THE TRAGEDY OF DISTRUST IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF FEDERAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

In the dream, it works something like this: The huge hall of Environmental Control is lit from above. Operators below press controls and the translucent dome glows with the streams slashing the Upper Atmosphere, shaping the world's weather. Other controls are pressed and the flow changes color. Now it illuminates the Middle Atmosphere over America, showing regional smog-bearing inversions that may lock over cities within hours. In and out of walls glide panels on which river basins shine with flood-crest warnings or change hue to show rise and fall of pollution .... Nearby, in the Surveillance Center of Environmental Health Services, pesticides, oxides, nitrates, adulterants, all 30,000 chemicals used by industry or everyday life are indexed, cross-referenced, computerized for interaction and contaminations.I

the law's impracticability. A court, however, would likely have overturned the agency's construction, thereby compelling EPA to spend substantial resources in making a good faith, albeit futile, effort to comply with the congressional mandate. Significant institutional obstacles would then have quickly arisen. The Office of Management and Budget ("OMB") would invariably have opposed such a wasteful expenditure of monies. Heads of other federal agencies would have likely expressed opposition based on the program's potential interference with the operation of their own programs. State government officials would have been concerned with its federalism implications. The congressional appropriations committees, feeling the pressure to fund other programs competing for scarce federal dollars, would likely have provided EPA with only limited funds to develop an environmental control command center of such dubious efficacy. Those on the appropriations committees concerned about the impact on free market forces, other federal programs, or federalism, might have also placed riders on EPA's appropriations, limiting the agency's ability to spend funds on certain aspects of the program.
When EPA failed to meet the statutory deadline, the congressional subcommittees that drafted the agency's enabling law would have condemned the agency at oversight hearings. Those subcommittees would also have secured passage of legislation imposing additional deadlines on the agency and eliminating the agency's substantive discretion to ensure future agency compliance.
At EPA, the resulting crisis atmosphere would have stifled pollution control efforts. Agency resources would have been spent preparing for litigation, testifying before oversight hearings, placating state officials, and justifying agency expenditures on the program to skeptical OMB and White House officials. EPA officials would have created numerous working groups to consider how, in the absence of any foundation in science or technology, they might have created the type of highly centralized system of command and control envisioned by Congress. Because of the pending litigation, the agency's lawyers would have displaced other agency professionals (scientists, engineers, and economists) in developing the agency's response. OMB would have sought to delay any implementation of the plan. When the program was finally promulgated, affected industries would have promptly sought a federal court injunction barring any effort by EPA to implement a program disruptive of industry's vested economic interests. Based on the program's severe economic impact and the thinness of its scientific support, the court would have likely granted the injunction and remanded to EPA for further administrative proceedings.
Within EPA, the congressional, judicial, and public demand for immediate results would have discouraged long-term planning. The pall of suspicion cast upon the agency's motives by repeated failures would have likewise deterred innovation. The agency's inevitable loss of credibility before Congress, the courts, and the public would have decreased its influence in LAw AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 54: No.4 state of siege and a crisis mentality have persisted at the agency for much of its existence as Congress has responded to each EPA failure by passing even more restrictive deadline legislation that the agency again fails to meet. 7 In short, a pathological cycle has emerged: agency distrust has begotten failure, breeding further distrust and further failure. The destructive cycle is not simply a product of personality or partisan politics. Replacing Anne Gorsuch with William Ruckelshaus as EPA administrator averted agency collapse in 1983 but did not eliminate the pattern. Nor, at an earlier time, did the coupling of a Democratic president (Carter) with Democratic majorities in both congressional chambers yield fundamental change. 8 The cycle results from the way in which our governmental institutions have responded to persistent public schizophrenia concerning environmental protection policy. Public aspirations for environmental quality are relatively uniform and strongly held. But those aspirations contrast sharply with the public's understanding of their implications and its demonstrated unwillingness to take the steps necessary to have those aspirations realized. There is an appearance of harmony underlain by much actual disharmony.
Our governmental institutions have exacerbated rather than redressed the discrepancy. These institutions are founded on deep-seated skepticism of those who wield governmental authority, and they seek, through the checks and balances embraced by our tripartite system, to curb potential governmental overreaching and any branch's abuse of the public trust. In the case of EPA, the illusion of harmony suggested agency abuse of its public trust as public aspirations have gone unrealized. At the same time, the various interests that are in disharmony have exploited to their own advantage the institutional forces of distrust within the government to guard against adverse EPA actions. The upshot has been a pattern of agency crisis and controversy and, as described, a cycle of regulatory failure.
The cycle must now be reversed. The need to reduce dramatically the strain we place on the natural environment is simultaneously immediate and long-term. Our domestic laws reflect that understanding and express a symbolic commitment to that goal. Those laws have achieved, moreover, significant improvement in discrete areas and, in some others, have managed to resist further environmental degradation in the face of a growing economy.9 For that reason, they warrant great praise. The past twenty years nevertheless reveal that those same laws decline to undertake the concomitant modification of our governmental institutions, and the way we think about them, which is necessary for a fuller realization of our environmental goals. EPA's 20th anniversary and expected elevation to cabinet status as the Department of the Environment provide an appropriate occasion to initiate a 7. See text accompanying notes 185-234. 8. See R. Shep Melnick, Regulation and the Courts: The Case of the Clean Air Act 33-35 (Brookings Inst, 1983). Nor, for that malter, did the combination of a Republican administration and a Republican.controlled Senate from 1980 to 1986 eliminate the tension.
9. See Council on Environmental Quality, Seventeenth Annl1al Report 17 (U.S. Govt Printing Office, 1986) (descrihing significant advances in environmental quality since 1970). much needed institutional study of the federal environmental protection effort, which is the purpose of this article. A retrospective on EPA illustrates the causes and effects of the cycle of distrust that has plagued the agency since its inception. More importantly, the inquiry lays the foundation for a more positive discussion of how to avoid repeating the cycle and how instead to facilitate the type of social and institutional innovation necessary for protection of the natural environment.

THE ORIGINS OF EPA AND ITS EARLY YEARS: AGENCY CAPTURE AND THE SEEDS OF DISTRUST
Historically, the creation of EPA in 1970 was a modest step in the wake of decades of debate concerning how best to institutionalize natural resource planning and environmental protection within the federal government. IO President Nixon ultimately rejected the recommendation of his Advisory Council on Executive Branch Reorganization-the "Ash Council" headed by Roy Ash-that he establish a cabinet level Department of Environment and Natural Resources. I I The Ash Report called for a consolidation into one agency of most of the natural resource and pollution control programs then located in forty-four bureaus and offices within nine different agencies, including the Army Corps of Engineers, Soil Conservation Service, Forest Service, and Rural Electrification Administration. 12 Congress likewise shelved parallel suggestions that it too should foster systematic and coordinated federal environmental and natural resource policy planning by reducing the fragmentation of authority over that subject matter then reflected in its committee structure. Congress took no such action,13 and President Nixon ultimately proposed only the creation of a noncabinet-Ievel federal agency LAw AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 54: No.4 that consolidated the federal pollution standard setting functions then located in fifteen offices within four agencies and one interagency council. I4 The reorganization transferred to EPA only nine of approximately fifty federal programs then pertaining to the environment. 15 A major reason why both President Nixon. and Congress took relatively modest action in institutionalizing a federal role for environmental protection also explains much of EPA's subsequent history. It underlies the subsequent whipsawing of EPA within and among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches over the last twenty years, and it finds its ultimate expression in the pathological cycle of regulatory failure and controversy that has plagued the agency from the outset.
Simply put, EPA was not trusted. Myriad interest groups were potentially affected by a federal agency responsible for environmental protection. Some favored the agency's establishment and its mandate; many others, however, were threatened by both. All recognized that the agency would face tremendous pressures in its effort to fashion and implement federal environmental protection laws. Each therefore sought to prevent "agency capture," meaning EPA's domination by an adverse competing interest.
In particular, three variants of agency capture theory have predominated and strongly influenced EPA's institutional development. The first hypothesis, identified with the works of Professor Marver Bernstein, 16 concerns the tendency of administrative agencies to ally themselves, over time, with the community they regulate. At the time of EPA's creation, Ralph Nader's organization had published a series of books, relying on Bernstein's thesis, that accused various federal agencies (including the Department of Agriculture's pesticides program) of being in a state of agency capture.l7 TRAGEDY OF DISTRUST 317 The second thesis, most thoughtfully articulated by Professor Joseph Sax, concerns the tendency of agency personnel to bargain away environmental values as part of the political process. IS According to Sax, agency officials are simply incapable of providing natural resources with long-term protection from persistent and influential economic interests. 19 The constant demands on the bureaucracy for compromise are too great. 20 Finally, there are those who fear the agency's capture by its own bureaucracy.21 Unlike the other two theories, the primary proponents of this view are concerned with the agency paying too little attention to the needs of the regulated. The theory is premised on the reputedly liberal, proregulatory bias of the federal bureaucracy, particularly that in an agency rearrangement such as EPA with a social mission. 22 EPA's creation and the manner in which it was initially received within the executive branch, by Congress, and the courts can largely be traced to these three different capture theories. These theories affected EPA's organization within the executive branch, its internal structure, the structure and focus of the federal environmental laws under its jurisdiction, and the amount and character of judicial review of its actions.

A. Executive Branch
Within the Executive Office of the President and Cabinet in 1970, there were two competing philosophies regarding environmental regulation. Those sympathetic to an active federal pollution control program were opposed to its inclusion in a cabinet agency along with the government's traditional natural resource management programs. The historically pro-development  (Cong Res Serv, 1983) ("EPA: An Analysis of Its Controversies"). The Bush Administratio.n has not been immune from harboring similar suspicions toward EPA's bureaucracy. See Maureen Dowd, SWI/Inu on Environment: His Influence is Debated, NY Times A I col I (Feb 15, 1990). President Bush's Chief of Staff, John Sununu. explained that he helps to formulate environmental policy because of his "deep distrust of the EPA bureaucrats 'who forget that it is Bill Reilly and the President who make policy.' .. Id at AI4 col 4. Unnamed White House officials reportedly believe that "Reilly has been captured by his bureaucracy." Id at A I 4 col I.
