Word: watt
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...quality would continue to improve, but "at a more reasoned pace." Environmentalists immediately assailed the plan. Said Richard Ayres, chairman of the National Clean Air Coalition: "This is a sugar-coated prescription for dirty, unhealthy air." Reagan defended his environmental policies and those of beleaguered Interior Secretary James Watt last week, branding critics "environmental extremists." Said he: "What Watt's trying to do is a little bit like getting a mule's attention-you hit him in the forehead with a two-by-four first...
...Watt insists that his abrasive approach was necessary to change entrenched attitudes in the Interior Department's bureaucracy. He told TIME last week: "I had to come in and yell commands that would be heard and obeyed. So I yelled, and the change came faster than I thought it would." Having forcefully made clear his intentions and goals, Watt says that he can settle down to manage the department: "Now I can change my style, my rhetoric and my mode of operation. I'm mellower...
Perhaps. But Watt in a lower key is unlikely to stop the controversy; he is a true believer in what he sees as Reagan's mandate to restrain the intrusive federal bureaucracy. Watt's explanation of why environmentalists oppose him may be right on the mark: "They were quite surprised and upset when we did not consult them on decisions. But we didn't need to. We knew exactly what we wanted...
...environmentalists, Interior Secretary James Watt sometimes seems to be an avenging Ahab, citing the Bible and warring against nature. But that image may be unfair. Last week, with the Secretary's blessing, the U.S. came to the help of Watt's surprising friends, the whales...
Still, marine biologists worry about the whale's future. Chief U.S. Delegate Tom Garrett, a childhood friend of Watt's and longtime defender of the whales, who was appointed at his urging, said that far too little is known about the populations of various species or their reproductive habits to permit the slaughter to go on, even at reduced levels. He backed a British proposal for a moratorium on all commercial whaling...