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...fresh start" fizzled. Democratic Congressman James Scheuer, who heads one of the six congressional panels investigating the agency, charged that Hernandez personally intervened to allow Dow Chemical Co. to edit a July 1981 agency report about dioxin contamination of two rivers and a bay near its Midland, Mich., plant. EPA officials agreed to Dow's suggested deletions of critical passages linking the deadly poison to fertility problems and birth defects, as well as the conclusion that "Dow's discharge represented the major source, if not the only source, of [dioxin] contamination" in the waterways...
Testifying before the House Public Works Oversight Subcommittee, Hernandez acknowledged that he urged Valdas Adamkus, head of the EPA's Midwest regional office, to hear Dow out on the report but denied ordering him to let company officials make changes. In a stunning public break with his bosses, however, Adamkus testified on Friday that his staffers had been "forced" by Washington headquarters to strike out the passages. Hernandez was angry that the Midwest office had prepared the report in the first place, Adamkus said, and was "denouncing our report and calling the work of our regional people 'trash...
Hernandez was also blasted for blocking a voluntary plan by three smelting companies to clean up serious lead contamination in a poor, mostly black area of Dallas. An EPA study had revealed dangerously high lead levels in the blood of neighborhood children. Instead, the EPA simply ordered that residents be given blood tests and be instructed to "plant grass" to control the lead dust and to "keep [their] homes clean." That advice did not satisfy many subcommittee members. Said Hernandez in explanation: "If we went out and started running bulldozers around, we'd end up with even greater hysteria...
Congressional committees continued to stumble over one another last week in their sometimes overzealous efforts to keep "Sewergate" sizzling. Democrats culled EPA documents, looking for a trail of evidence that would lead to the White House. On Thursday the White House, which had long insisted that its files contained no internal reports on the notorious Stringfellow toxic dump in California, admitted that it did have two EPA reports confirming that Burford prepared to announce a grant to clean up Stringfellow last year but changed her mind at the last minute. There have been charges that the Administration delayed the cleanup...
Both Congress and the EPA tried to take advantage of the rising public concern over hazardous wastes. Lawmakers introduced three bills designed to tighten federal control of the poisons and close the loopholes detailed in an alarming new congressional report. The EPA weighed in with its own announcement tightening controls on dioxin and other toxic substances. Compiled during three years by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, the new study warns that 255 million to 275 million tons of chemical poisons are being dumped in the U.S. every year, a ton for every person. It estimates that it will cost...