LAw AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 54: No.4 bias of those natural resource programs, it was feared, would dominate the agency and undermine pollution control efforts. 23 Conversely, those in the executive branch, including President Nixon, who were concerned about the possible adverse economic impact of environmental protection on existing federal programs, sought to limit the new agency's jurisdiction and maintain presidential control over the agency's decisions. 24 The final presidential proposal reflected a compromise of these forces. The agency was independent in the sense that it was placed outside the formal jurisdiction of any other agency, but unlike a truly independent agency, its administrator and assistant administrators were to serve at the President's pleasure and formally report to the President through OMB.25 The agency's pollution control jurisdiction was not combined with any of the federal government's natural resource management authority, but neither was the pollution control dimension of that management authority surrendered to the new agency. For instance, the President did not transfer to EPA all of the Department of Agriculture's jurisdiction over pesticide regulation. The Army Corps of Engineers also retained jurisdiction to regulate certain types of environmentally harmful activities occurring within the nation's traditional navigable waters.
In addition, at the same time that the President proposed the creation of EPA, he counterbalanced it with the creation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ("NOAA") and National Industrial Pollution Control Council ("NIPCC") within the Department of Commerce. 26 Commerce's pro-business perspective, the President believed, would minimize the chance of NOAA impeding economic activity within the coastal zone. NIPCC was made up of senior officials of major domestic corporations and trade associations and was designed to provide an authoritative source within the government on the adverse economic impact of pollution contro1. 27 Working with OMB, NIPCC was intended to provide the President with an institutional mechanism for maintaining control over EPA. 28 Finally, the internal structure of EPA reflected competing agency capture concerns. The Ash Council contemplated that, like the Defense Department, 23 EPA would be organized by function (for example, by abatement, monitoring, enforcement, standard setting, and research).29 Such a structure would allow the agency to approach the environment as an interrelated system, as suggested by the President in his message transmitting the reorganization plan to Congress, rather than as a series of discrete media (for example, air, water, and land).30 There were many perceived advantages to a cross-media approach, including avoidance of the tendency of media-specific programs to ignore their impact on other media. 31 EPA's first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, however, never fully adopted the contemplated functional, integrated organization. He was not persuaded of the importance of organization in the first instance, and he anticipated objections from members of Congress and the environmental community who, because they were themselves organized by media, would be concerned about the adverse impact of such an organizational scheme on their respective abilities to influence agency policy. 32 The final agency structure was a compromise that still persists today under which EPA is simultaneously organized both by media and by function.

B. Congress
EPA's initial reception in Congress reflects the same tension between different philosophies and agency capture theories. There were those in Congress concerned about EPA's possible capture by the regulated community and about the bureaucratic tendency to give in to the political forces that can be wielded in the executive branch by powerful economic interests opposed to expensive pollution control measures. 33 There were also members of Congress concerned about the dangers of a runaway bureaucracy imposing excessive costs on the nation's economy.34 In hearings on the nominations of EPA officials, members of Congress repeatedly questioned presidential appointees about their willingness to exercise judgment independent of the President. 35 They also reminded 29. Marcus, Promise and Perfonnance at 102-03 (cited in note II). 30. Message of the President Relative to Reorganization Plan No 3, July 9, 1970.6 Weekly Comp Pres Docs 908 Ouly 13, 1970). 31. Id ("Control of the air pollution may produce more solid wastes, which then pollute the land or water. Control of the water-polluting effluent may convert it into solid wastes, which must be disposed of on land.").  [Vol. 54: No.4 nominees about the need for consultation with congressional committees prior to the agency making any significant decisions. 36 Congressional committees dominated by those favoring a strong federal pollution control effort secured passage of statutes specifically designed to minimize the possibility of bureaucratic neglect and compromise and of agency capture by regulated industry. 37 Those in Congress who were more wary of the economic costs of pollution control also sought to oversee and influence EPA's work. Neither side favored consolidation of environmental jurisdiction in a few committees. Each wanted to avoid any reduction in leverage over the agency that might result from any loss of committee jurisdiction. As a result, there was great resistance to many of the early efforts to achieve a congressional reorganization of environmental jurisdiction that was similar to that which was occurring within the executive branch. 38 Regulation, in Nat! Res Council, ed, 2b Decisionmaking at the Environmental Protection Agency: Selected Working Papers 181 (Nat! Acad Sciences, 1977) ("some Congressional staff members argue that Congress has delegated regulatory functions to EPA which are to be carried out without presidential influence or interference"). In Administrator Train's hearing, however, he was also sharply questioned by Senator William Scott who was upset by Train's earlier intimation that EPA would be free "to defy the White House." See Nomination of Russell E. Train at 52-55 (cited earlier in this note Finally, the initial relationship between EPA and the courts was likewise heavily influenced by various forms of the capture theory.39 As summarized by one commentator, the courts' opinions reflected two different views of the agency. Some courts viewed the agency's work as the product of an overzealous bureaucracy that acted without proper regard for economic concerns; others "pictured the EPA as a marginally competent but occasionally careless agency that from time to time needs to be reminded of the importance of its statutory goals and warned against bowing to demands from the White House and industry."4o The effect was the spawning of the so-called "hard look" doctrine and modern administrative law of the 1970s, much of which was fashioned in the context of environmentallitigation. 41

REGULATORY FAILURE AND CONTROVERSY
The tug-of-war in which EPA found itself might have turned out to be nothing more than a benign, even healthy, application of the checks and balances necessary to realize this country's commitment to the separation of powers. After all, where important regulatory authority is at stake, the various branches will invariably vie for influence in fashioning national policy. It should be no great surprise, moreover, that those institutions should do so at the behest of an interest group seeking to avoid the domination of the regulatory process by an adverse and competing interest.
In the case of EPA, however, the effect has been neither benign nor healthy. The institutional forces set into motion by the various capture theories have repeatedly collided, breeding conflict, controversy, and ultimately a destructive pattern of regulatory failure. No one individual or institution is to blame for this phenomenon. 42 Indeed, "blame" is an inappropriate characterization. Many of the problems that have arisen in the implementation of environmental law were likely the inevitable result of such a dramatic infusion of new values and priorities into the nation's laws. But, be that as it may, it is possible to understand why this phenomenon resulted and how the cycle may now finally be reversed as we move into the 1990s.
Most simply put, the forces designed to prevent EPA's capture became pathologically destructive because the country's spiritual environmental LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 54: No.4 awakening in the 1970s occurred without much of an intellectual understanding of its implications. A strong national consensus in favor of environmental protection prompted the President to create EPA, Congress to pass sweeping environmental laws, and courts to open their doors to environmental plaintiffs. But both the public and those institutions were remarkably unsophisticated about the demands that they were placing upon themselves.
There was little, if any, sense of the huge short-term costs associated with treating pollution as a cost of doing business. Nor was there much awareness of the degree to which settled expectations and lifestyles could be disrupted if the natural environment were to be treated as more than an economic commodity. The public and governmental institutions likewise did not truly appreciate the incalculable nature of the benefits of environmental protection, including the scientific uncertainty associated with the measurement of those benefits and the long term intergenerational nature of their realization. There was especially little apprehension of how those characteristics would challenge the patience of both those sympathetic to, and those skeptical of, the new federal programs.
Nor were the late 1960s and early 1970s a time susceptible to the type of candid dialogue between citizen groups and business, Congress and the President, or scientists and economists that would have been required to begin to reach consensus on these issues. 43 The civil rights and antiwar movements had polarized the nation. In the aftermath of powerful denunciations of the chemical and auto industries and government by activists Rachel Carson (Silent Spring (1962» and Ralph Nader (Unsafe at Any Speed (1965)), the credibility of government and business on health and safety issues was exceedingly low. 44 Indeed, because of the civil rights and antiwar movements, there was a pressing need for national consensus on some important issue. That need satisfied itself by embracing the environmental movement. The social consensus behind the environmental movement was illusory, however, and as the conflicts became apparent, EPA, which was the object of the country's hopes and dreams about the environment, often became the object of its frustration and scorn. Congress responded to the perception of a national consensus in environmental protection by passing a series of laws in the 1970s that set the stage for institutional conflict and agency failure. Congress lacked the incentive to address or emphasize the pitfalls and chose instead to join the chorus in favor of immediate and fundamental change. 46 The congressional votes in favor of the new laws were accordingly overwhelmingly favorable. The average vote in favor of major federal environmental legislation during the 1970s was seventy-six to five in the Senate and 331 to thirty in the House. 47 As one legislator put it in describing his reluctant vote in favor of safe drinking water legislation in 1974, "[a]fter all, if one votes against safe drinking water, it is like voting against home and mother."48 l. From Public Aspiration to Statutory Mandate. The federal environmental statutes of the early 1970s were dramatic, sweeping, and uncompromising, consistent with the nation's spiritual and moral resolution of the issue. The laws also reflected skepticism and distrust of agency implementation of statutory mandates, consistent with agency capture theory and the general political ill will then existing between the executive and legislative branches. The statutes imposed hundreds of stringent deadlines on the agency and removed much of the agency's substantive discretion in accomplishing them. One-third of the deadlines were for six months or less. 49 Sixty percent were for one year or less. 50 According to EPA's current administrator, William Reilly, Congress and the courts had imposed 800 deadlines on the agency through 1989. 51 Congress made no effort to bridge the gap between the nation's aspirations for environmental protection and its understanding of the underlying issues and its own capacity for change.
The result was a seemingly never-ending onslaught of impossible agency tasks. Eighty-six percent of the statutory deadlines applied specifically to 46. John P. Dwyer, The Pathology of Symbolic Legislation, 17 Ecol L Q 233 (1990).
