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GOVERNMENT
In his first speech to employees and in a press briefing, EPA Administrator Michael O. Leavitt last week outlined his plans for the agency, described a new "collaborative" role for EPA, and applauded the workforce he now leads. The former Utah governor has been on the job for only four weeks and made clear that he was just learning his way around. His management style, he said, would be based on a series of "500-day" strategic plans leading to a long-term "5,000-day action horizon." The first 500-day plan would be made public "very soon," he said, and will address air quality. More plans will be out in the next few weeks, he promised. Leavitt said to expect big gains from his EPA, predicting now will be "the most productive period for air quality improvement in the nation's history." He warned, however, that most "low-hanging fruit" has been picked. Improving the nation's air, he said, will call for new approaches, and tops among them would be "national market-based solutions," particularly pollution trading. As governor, Leavitt developed an environmental concept he called "enlibra," a Latin word meaning "to move toward balance," he said. His EPA would apply that approach and reach out to people in the "productive center," he explained. EPA will become a "convener of collaborative networks" made up mostly of "neighbors, communities, and local governments." "I am convinced that formalized collaboration is the next great leap in environmental productivity," he said, and EPA should lead the way. But just as Leavitt settled into EPA, opponents criticized its collaboration on an agency draft proposal to reduce coal-fired power plants' mercury emissions. The mercury regulation is nearly a decade late, and EPA is under court order to propose it by Dec. 15. The day of Leavitt's speech, the mercury proposal was made public, and it revealed that EPA wishes to trade mercury emissions among power plants as an alternative to controls. Mercury trading is the choice of utilities. But state regulators and environmental activists oppose trading because mercury is neurologically toxic and bioaccumulates and can be concentrated near the pollution source. Opponents immediately pounced on the proposal, saying three years had been spent negotiating with EPA and industry over mercury emissions controls. Trading, they said, had never been on the table. "This was a collaborative process involving states, industry, and environmental groups, and this proposal was never presented ... at all," said Bradley M. Campbell, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection commissioner and a Clinton-era White House adviser. "It was apparently developed behind closed doors at the behest of industry. It betrays the administrator's stated principles and betrays public health." |
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