices. When federal EPA officials began investigating complaints of 300,000 leaking barrels of pesticides in Toone, Tenn.--where six carcinogens were later found in drinking water at 2400 times the "safe" level--regional EPA officials refused to cooperate. "I'm not going to tell you anything more about this," said one, who warned, "Listen...you people up there better stay out of this. I mean, I'm telling your office to stay out of this altogether." It wasn't until the Washington...
...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...
...dumpsite in Seymour, Ind., is known to have leaked cyanide for years, poisoning wildlife and water, while the regional office sat by idly; when the federal EPA ordered a $4 million cleanup, regional officials "cursed us up, down and sideways," Kaufman says, adding, "And when we asked them what they were going to do about those sites in their regions that were supposedly worse than Seymour, they said, 'Nothing, and stay...
...FEDERAL EPA officials, naturally, have demanded an explanation for this insubordination. One regional official expressed an "extreme reluctance" to expose his employees to the dangerous chemicals in the dumpsites. Another employee complained of "a large backlog of work" and lack of manpower and lab facilities. And a third official--this one a regional director--stressed that "it is important to pursue (only) cases that the agency can win" in court and ignore the less blatant violations of environmental laws...
Internal memos indicate that a more likely reason for EPA inaction may be incompetence. One federal official who toured a regional office reported, "It seemed as if no one really knew what they should be doing and how to accomplish it." The regional staff seemed unable to gather basic information on dumpsites, sample hazardous materials, or even follow elementary safety precautions; several staff members were injured and hospitalized because of poor sampling methods. To make matters worse, "material documenting hazardous conditions at waste facilities have been sitting in files for years," says branch chief Kaufman. "It would look very...