47. These numbers are based on the last recorded roll call vote taken in each chamber for each of the major bills ultimately passed by Congress in the 1970s. In most cases, the final votes were voice votes. The statutes covered include the Clean Air Act of 1970 ("CAA"), the Federal Water Pollution Control Act ("FWPCA"), the 1977 Clean Air Act, the 1977 Clean Water Act ("CWA"), the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act ("FIFRA"), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act ("RCRA"), and the Toxic Substances Control Act ('TSCA"). The numbers do not reRect the votes in favor of the Safe Drinking Water Act ("SDWA") in 1974 because there does not appear ever to have been a recorded roll call vote in the Senate. The formal votes are not, of course, an accurate measure of congressional support for every aspect of the bills passed. Many parts of those bills were likely quite contentious and, if added by amendment during debate, might well have been adopted by the narrowest of margins. EPA.52 EPA was "told to eliminate water pollution, and all risk from air pollution, prevent hazardous waste from reaching ground water, establish standards for all toxic drinking water contaminants, and register all pesticides."53 To date, EPA has met only about 14 percent of the congressional deadlines imposed and has had 80 to 85 percent of its major regulations challenged in court. 54 a. Air Pollution. In the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970,55 Congress mandated the achievement by 1975 of national ambient air quality standards ("NMQS") necessary for the protection of public health (primary standard) and public welfare (secondary standard).56 Congress also instructed EPA to publish an initial listing of "hazardous" air pollutants within ninety days and then, within 180 days of its listing, to publish for each such pollutant a proposed "emission standard" for the protection of public health. 57 The deadline for final emission standard regulations was 180 days later. 58 Congress established a similarly rigid schedule for EPA's listing of categories of stationary sources that "may contribute significantly to air pollution which causes or contributes to the endangerment of public health or welfare" (ninety days), and an even tighter schedule for promulgation of regulations for new sources (120 days after inclusion as a secondary source for proposal; ninety days after proposal for final promulgation).59 The Clean Air Act also mandated that the administrator achieve a 90 percent reduction in existing automotive pollutant levels by 1975 (hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide) and 1976 (nitrogen oxides), with a narrow provision for a possible one-year extension. 60 The administrative task was enormous. It required strict regulation of 20,000 to 40,000 major stationary sources of air pollution, millions of cars 52. EESI, Statutory Deadlines at II (cited in note 49). The remaining 14'10 was evenly divided between the regulated community (including public water supply companies) and the states. and trucks being driven by average citizens,61 and 275 toxic air pollutants (sixty of which are known or suspected carcinogens),62 many of which were emitted by industries vital to local economies. In short, the Act challenged not only "business as usual" but "life as usual" in the United States and demanded that EPA immediately seek dramatic change in both. The short time scale necessarily precluded prolonged attention to the tremendous scientific uncertainty associated with the complex mechanics of air pollution.
It also did not allow for much serious agency consideration of the relative costs and benefits of air pollution reduction. Neither the NAAQS nor the toxic emission standards allowed for any significant consideration of their economic costs. Not surprisingly, fewer than 15 percent of the Clean Air Act's deadlines were met. None of those met pertained to compliance with environmental quality standards. 63 Twenty years later, many areas of the nation still have not met the NAAQS. Both EPA and Congress have given the auto companies numerous extensions of the deadline for meeting 90 percent reduction in emissions of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides, and, twenty years later, the companies have still not reduced nitrogen oxides by 90 percent. 64 EPA has acted on only seven of the 274 known hazardous substances emitted into the air. 65 b. Water Pollution. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 took a similar approach. 66 The 1972 enactment sought fishable and swimmable waters everywhere by 1983 and zero discharge of pollutants by 1985,67 and it made unlawful any discharge of pollutants into navigable waters absent a permit issued by EPA. The act instructed EPA to require through the permitting process that industry secure the "best practicable control technology currently available" ("BPT") by 1977 and "best available technology economically achievable" ("BAT") by 1984 Section 306 of the Act compelled EPA to require new sources of water pollution to achieve effluent reduction "achievable through the application of the best available demonstrated control technology" ("BDT").69 EPA was supposed to promulgate effluent guidelines by October 1973 and permit limitations by December 1974. 70 The required administrative undertaking was no less daunting than that posed by the Clean Air Act. There are at least 68,000 point sources of water pollution requiring federal permits and probably thousands more. 71 As one commentator put it, to develop appropriate effluent limits for each of those sources based on BPT, BAT, and BDT technological standards demanded "omniscience."72 The zero discharge goal was plainly impossible and the fishable/swimmable mandate could not, in any event, be met by the strict technology-based effluent reduction requirements of the permit program; the large amount of nonpoint pollution not covered by the Act's permitting program was sufficient, by itself, to prevent EPA's success. 73 By 1985, only 18 percent of the deadlines established by federal water pollution legislation had been met. 74 As with the Clean Air Act, none of the deadlines for compliance with environmental quality standards was met.7 5 c. Pesticides, Toxic Substances, and Hazardous Waste. In the 1972 amendments to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act ("FIFRA"),76 Congress gave EPA just four years to review approximately 50,000 pesticides that had previously been registered under far more permissive statutory requirements. 77 For registration, EPA had to determine that the pesticide's intended use would not cause "unreasonable adverse effects on the environment" when used "in accordance with widespread and commonly recognized practice. "78 The 1976 deadline, like others, proved impossible. EPA believed that it would take at least ten years to complete the re-registration process, and it has actually taken much longer. 79 EPA has issued relatively few final re-registrations each year. 80 By 1984, EPA had reregistered less than half of the 600 active pesticide ingredients and had not addressed any of the 900 inert ingredients, some of which may be more toxic than the active ingredients. 81 Before recent changes in the pesticides law, EPA's rate of re-registration suggested that the agency would not complete the re-registration process until 2024. 82 The Toxic Substances Control Act ("TSCA"), which became law in 1976,83 asked EPA to review approximately 50,000 to 55,000 chemicals then in commerce as well as each of the 1,000 new chemicals introduced each year to determine if they "may present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment. "84 By 1985, EPA had performed the necessary health assessments on fewer than 100 of the chemicals in commerce. 85 Finally, congressional dictates to EPA regarding the regulation and cleanup of hazardous wastes were no less overwhelming. In the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 ("RCRA"),86 enacted just ten days after TSCA, Congress gave EPA only eighteen months to promulgate regulations regarding the identification, generation, transportation, treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous wastes. 87 In the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act ("CERCLA"), enacted in 1980,88 Congress authorized EPA to take action to clean up inactive and abandoned hazardous waste sites either by filing lawsuits against those who contributed to the sites to force them to clean up the sites themselves, or by arranging for government cleanup, followed by lawsuits for reimbursement from contributors. 89 These mandates on hazardous waste control and cleanup may have proved the most difficult to achieve. There are approximately 650,000 generators of hazardous wastes producing 250 million metric tons of such waste each 79 year. 90 There are 5,000 facilities authorized to treat, store, or dispose of hazardous waste and approximately 27,000 abandoned hazardous waste sites, 2,000 of which will require federal action. 91 The Office of Technology Assessment estimates that there are also about 600,000 active or former solid waste disposal facilities, 10,000 of which may require federal action. 92 EPA did not meet any of the 1978 RCRA deadlines and as of 1989 had completed cleanup at fewer than fifty abandoned sites. 93 2. The Coalition for Failure. These series of impossible tasks did more than guarantee repeated agency failure; they triggered a chain of events that profoundly influenced EPA's institutional development and the evolution of federal environmental law. Those who supported these statutory mandates sought judicial review and enlisted some in Congress to oversee EPA's implementation. Their aim was to guard against EPA's abdication of its statutory responsibilities. At the same time, those who were opposed to the statutory mandates but who were unable to muster the political capital to defeat their passage, were nonetheless quite successful in enlisting others in Congress, the executive branch, and some courts to impede EPA's implementation of the mandates.
a. Agency Funding. Forces within Congress were able to secure passage of various environmental statutes that reflected the nation's aspirations for environmental quality, but a very different set of institutional forces was responsible for appropriating funds for the implementation of those laws. Members of the appropriations committees typically did not share the environmental zeal of those on the committees who drafted the laws. Indeed, some were quite skeptical of the efficacy of those laws. 94 The skeptics may have been reluctant to voice publicly their opposition to passage of the statutes-because of the popular appeal of environmental protection-but they felt far more secure in undermining the statutory mandates in a less visible way through the appropriation process. 95 Such congressional skeptics were joined in their efforts by those in the executive branch, especially in the 90 statutory responsibilities and agency funding by imposing even greater and more rigid statutory responsibilities on the agency. EPA consequently has had far fewer lawyers per significant regulation and fewer dollars for evaluation than other federal agencies. lOS One former EPA official recently noted that EPA's water program "budget has declined 43 percent in real purchasing power since 1981, although during that period the number of pollutants to be regulated jumped from five to several hundred, and the number of people subject to regulation has risen roughly from 45,000 to 120,000."109 The number of hazardous waste generators regulated by EPA under RCRA has similarly increased-by a factor of nine during the last ten years. I 10 Hence, Congress has spoken with two different voices to EPA. Each voice reflected the distinct legislative path followed by the authorization and appropriation processes within Congress. Legislators demanded immediate action requiring a massive agency undertaking. At the same time, however, they never provided a remotely commensurate level of agency funding. I II Ironically, therefore, while Congress was willing to ask American business and the public to curtail pollution, regardless of the cost, in order to ensure public health, Congress itself refused to fund the level of agency activity necessary for even a good faith effort to implement such an ambitious program. 1I2 b. Executive Branch Oversight. OMB was naturally hostile to the federal environmental statutes of the 1970s because those laws took little account of their economic impact. The White House exhibited a similar bias, perhaps because of its enhanced sensitivity to those national economic indicators that are often utilized to measure the relative success of an administration. 113 Such concerns likely prompted the White House's and OMB's persistent requests for low funding of EPA's environmental programs.
