Word: epas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
UNDER the mismanagement of Reagan-appointed administrator Anne Gorsuch Burford, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has suffered its worst year ever. Charged by environmentalist critics with moving slowly in toxic-waste cleanup efforts, the Agency is currently under investigation by the Justice Department and a half-dozen congressional subcommittees seeking answers to allegations of mismanagement of the $1.6 billion Superfund and of the use of cleanup decisions for political leverage. Each day the list of charges grows longer, highlighting the agency's failure to meet its responsibilities, and raising serious questions about Burford's understanding of her job description...
Lavelle, whose Feb. 7 firing set off the EPA crisis, provided another erratic sub plot. After pledging to cooperate with congressional investigators, she holed up in her apartment and refused to honor subpoenas from two House subcommittees looking into her management of the agency's hazardous-waste program. In another bizarre twist, she sent her appointment calendars, which she had resisted giving to the House subcommittees that had subpoenaed them, to a Senate committee that had never requested them. The calendars, listing numerous luncheon and dinner dates with representatives of chemical companies she regulated but very few with environmental...
...center of the congressional investigations is the $1.6 billion Superfund program, created by Congress three years ago to clean up the nation's most dangerous toxic-waste dumps. On Friday, House leaders were given a new EPA audit showing that the agency cannot account for $53.6 million, almost one-third of the 1982 appropriation for the Superfund. "At best, EPA officials have been sloppy and incompetent," said Democratic Representative James Scheuer...
Congress continued to widen its investigation to cover all of the EPA's enforcement efforts. Called before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Gorsuch was accused of trying to cripple the agency through budget reductions. As the "Ice Queen" defended her stormy tenure, her eyes misted with a few rare tears. "Nobody can be wrong all that much of the time," she said. "I have to judge that a great deal of it is political harassment...
...from lawmakers of either party. The Senators warned her that they plan to get to the bottom of charges of mismanagement and political favoritism that taint the Superfund program. Chided Democratic Senator Max Baucus: "I think there's a feeling in the committee, and the country, that the EPA no longer cares...