The executive branch's funding requests were not, however, the only expression of its concerns. The White House ventured into pending litigation 108 Ill. Bryner, Bureaucratic Discretion at 118 (cited in note 37) (noting that Congress "has imposed overwhelming responsibilities on the agency to remedy an almost unlimited array of environmental problems, without providing adequate resources to even begin to solve these problems"). to express its interests I 14 and sometimes became directly involved in agency rulemaking. 115 Of even greater historical significance was the substantive role OMB defined for itself in reviewing proposed EPA regulations to influence their final content. 116 Both the White House and OMB were motivated at least in part by fear of possible "capture" of agency political appointees by career staff. I 17 The OMB review process began, not coincidentally, just a few months after EPA commenced operations, and has gradually and inexorably increased in significance ever since. I IS Under President Nixon, the process was dubbed the "Quality of Life Review" and focused primarily on the economic impact of EPA rules. I 19 Under President Ford, EPA was required to submit an inflation impact statement along with every proposed major regulation or rule. 120 President Carter issued an executive order requiring each agency to prepare a regulatory analysis for every proposed regulation that either would cost the economy more than $100 million or threatened to cause a major price increase. 121  The review process reached its zenith under President Reagan and his first OMB director, David Stockman. 124 Stockman believed that EPA rules "would practically shut down the economy if they were put into effect," and he was therefore determined to establish "a whole new mind set down at EPA."125 An OMB official under Stockman reportedly asked one applicant for the EPA administrator position whether he "[w]ould ... be willing to bring EPA to its knees." 126 The result was the establishment of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, chaired by then Vice President Bush, and the issuance of Executive Order 12291. 127 The task force identified specific federal regulations for revision in order to provide business with regulatory relief.128 EPA had promulgated a disproportionate number (more than half) of those regulations targeted by the task force. 129 Executive Order 12291, like executive orders issued by prior presidents, authorized OMB to review proposed agency regulations. 130 Unlike its predecessors, however, Executive Order 12291 took the further step of requiring OMB approval of the regulatory analysis that accompanied all major regulations, unless such approval was prohibited by statute. 131 OMB's leverage over agencies such as EPA therefore dramatically increased. OMB's power of review and ensuing power to delay regulations enabled OMB, in effect, to compel modifications of EPA's proposed rules to satisfy OMB's fiscal concerns. 132 As in prior Asking the Wrong Questions at 66-75 (cited in note 32) (discussing conflict between OMB (and White House) and EPA (Administrator Costle) concerning promulgation of ozone standard); see also Anne Burford, Are You Tough Enough? 83 (McGraw-Hili, 1986) (Gorsuch confrontation with OMB over promulgation of EPA rule). Anne Gorsuch changed her last name to "Burford" following her marriage in February 1983, which was shortly before she resigned as EPA administrator.
124. According to William Ruckelshaus, however, the problems presented by OMB review that he faced as administrator of EPA in the early 1970s were "exactly the same" as those he faced as administrator in 1983 and 1984. See Rochelle L. Stanfield 132. Olson, 4 Va J Nat Res L at 43-46, 51 (cited in note 117). In her account of her tenure as EPA administrator, Anne Gorsuch descrihes the OMB process for reviewing EPA's budget and rules. See Burford, Ar!' }'ou Tough Enough? at 75-84 (cited in note 123). When Gorsuch once approved final EPA rules without waiting for OMB clearance, an OMB official warned her: "There's a price to pay for this, and you've only begun to pay." Id at 83. administrations, the practice generated considerable controversy and was widely criticized, although to a much greater degree under the Reagan Administration. 133 The relative power of OMB did not significantly decrease during President Reagan's second term, nor has it more recently under President Bush. While OMB's review is now subject to more public scrutiny,134 it remains a strong force in the development of EPA regulations. During 1985During ,1986, and 1987, EPA revised 74.5, 66.2, and 66.2 percent, respectively, of agency rules reviewed by OMB.135 When disagreements between EPA and OMB have arisen, OMB has invariably won. 136 OMB continues to "hold" EPA rules for months and years based on OMB concerns with the cost of compliance with a rule. 137 Finally, while the OMB review process formally applies to all maJbr agency regulations, its practical impact on EPA remains far greater than on other agencies. In 1988, for example, OMB rejected EPA regulations three times more frequently than those presented by other agencies: 21 percent of the 134. In October 1986, OMB agreed (upon federal agency request) to provide the agency with copies of written material that it receives fro"m persons outside the federal government and to advise the agency of any oral communications. OMB also agreed to invite the agency to schedule meetings with those same individuals concerning the agency rules, to make available in a public reading room all written material received, as well as to list all meeting and all communications with outside persons pertaining to the agency rules. See NAPA, Presidential Management at 3 (cited in note 113); Bernard Rosen, Holding Government Bureaucracies Accountable 51 (Praeger, 2d ed 1989); Bryner, Bureaucratic Discretion at 118 (cited in note 37); Harold Bruff, Presidential Management Of Agency Rulemaking, 57 Ceo Wash L Rev 533 (1989). Just last year, in response to increased congressional pressure (including a threat to eliminate relevant OMB funding and to limit OMB review to 60 days), the President apparently agreed to limit OMB review. See Congress c. Judicial Oversight. Partly to prevent agency capture, Congress encouraged judicial oversight of EPA by including citizen suit and judicial review provisions in each of the environmental statutes and by requiring EPA to follow decisionmaking procedures more rigorous than those normally employed in informal notice and comment rulemaking. 140 The citizen suit provisions routinely allowed successful plaintiffs to recover their attorneys' fees. 141 Both environmental organizations and industry took advantage of the increased judicial access and together challenged between 80 and 85 percent of EPA's major decisions. 142 The deadlines and mandatory duties contained in the various federal laws, along with their carefully crafted legislative histories, provided environmentalists with enormous leverage over EPA through litigation, which they used as their dominant tool to influence agency decisions. 143 Whenever EPA failed to meet a deadline, or otherwise to satisfy a statutory obligation, which was inevitably often, environmentalists used litigation to compel EPA to negotiate with them in drafting a consent decree. 144 Environmentalists utilized the consent decree and the threat of contempt sanctions to control the agency's future actions. 145 The filing of lawsuits also provided environmentalists with media events that provided publicity for their cause and incidentally aided fundraising efforts. 146 The media was naturally receptive to accusations of agency malfeasance, and the result was a steady stream of negative articles about EPA in the national press. There were likewise those who have had tremendous economic incentives to use litigation to challenge EPA decisions. EPA's regulations impose huge costs on a wide segment of economic activity; indeed, no significant economic activity has been unaffected. 147 The General Accounting Office recently estimated that the cost of EPA programs since 1970 has been $700 billion, and now total about $86 billion each year. 148 The estimated annual cost of complying with the 1976 RCRA law was itself $6 billion, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates the annual cost of compliance with the 1984 amendments to RCRA at between $3 and $7 billion. 149 With an average cost of $30 million per site, the cost of cleaning up the 2,000 abandoned and inactive hazardous waste sites now thought to require cleanup will be $60 billion. 150 The new Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 will reportedly require an additional $40 to $50 billion in pollution control expenditures}51

OMB Subjects EPA Regs To
Proclaiming "a new era in the history of the long and fruitful collaboration of administrative agencies and reviewing courts,"152 the judiciary did not shy away from careful examination of EPA's actions}53 Especially during EPA's early years, courts of appeals frequently rejected the agency's efforts to relax the statutory mandates through "loose" construction of their terms. 154 The courts also often remanded agency rulemaking for further proceedings based on perceived inadequacies in the rulemaking record. Environmentalists benefitted from many of the courts' more expansive constructions of the federal environmental laws}55 Industry, however, benefitted from many of 147. Natl Res Council, ed, 2 Decisionmaking in the Environmental Protection Agency at 2 (cited in note 97) ("the regulatory reach of the EPA program is probably unparalleled").
148 the judicial remands of agency rules. 156 The deadlines compelled agency decisions within exceedingly short time frames, and, due to the scientific complexity of the mechanics of environmental pollution and the associated scientific uncertainty, the scientific bases for agency rulings were often quite sparse and subject to effective criticism. 157 In addition, even when industry plaintiffs fared poorly in their initial efforts to persuade courts of appeals to require or permit EPA's consideration of the adverse economic impact of its rules on business, 158 individual industry defendants in EPA enforcement actions appear to have been more successful in their efforts to have trial courts fashion remedies in response to economic factors. 159 One explanation for the disparity is the differing perspectives of the district courts and the courts of appeals: courts of appeals are possibly more influenced by academic theories of agency capture than are district courts; district courts, unlike courts of appeals, are closer to the impact on local economics of applying the law according to its strict terms. 160 d. Congressional Oversight. Perhaps the most important (and most often overlooked) of the institutional forces that have buffeted EPA has been the operation of congressional oversight,161 long referred to as Congress's "neglected" function. 162 Congress did not quietly disappear following its passage of the federal environmental protection laws under EPA's jurisdiction. It has actively overseen the agency's implementation of those laws through informal agency contacts, General Accounting Office and Office of Technology Assessment investigations, agency reporting requirements, formal oversight hearings, confirmation hearings, appropriation hearings, appropriation riders, inspector general reports, and amendments of the laws themselves. 163 Much of the oversight has been driven by a desire to prevent EPA's capture by industry and by those in the White House and OMB who are perceived (accurately) as unsympathetic to the statutory policies of the laws within EPA's jurisdiction. l64 Others within Congress, however, have been more concerned about the possibility of bureaucratic or environmentalist capture and have used the same oversight tools to counsel EPA against strict application of those laws. 165 Because the statutes demand the impossible of EPA and require EPA to demand the impossible, or at least very painful, from others, there has historically been plenty to fuel criticism from both constituencies within Congress. 166 "EPA bashing" has been commonplace on Capitol Hill as legislators from both sides of the aisle have perceived its political advantages. 167 Indeed, a culture of condemnation of EPA developed early on In Congress. Fueled by Senator Edmund Muskie's growing presidential aspirations and by increasing alienation between a Democratic Congress and President Nixon, Muskie's Air and Water Pollution Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Public Works quickly established itself as EPA's critical overseer. 168 Muskie and others sharply criticized agency officials in widely publicized media events. They strongly urged those officials to consult with the subcommittee prior to making any important agency decisions. Muskie also warned EPA officials against allowing either the White House or OMB to 163. See generally NAPA, Oversight Study at 9-12 (cited in note 162) (describing congressional oversight methods); Bernard Rosen, Holding Government Bureaucracies Accountable at 62-79 (cited in note 134).
164. Increased congressional oversight of executive branch agencies parallels increased presidential oversight of those agencies and thus expresses the ongoing competition between the two branches for control over agency policy. See  influence unduly the agency's implementation and enforcement of the laws. ' 69 The practice was not confined to Muskie's subcommittee, the Senate, or to those who believed that EPA was not doing enough pO There were plenty of congressional overseers equally concerned with potential agency overreaching. For instance, as a result of internal compromise, EPA's budget was initially within the jurisdiction of the House subcommittee chaired by Representative Jamie Whitten, an outspoken cntIC of many of the environmental laws. l7l He accordingly used the appropriations process to conduct lengthy inquiries into the details of the agency's implementation of those laws. 172 He quite openly opined that Congress may not actually have intended full implementation of the laws that it had passed: "Sometimes a fellow might feel that if he writes a law three times as strong as he wants it to be, maybe it will be carried out 100 percent."173 Whitten also described his ability to "limit use of money" to cut back on environmental laws. '  Oversight of EPA ultimately spread to both chambers and to authorization, government operations, and appropriations committees. The expansion roughly coincided with a general increase in congressional appreciation of the political advantages of "subcommittee government"175 and "fire alarm" oversight,176 which in turn spurred a dramatic increase in committee staff and oversight during the last few decades. l77 When EPA failed to meet statutory deadlines, members of Congress held hearings in which they chastised the agency for neglecting the public trust. 178 Conversely, when EPA made politically unpopular decisions in an effort to comply with its statutory mandates, other members of Congress promptly joined in the public denunciation (including some who originally sponsored the strict environmental laws). 179 EPA's exposure to congressional criticism has been especially great because of the structure (or lack thereof) of congressional oversight. 180 EPA's jurisdiction is so sweeping, and therefore important to so many interest groups, that the demand for its oversight has grown commensurately among the committees and subcommittees in Congress. Most committees can find some nexus between their assigned jurisdiction and some aspect of EPA's work.
The result has been increasing fragmentation of oversight authority over EPA. Eleven standing House committees, nine standing Senate committees Pesticides and Politics at 189 (cited in note 143). Whitten is presently chair of the House Appropriations Committee.
175. Congressional reforms in the 1970s led to the rise of the power of the subcommittee. In the 1950s, full committees held most hearings and debates; subcommittees held only 20 to 30% of the hearings. By the late 1970s and the 95th Congress, subcommittees held over 90% of all hearings: their decisions were more authoritative; full committee chairs were restricted to being chair of one subcommittee; and subcommittee chairs were increasingly the floor manager for bills. Congressional reaction in 1984 to EPA's failure to meet RCRA's unrealistic deadlines and a host of other controversies arising from the statute's implementation prompted more legislative prescription. The 1984 amendments to RCRA imposed more than sixty additional deadlines on the agency.191 The law dictated precisely when each of a series of regulations had to be published, the dates by which the permits had to be issued, and the substantive criteria that the permits had to contain. 192 As described by two commentators, the amendments were "dripping with evidence that Congress does not wish to entrust EPA with too much."193 The administrative tasks were no less enormous than those contained in earlier laws. Indeed, the 1984 RCRA amendments extended EPA's jurisdiction to include small volume generators of hazardous waste (numbering approximately 130,000) and 1.4 million underground storage tanks. 194 Congress simultaneously enhanced the citizen suit provisions of RCRA to promote judicial oversight. 195 The likelihood that EPA will again fail to meet Congress's mandates seems great. 196 When EPA does fail, environmentalists and legislators will likely once again widely denounce EPA in the news media. Each agency decision or going to leave it to EPA this time to use its discretion to enforce the clean air law. We're spelling out what must be done." 189. DeLany and Monson regarding report of 1986 amendments to CERCLA) ("The Committee version adopts scheduling requirements that effectively force the EPA to fail. ... This is a disastrous move which threatens the future viability of the program. The EPA, not the courts, must control the cleanup mechanism."). LAw AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 54: No.4 "lapse" will prompt new litigation. Consent decrees will dictate agency behavior. 197 At the behest of environmental or industry plaintiffs, courts will remand the agency's regulations for further proceedings based on the inadequacy of administrative records prepared under short deadlines. Oversight hearings and the news media will again recount the "administrative horror stories" that result from EPA's strict enforcement of the law. Appropriations riders will seek to prevent such strict application, 198 while the committees from which the legislation originated will simultaneously draft even more restrictive legislation in response to EPA's "failure." The "spiral of unachievable standards, missed deadlines, resulting citizen suits, and even more prescriptive legislation by Congress continues." 199

B. The Breeding of Controversy
Regulatory failure was not the only product of the collision between institutional forces surrounding EPA. Considerable controversy also resulted. Indeed, EPA's past twenty years have been marked by persistent allegations of corruption, scandal, and abuse of public trust that have hindered the agency's work.
While arising in a variety of different settings, each of the major controversies involving EPA finds its roots in the operation of the same factors that prompted regulatory failure: (1) competing (and conflicting) efforts to avoid agency capture and (2) the great disparity between the public's aspirations for environmental protection, its understanding of the issues, and its demonstrated (in)capacity to change.
Accusations of improper White House attempts to influence EPA enforcement and improper OMB supervision of EPA originate in the continuing battle between the executive and legislative branches over control of EPA and the direction of national environmental protection policy. 200  199. Ruckelshaus, 15 Envir L at 463 (cited in note 185). As also described by former EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus: The history of events in the 1980s is characterized by a singular lack of trust in EPA by Congress. Thal is manifesled in increasingly prescriplive legislation that slrips away administrative discrelion from EPA managers and often sels impossible goals for lhe Agency. These goals may resull in polilical mileage, but lheir eXlreme nature ensures praclical failure. The resull has been missed deadlines, unfulfilled promises of purilY, failure lo achieve goals, and anolher round of EPA bashing, followed by even more slringent goals; and the spiral of mislrusl continues. tendency was exacerbated by Congress's pretending to have resolved the many difficult conflicts between environmental quality and economic cost about which there was in fact no true social consensus.
The accusations of gross agency incompetence, ignorance, or neglect evident in some of EPA's other misadventures likewise share common origins. EPA's doomed effort to include transportation control plans and indirect source review in state implementation plans under the Clean Air Act resulted from the gulf between public aspirations and public understanding. EPA lawyers were correct that such plans were contemplated by the Act. Their primary error was implementing the Act according to its terms. 201 Although Congress and state and local officials blamed EPA for overreaching, the agency can be little faulted for Congress's initial policy determination and the public's subsequent lack of will.2 02 Nonetheless, it was EPA, not Congress, that became the focal point of public criticism. State and local officials widely condemned the agency, and Congress ultimately enacted an appropriations rider that sharply limited EPA's abil~ty to rely on either type of measure. 203 As described by one commentator, EPA took the fall for Congress and became "every elected official's favorite whipping boy."204 The allegations of agency neglect arising out of the highly publicized Kepone incident in 1975 and the subsequent resignation of several EPA lawyers from the pesticides program in 1976 can be similarly explained.
Federal pesticide legislation, like federal air pollution legislation, provided EPA with remarkably few 'escape clauses' that allowed the agency to prevent the appearance of outright policy failure. Agency officials, aware that they could not meet statutory deadlines, desperately sought 'out administrative mechanisms through 20 I. The Clean Air Act required state implementation plans to include "such other measures as may be necessary to insure attainment and maintenance of such [air quality standards], including, but not limited to, land-use and transportation controls." 42 USC § 1857c-5(a)(2)(B) (1970). The courts accordingly rejected EPA efforts to delay implementation of the transportation control plans that were necessary to meet the Clean Air Act's air quality standards. In addition, as in the case of transportation control plans, EPA's early aggressive enforcement of FIFRA, including its cancellation of a number of pesticides, prompted a backlash from those in Congress and the executive branch (including Agriculture) who were more concerned about the cost to industry.206 That coalition, in turn, heavily pressured EPA to moderate its enforcement of FIFRA, and Administrator Russell Train ultimately responded by providing the General Counsel's Office, which had initiated the more aggressive approach, less programmatic authority.207 When, however, in the aftermath of wide publicity concerning the dangers presented by the pesticide Kepone, concerned agency lawyers aided Senate oversight investigations of agency registration practices, EPA was once again the object of congressional criticism, this time for having neglected its statutory mandate. "The EPA, inundated by its registration and reregistration burdens [under FIFRA], long had abandoned any pretense of systematic data review, blaming their actions on tight resources and unrealistic statutory deadlines.''208 To Senate overseers, however, EPA's consequent reliance on industry data was strong evidence that industry had captured the agency, and that EPA had subverted congressional will at the expense of increased risks to public health. EPA ultimately suspended all registration actions in light of increasing evidence of problems with the industry data upon which EPA had been relying. 209 Finally, EPA's most controversial era under the leadership of Administrator Anne Gorsuch 2IO can be seen as an expression of institutional conflict and public misapprehension. 211 The conflict between the executive and legislative branches concerning the proper direction of national environmental policy came to a head with the election of President Reagan. Gorsuch's assignment was to overcome the agency's bureaucracy-which many In the administration believed had been captured by 205 (1990). Still, many of the claims of agency corruption were rooted in policy disagreements between the executive and legislative branches. Even classic corruption involving bribery of governmcntal oAicials, if it occurred, likely resulted from the quality of appointments made during an administration that devalued EPA's mandate.
environmentalists 212 -in order to realize the administration's goal of making the environmental laws more cost conscious by administrative rule or, if necessary, by legislative amendment. 213 But, just as EPA officials had previously overestimated Congress's and the public's willingness to sacrifice on behalf of its aspirations for environmental quality, Gorsuch likewise overestimated public willingness to compromise its aspirations for environmental quality. She also failed to appreciate the significance of those institutional forces within government that historically had been distrustful of EPA, and, as a result, she ultimately became their victim.
Unlike her predecessors, Gorsuch showed no appreciation for the notion of an "independent" EPA, or for the dangers of any appearance of agency capture by the regulated community or by pro-development forces within the government itself. Gorsuch immediately violated the first tenet by occupying an office at the Department of the Interior prior to her confirmation and also by appearing to be carrying out OMB's marching orders.214 She violated the second tenet by refusing to take into account how certain actions  Consequently, regardless of her true motives,225 Gorsuch lost any credibility with Congress and the courts almost as soon as her tenure began. The congressional oversight machinery commenced within months of her confirmation and scrutinized for any hint of agency corruption. 226 Accusations of "sweetheart deals" with industry,227 political manipulation,228 and agency crippling soon followed. 229 225. The former administrator maintains that she had no intention of undermining the agency's effectiveness and sought instead to improve its efficiency and effectiveness in delivering environmental protection and quality. See Burford, Are You Tough Enough? at 65 (cited in note 123). This is a difficult burden for Gorsuch to carry. It likely depends for its ultimate justification on the thesis that the states are in a better and more appropriate position to do much of what EPA has historically done. If so, then the claim that Gorsuch and her staff sought to dismantle EPA as we know it would seem close to the mark. 226 Moreover, when Gorsuch finally took steps to address adverse congressional and public perceptions of her motives, she did so at the expense of her relationship with OMB,230 thereby cutting off her last source of political support. 231 Even the regulated community, which welcomed the administration's philosophy of deregulation, could no longer afford the instability that she created. 232 Ironically, the final event that triggered her departure-an assertion of executive privilege in declining to provide Congress with agency enforcement files-was, as she claimed, not one of her making. 233 But her loss of credibility by then was so great that there was no one left to listen or care.
Gorsuch's tenure as EPA administrator (a few months shy of two years) was shorter than that of any other administrator before or since. The effects on the institutional development of EPA and the evolution of federal environmental law have lasted far longer. She confirmed the worst fears of those in, Congress who were concerned about the agency's potential for deliberately undermining the federal environmental protection laws. She thus dramatically accelerated the cycle of distrust that had plagued EPA before her arrival, prompting one commentator to conclude that "the most poignant and irremediable [impact] was the EPA's loss of credibility; the loss of credibility with the Congress and, more importantly, with the American people. "234 IV THE TRAGEDY OF DISTRUST:

THE STIFLING OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
EPA is plainly in a dilemma. The agency strives to be responsive to both the environmentalists' vision and the regulated community'S pragmatism, but ("The budget and personnel cuts, unless reversed, will destroy the agency as an effective institution for many years to come."); Lash. Gillman & Sheridan, ," Season oj Spoils at 61 (cited in note 214  ultimately satisfies neither. 235 EPA is also a pawn in an ongoing struggle between the executive and legislative branches for control over national policy.236 Finally, EPA is pushed in one direction by public aspirations and pulled in the other direction by the absence of public willingness to change and by the public's proven incapacity for self-sacrifice. 237 To be sure, EPA is itself responsible for some of its failures and for the generation of some of its controversies; it is not solely a victim of historical and institutional circumstances. As with other federal agencies, there have been many instances of mismanagement and poor decisionmaking for which agency officials deserve to be held accountable. But placed in proper perspective, most of EPA's reported failures and controversies seem more justly viewed as the product of institutional conflict and public schizophrenia than as the result of systemic EPA dereliction or incompetence. 238 EPA's dilemma could nonetheless be viewed positively as a small price to pay in the United States' first effort to reshape its relationship with its natural environment. Certainly this nation's accomplishments in seeking to produce a legal regime for environmental protection have been extraordinary. In relatively few years, the nation's laws have been dramatically rewritten. Viewed from this perspective, repeated regulatory failure could be seen as the necessary cost of our attempt to address pressing environmental problems in the face of scientific uncertainty. There was not sufficient time to delay governmental action until its environmental objectives could have been fairly and accurately defined. 239 The conflict and controversy surrounding EPA during the last twenty years could be similarly viewed as a necessary evil, as the inevitable consequence of administrative agency implementation of fundamental social change in our system of government, which heavily depends on the actions of each branch being overseen by the others. Isolated excesses may have resulted, and there may have been cases of overreaching, but the advantages of intense oversight have been overwhelming. For instance, the impossible objectives and unrealistic deadlines contained in "symbolic" environmental legislation place EPA in an administrative quandary, but they also effectively send a public message concerning the urgency and seriousness of environmental problems. 24o Such objectives and deadlines also provide the environmental community, which has fewer resources, with an effective rhetorical advantage in its debate with the regulated community concerning the need for environmental protection. 241 Close judicial and congressional scrutiny of EPA has clearly also had significant benefits. It is likely that an active judiciary improved the quality of EPA decisionmaking in some cases. 242 And, as was the case in Congress's exposure of EPA's initial mishandling of the Superfund program, persistent congressional examination of EPA can be credited for having revealed instances of agency neglect and corruption and of OMB overreaching. 243 Certainly the threat of both judicial and congressional oversight enhanced EPA's leverage in resisting competing forces within the executive branch. 244 There is also some advantage to the public in the way environmental laws have evolved in response to repeated agency failure. The statutes allow for less agency discretion while arguably reflecting greater congressional assumption of responsibility for making public policy. Congress was faulted 240 1989 Duke LJ 522, 528-29, 537 ("[TJhere is some basis for believing that aggressive judicial review has, in many settings, increased the incidence of legality, prevented arbitrariness, ensured against undesirable regulation, and brought about regulatory controls that have saved lives or otherwise accomplished considerable good."). There are also weighty reasons for the judiciary to be especially concerned about the validity of environmentally destructive activities; for instance, those who may be adversely affected by LAw AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 54: No.4 for unfairly (and improperly) passing the buck to EPA in the environmental statutes of the 1970s. 245 In the more prescriptive environmental statutes, Congress is now making many of the difficult policy determinations necessary to fashion environmental quality standards. 246 Finally, there is even a positive way to view public distrust of EPA. After all, "political distrust has been a recurrent and perhaps a permanent feature of the history of the republic."247 Effective democracy undoubtedly requires criticism of government based on mistrust of its institutions. 248 Certainly, much of the federal constitution is designed to protect individuals from governmental overreaching,249 just as separation of powers principles are intended to prevent overreaching by anyone branch of government.
Appreciation of the benefits of the current institutional regime does not, however, mean that its adverse effects are insubstantial. Nor does it mean that significant reform is unnecessary. Celebration of past achievement is no substitute for careful planning for the future. This is certainly true for environmental law. There is a growing consensus that fundamental changes in approach will be necessary for the country to reach acceptable levels of environmental protection while maintaining a high standard of living. 250 A detailed accounting of the ways in which existing institutional forces have impeded federal environmental protection efforts over the last twenty years strongly suggests, moreover, that institutional reform will be required for such fundamental change to be achieved.

A. Loss of Public Confidence and Agency Self-Esteem
Included among the most immediate and persistent impacts of the current institutional scheme are loss of public confidence in EPA and loss of the agency's confidence in itself. EPA's repeated regulatory failures and frequent controversies created a public image of an incompetent, neglectful, and at TRAGEDY OF DISTRUST 351 times even corrupt agency.251 A myth of scientific incompetence resulted,252 which EPA can ill afford, but which others may have an incentive to perpetuate. 253 The level of distrust in EPA, moreover, is inconsistent with the needs of an administrative agency responsible for the implementation of federal environmental laws. An important lesson of the last twenty years is that EPA simply cannot do its job effectively without greater public confidence in the agency.254 EPA cannot effectively manage public risk without the confidence of the public any more than a doctor could treat a patient without that patient's trust. in Ann F. Friedlaender, Approaches to Controlling Air Pollution 67 (MIT Press, 1978) ("The cost is not just the waste of resources but is also the loss in confidence in government-and in ourselves. "). In 1972, Administrator Ruckelshaus cautioned Congress against promoting the very loss of public confidence in EPA that subsequently developed. In oversight hearings, he testified that the "tragedy" in 1972 was that the public does not trust its institutions and people "don't believe that the EPA is really trying to protect the environment." See Implementation of the Clean Air Act of 1970 at 325 (cited in note 123) (testimony of Administrator Ruckelshaus). According to Ruckelshaus, accusations of improper OMB influence on EPA, made in the oversight hearing, could be used "to feed this mistrust" and undermine the dedication of EPA employees "and their ability to function as public employees." Id at 325, 328 EPA's lack of credibility has, for instance, severely hampered the agency's ability to manage the Superfund program. Based on his review of the Superfund program, EPA's current administrator, William Reilly, concluded that "the legacy of public distrust" surrounding EPA's management of the program and "the barrage of criticism leveled at the program nationally" had caused the agency to lose its "most valuable asset, the benefit of the doubt."257 When the public's unrealistic expectations of quick cleanup were not met, Reilly concluded, the public became suspicious of federal efforts and unwilling "to completely trust EPA to represent them in confidential negotiations with [potentially responsible parties]. "258 As a result, cleanup efforts were slowed. 259 More broadly, the absence of public confidence has exacerbated the gap between the public's and the agency's perception of risk, undermining the validil y of the agency's efforts to manage risk. EPA's Science Advisory Board recently concluded that "the remaining and emerging environmental risks considered most serious by the general public today are different from those considered most serious by the technical professionals charged with reducing environmental risk."260 Not only does the public fail to accept EPA's assessment of the relative risks of various hazards, but EPA, too, fails to appreciate the public's distinct assessment. EPA discounts the public's risk perception as a product of ignorance and misunderstanding. Because risk assessment is, however, at bottom, not simply a technical determination, but "an ethical and political one that technical experts have neither the knowledge nor the authority to dictate,"261 EPA's technical approach may systematically fail in cases of diffuse, low probability risks. 262 259. EPA's current assistant administrator for pesticides and toxic substances recently commented that EPA's lack of credibility with the public had impeded the agency's ability to communicate the risks associated with the preservative ALAR and had prompted great conflict over its plan to ban asbestos. See New OPTS Chief Will Seek Expanded TSCA Authority, Legislative Fixes to FlFRA, 10 Inside EPA 1, 7-8 (Oct 6, 1989); see also Christine Russell, A Crisis in Public Confidence, 16 EPAJ 2,4-5 (May/June 1990). Similar problems arose at an earlier time involving EPA's handling of public concern with ethylene dibromide ("EDB"), when a "tidal wave of public anxiety swept the country." See Harold Issadore Sharlin, EDB: A Case Studv in the Communication of Health Risk 2 (Jan 9, 1985) (report prepared for Derry Allen, associate director, EPA Office of Policy Analysis 262. Id at 1085. Professors Gillette and Krier argue that agencies have "a systematic tendency in favor of too much public risk," id at 1061, because producers of public risk "will generally enjoy a Finally, the loss of public confidence in EPA has at times caused the agency to lose confidence in itself, as well as causing a general decline in agency selfesteem. The morale and self-esteem of a bureaucracy can be severely damaged by sustained public criticism. 263 Agency self-confidence is likewise adversely affected by increasingly prescriptive statutes and intense oversight. 264 The adverse effects of agency demoralization are particularly acute in an agency such as EPA whose employees choose to work there primarily out of their sense of sharing in the agency's perceived mission ra~her than for more tangible rewards. 265 Agency turnover becomes greater as employees are increasingly deprived of the sense of public service they sought in government employment. 266 For this same reason, recruitment of the very best employees becomes more difficult.
EPA is suffering from all of these problems. Indeed, the adverse effects may be especially acute for agency technical staff whose salaries have historically been much lower than those of their legal counterparts within the agency. The low salary scale and reduced agency self-esteem have made it difficult to attract such technical employees and, even more so, to retain them. As a result, EPA is losing the sustained technical expertise it needs most to address long-term environmental problems. 267 considerable comparative advantage in mobilizing interest groups and exercising influence. whether by benign or sinister means."' Id at 1068. According to Gillette and Krier, however, judges and juries are better able to redress public conception of risk precisely because they are "not experts.

B. Polarization of Debate and Proliferation of Litigation
Another significant adverse effect of the current scheme is its tendency to polarize the debate on environmental issues and to encourage litigation. Environmentalists, the regulated community, Congress, and even EPA repeatedly rely on extreme allegations in seeking public support for their respective posItIOns. There is little, if any, candid dialogue. As one commentator put it, symbolic legislation such as the Clean Air Act of 1970 "infantilized rather than matured public opinion. "268 Moreover, by making impossible demands and attacking EPA for any compromise, environmentalists have "discouraged EPA from being honest with the public. "269 Nor has EPA hesitated to use its own scare tactics to shift public opinion in its favor. In 1980, for example, the agency systematically exaggerated the relative hazards presented by abandoned hazardous waste sites in order to increase public pressure on Congress to pass CERCLA.270 One harmful result of such issue polarization is excessive reliance on litigation to resolve conflicts. Indeed, agency decisionmaking becomes a mere prelude to litigation. 271 The rulemaking proceedings tend to be adversarial; the competing sides exaggerate or minimize the relative risks, suppress relevant information, and distort scientific data. 272 Agency lawyers consequently take on more responsibility in the preparation of agency decisions at the expense of other agency professionals. 273 The dividing line between legal advice and policy advice becomes blurred, and, as a result, 270. Id at 279-80; see id at 167 ("For EPA to have conceived of its duty in a manner more conducive to the enhancement of public education and political responsibility, it needed to be part of a larger political system in which statesmanship, not salesmanship, was the mark of a good agency executive."). Another illustration of the problem with polarization is presented by the controversy surrounding EPA's refusal to provide Congress with access to its enforcement files. See note 233. Although the confrontation with Congress ultimately led to Anne Gorsuch's resignation. lost in the uproar was any meaningful discussion of the merits of the executive branch's legal position. The files may well have contained documents, the release of which might have been harmful to ongoing enforcement efforts. One can therefore well imagine why career lawyers at the Justice Department were concerned about the release of these documents to congressional stafr, some of whom might lawyers in the EPA General Counsel's Office have become increasingly influential on matters of agency policy.274 Internal agency meetings also become more adversarial, with published agency decision documents tending to resemble legal briefs rather than candid presentations of the competing arguments. 275 Technical expertise is devalued, and opportunities for public education are missed. 276

C. Wasted Resources and Misdirected Priorities
The legacy of distrust created by the current institutional scheme also creates tremendous delay and poorly allocates the limited agency resources among competing prionties. The combination of impossible statutory mandates and increased judicial access has created a situation in which more than 80.  (1988) ("If the American people are ever going to have a more informed, mature, and balanced attitude toward the risks of chemicals in the environment, toxic tort litigation, like other forms of our public discourse, must educate the public, and not pander to its fears and prejudices.").
278. NAPA, Oversight Study at 27 (cited in note 162) (Milton Russell, former EPA assistant administrator for policy and planning, stat."d that "oversight and litigation drive 90 percent of the agency's priorities, and there is very little opportunity to do anything else. "); see id at 28 (former EPA Deputy Administrator James Barnes said, "It wouldn't surprise me to find there are four people doing oversight, for everyone doing the job to begin with.").
279. Landy, Roberts & Thomas, EPA: Asking the Wrong Questions at 111-12 (cited in note 32) (congressional oversight diverted agency resources from developing RCRA regulations); see also Foreman, Signals from the Hill at 4 (cited in note 36) (subcommittee ties with administrative agencies are so strong, and committee meddling in administrative and policy detail so pervasive and unpredictable, that coordinated, responsible governance is not much of a prospect). if any, time left to respond to internal agency demands. 281 Indeed, congressional oversight of EPA has periodically been so intense that the agency has been effectively paralyzed as a result. 282 Ironically, therefore, much of the delay about which Congress complains may be the product of its own oversight of the agency.283 Another adverse effect of excessive oversight of EPA is that it has caused the agency to go "underground" in its lawmaking. To avoid overseers, EPA has increasingly resorted to less formal means of announcing agency policy determinations. Instead of promulgating rules pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act,284 EPA now frequently issues guidance memoranda and directives. Also, many important agency rulings are not reflected in generic rulemaking, but in individual permit decisions. OMB oversight is thereby avoided, and judicial review of agency action is limited. 285 Excessive congressional, OMB, and judicial oversight also has resulted in poor allocation of agency resources and skewed national environmental priorities. Each overseer can use his or her leverage (that is, power to delay or reduce appropriations, hold up confirmation of agency appointments, create bad publicity, eliminate agency discretion, or impose appropriations riders to redefine agency priorities),286 but the end result is unlikely to reflect any broad or thoughtful determination of environmental priorities. In fact, quite the opposite is true.
Members of the House and Senate routinely respond to narrow parochial concerns and to their own need to receive maximum favorable publicity.287 287. NAPA, Oversight Study at 26 (cited in note 162); id at 14 (maximum publicity and political advantage); id at 27-28 (statement of Lee Thomas, former EPA administrator: "[Olversight often becomes what I term a king of witch hunt oversight ... motivated, sometimes to a large extent, by an overzealous staff, sometimes by a member who is particularly interested in publicity."); see also There is thus no reason to assume that the views of a particular subcommittee ·chair are consonant with those of Congress as a whole,288 or even consistent with the views simultaneously expressed by a different subcommittee. 289 Oversight is likely to empower a few isolated interest groups that are able to persuade the chair to express their concerns to the agency. 290 Indeed, a congressional subcommittee may be as likely as an agency, if not more so, to be "captured" by a special interest group. 291 The competence of congressional staff to draft environmental legislation containing increasingly detailed prescriptions can also be questioned. Because authority among congressional committees is so fragmented, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for anyone committee to undertake a broad, coordinated look at a complex problem. 292 Rather, each committee tends to "view[] the bill through the narrow lens of its own particular mandate. None tr[ies] to critically examine the structure of the program as a whole. " 293 Finally, there is also some reason for questioning the wisdom of exacting judicial review of EPA decisions. 294 Commentators increasingly believe that the benefits of such review may have been overstated and the harms LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 54: No.4 underestimated. Some question the extent to which judicial review prompted process changes within the agency that may have improved its decisions. 295 Other commentators question the competency of the courts to second-guess the policy judgments and complex technical determinations underlying EPA's major regulatory decisions. 296 Still others point out that, because courts cannot choose the cases brought before them, they, unlike EPA, are unable to consider the "complex interactions among various cleanup strategies."297 Finally, because courts are not in a position to make a considered judgment concerning how the agency might best allocate its limited resources among competing priorities, court orders force agency choices that may misallocate those resources. 298 For all of these reasons, EPA's statutory priorities are diverging from the agency's own perception of the relative risks presented by various environmental hazards. Agency staff believe that too little attention has been paid to certain hazards and, at least in relative terms, too much to others. 299 In addition, the demands for immediate results and agency action made by Congress and the courts have left EPA with little room for long-term planning, which, as noted above, is an essential aspect of environmental protection. 30o The worst result of the current administrative scheme is that it has undermined environmental protection by chilling agency and congressional innovation. Increased statutory prescription comes at the expense of agency discretion and flexibility. 30 I Intense agency oversight, repeated regulatory failure, and frequent controversy likewise discourage agency initiative. 302 EPA officials have long recognized the need for administrative experimentation and reorganization. Congress, however, has increasingly denied the agency the option of exercising administrative innovation. Moreover, even when the opportunity remains, EPA officials have often shied away from innovation because of actual and anticipated objections from those elsewhere in the executive branch, the regulated community, Congress, and environmental organizations who are suspicious of the agency's motives.
For example, Congress's sharp restriction of agency discretion in its regulation of hazardous air pollutants under section 112 of the Clean Air Act has apparently prompted the agency to take less action than it might have under a more flexible statutory scheme. By mandating what is often infeasible, such as disallowing any significant consideration of economic costs,303 Congress prompted EPA to do very little. 304 EPA chose not to list a pollutant as "hazardous" in order to avoid triggering the statute's rigid requirements. 305 The agency has consequently acted on only seven out of hundreds of toxic air pollutants over the last twenty years,306 leaving the others unregulated. 307 The collision of institutional forces on Capitol Hill exacerbates matters by impeding the passage of new legislation. One obvious source of this problem is the sheer number of committees with overlapping jurisdiction, which can make it extremely difficult to pass a new law or a significant amendment to an existing law. For instance, conference committees for environmental statutes 301. See [Vol. 54: No.4 are often so large that they are unwieldy. Former EPA Administrator Lee Thomas described his "disgust" with the process of reauthorizing CERCLA in 1986: "We have six different committees on the House side and three or four on the Senate side and they all have created a camel that they are trying to make a race horse of. The end result is that they have spent a lot of time looking for a room big enough to hold everybody. "308 Efforts to amend the Clean Air Act in 1990 similarly became bogged down when nine senators and 132 members of the House were appointed to the conference committee. 309 The legislation that finally emerges, as happened with the Clean Air Act, reflects an amalgam of special interests considerations rather than a coherent and comprehensive approach to the problem of air pollution. 3lO There are other casualties. EPA was long impeded in its efforts to develop an administrative program to address acid rain. 311 There has been little concerted action to address global warming or indoor air pollution. Even a matter so seemingly uncontroversial as elevation of EPA to cabinet status, which had bipartisan support,312 became a victim of the same clash of institutional forces. Congress may pass the legislation sometime soon, but it will be long after the planned Earth Day 1990 (April 22) announcement. Like every other environmental initiative in recent years, the legislation became bogged down when controversies originating from the ongoing battle for control over EPA nearly overwhelmed the bill. President Bush threatened a veto when Congress proposed making the director of a "Bureau of Environmental Statistics" free from plenary presidential control,313 And there was widespread rebellion among certain congressional committees, OMB, environmentalists, and the regulated community concerning the proposed creation of a presidential commission to study administrative reorganization of federal environmental protection. All feared that any 308 reorganization might adversely affect their jurisdiction, access, and ultimately their influence over the agency's operations. 314 The significance of the pall of suspicion that has been cast over EPA initiatives and new legislative proposals. extends, moreover, far beyond impeding presidential commissions. One of the most damaging effects may have been its thwarting of any meaningful EPA effort to implement a crossmedia approach, despite longstanding support for it within government and among commentators. 315 As EPA's first administrator, William Ruckelshaus decided against organizing the agency along functional lines, which would have facilitated cross-media approaches, because of the possibility of engendering controversy in Congress. 316 Ruckelshaus had early on borne the 314. During the summer of 1990, Senate majority leader George Mitchell sought to break the legislative logjam related to internal disputes over turf between the Senate Government Affairs Committee, from which the bill originated in the Senate, and several Senate committees (Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Environment and Public Works; and Energy and Natural Resources), each of which had placed a "hold" on the bill because of their concern with its possible impact on their jurisdiction.   I, 1989). A recent article outlines the basic disadvantages of a fragmented approach; these disadvantages include consideration of the impact of various inputs in the creation of residuals. holding the end product accountable for harmful residuals, looking at problems created by transfers from one medium to another. and dividing waste between three media to make optimal use of assimilative capacity of each. See  Wis L Rev at 472-76 (cited in note 291). Professor Guruswamy eloquently argues that the agency should implement a cross-media approach by organizing itself along functional lines and abolishing its media-specific offices. Id at 536. See also Lakshman Guruswamy. The Case of /nlegmled Pol/Illioll COlllrol. 54 L & COnlemp Probs 41 (Autumn 1991).
316. Ralph Nader's organization at the time appeared to be suspiciolls of an integrated approach and agency capture and. for this reason. promoted the more fragmented, media-specific approach.  Wis L Rev at 487 (cited in note 291); see also Barry G. Rabe. Fragmelltatioll alld LAw AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 54: No.4 brunt of what he viewed to be a congressional misconstruing of agency motives, fueled by disgruntled agency employees. 317 Once bitten, he shied away from other possible confrontations,318 arguably at the expense of implementing a far more rational and effective approach to pollution control. 319 In addition, Ruckelshaus created a distinct problem for the agency by adopting what was supposed to be a temporary compromise approach under which functional and media-specific offices would exist side by side. The agency's persistent inability to move to a fully integrated organizational scheme has impeded effective decisionmaking. There is necessarily overlapping authority within the agency on all issues, and there has been a tendency for the two sides to take different approaches; the media-specific offices look to Congress for its signals, while the functionally defined offices look more to the executive branch. 320 There is also a clash of disciplinary perspectives. 321 The effect has been conflict and a decisionmaking process encumbered by efforts to include all interested parties within the agency in the process. 322 It is settled EPA lore that internal agency meetings typically include fifty to one hundred of the agency's employees most expert on the issue to be debated. Not only are there multiple representatives from both the functional and media-specific offices but also individuals from the relevant regional and enforcement offices and from the General Counsel's office.
Other significant agency initiatives that have been impeded include the development of pollution prevention and market incentive programs. Both schemes hold considerable promise for improving environmental quality at lower cost. 323 Each promotes the elimination of pollution at the source instead of through more costly end-of-pipe treatment. Both initiatives, however, depend on a departure from the command and control scheme for pollution control that has been the legislative touchstone for safeguarding against agency capture and neglect. 324 More specifically, each requires providing the federal environmental agency with more discretion and flexibility to respond to case-specific factors. 325 The existing polarization of institutional forces has, however, prevented any meaningful effort to implement these alternative approaches. 326 Many, but not all, environmentalists commonly equate any consideration of economics in the establishment of environmental standards or the use of market incentives for their achievement with caving in to industry.327 Hence, any agency step in that direction is typically met by a charge that the agency is undermining its public trust. Similarly, individual members of Congress have been so suspicious of EPA motives that a conflict has recently arisen with the agency concerning how best to organize the agency internally in order to emphasize pollution prevention. 328 v CONCLUSION

REVERSING THE CYCLE: INSTILLING TRUST AND PROMOTING INNOVATION
Reversing the current pathological cycle of regulatory failure, crisis, and controversy will not be easy. Indeed, to some extent, the problems that have been realized in the implementation of federal environmental law bear an uneasy resemblance to those forecasted by William Ophuls in his impressive, albeit gloomy, essay, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity.329 In that work, Ophuls suggested that democracy might have great difficulty fashioning technological solutions to the problems presented by ecological scarcity. He identified the potential problems associated with fragmented and dispersed policymaking responsibility; in particular, he questioned whether the public and its elected officials would be competent to make the correct technological decisions. 33o Fragmentation of authority and the gap that Ophuls intimated might develop between technical "experts," on the one hand, and the public and its elected representatives, on the other, apparently emerged. The issues are complicated and perhaps too complex for many members of the public to grasp. Moreover, because the benefits of environmental controls are realized over generations while the cost to society is immediate, few politicians are likely to have the electoral incentives necessary to embrace the kinds of societal changes now needed. Finally, interest group politics, which have rooted themselves deeply into modern democratic political processes, either deemphasize technological solutions to environmental problems or replace democratic processes with elitist decisionmaking institutions. 331 The choice, however, need not be so stark. Other valuable reforms can be undertaken; their implementation will engender resistance but not nearly to the same degree as Ophuls' choices, and some may succeed.
One such reform would be to reduce the level of distrust directed at EPA by other governmental institutions. Much of the distrust is derived from an intellectual mistake concerning the possibility of EPA's capture. Second, some of the unintended organizational mistakes of the past need to be redressed. With the benefit of hindsight, we can better organize the federal environmental protection agency, reducing conflict and facilitating environmental decisionmaking by the government. Finally, the existing gap between public aspirations for environmental quality and public understanding of the issues needs to be bridged, as does the gulf between public and agency perceptions concerning the nature of environmental risk.

A. Dispelling the Myth of Agency Capture
Much of the momentum behind the constant clashes that have marked EPA's existence originates in concerns about agency capture. 332 These concerns have been needlessly destructive of effective environmental protection. There is good reason to believe that the risk of agency capture would be slight, even without the intense oversight mechanisms that various competing factions have utilized to prevent capture. Indeed, the only plausible justification for the intensity of each of those mechanisms is the threat now presented by the excesses of the others. For instance, OMB justifies its intense oversight as a necessary response to congressional supervision, while Congress justifies the intensity of its oversight in part as a response to the supervision of OMB.
No single interest group is likely to capture an agency with characteristics similar to those of EPA. Unlike the agencies considered by the original agency capture theorists, EPA has a "social mission"; and unlike agencies such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, EPA does not manage a distinct kind of economic activity. EPA is subject to a complex set of constituencies. There is no single dominant interest that threatens to capture the agency.333 331. Id at 159-63. Ophuls also describes the choice as being between "the minimal, frugal steady state," and "a degraded and tyrannical version of the steady state," and he warns that the latter "may become almost inevitable" if there is too much delay in our moving towards the former. Id  Contrary to the assumption of agency capture theory,334 public interest in environmental issues has not been fleeting. 335 National environmental organizations have enjoyed sustained public support. Technological advances have greatly enhanced the ability of such citizen groups to marshall public support and to influence agency decisionmaking. 336 And, conversely, the agency is itself capable of avoiding decay and capture by enlisting the environmental organizations in support of controversial agency actions. 337 In the case of environmental protection, the regulated community or industry does not speak with one voice, as agency capture theory assumes. Because environmental protection laws sweep so broadly, those affected are an exceedingly diverse group. Accordingly, their interests frequently conflict, making capture improbable. 338 Companies that have already invested substantial sums in pollution control are less likely, for instance, to support the relaxation of restrictions that would result in their competitors avoiding similar expenditures. 339 Such companies generally desire regulatory stability. 340 The manufacturers of pollution control equipment, a sizeable industry in itself, resist deregulatory efforts, as do states and localities, which have become dependent on federal largesse in aiding their own pollution control efforts. 341 In addition, because employees of agencies like EPA tend to share the agency's social mission,342 the agency staff is less susceptible to ideological conversion by those regulated. 343 Indeed, quite the opposite might be true.
The greater risk could be their tendency to discount the needs of the regulated,344 which serve as a useful counterweight to the inherent difficulty of evaluating environmental benefits. 345 Nor, contrary to agency capture theory,346 does there appear to be any significant threat of agency corruption presented by the lure of career opportunities in the private sector. Past experience indicates that agency employees enhance their employment prospects by engaging in more aggressive action, rather than by appearing to coddle future employers. 347 Finally, there may also be reason to question the traditional agency capture concerns underlying heightened judicial review of EPA decisionmaking. As one commentator has pointed out, the empirical data upon which the "new era of administrative law" was based looked mostly to "entrenched bureaucracies administering well-established programs. "348 Such agencies were faulted for failing to consider innovative techniques and for their relative timidity.349 EPA has never shown a systematic bias in favor of underachievement (fairly measured).
It is nevertheless difficult to be optimistic that oversight of EPA will become less intense or adversarial in the near future. To be sure, the judiciary already appears to have cut back on the degree of its scrutiny of agency decisionmaking. 350 And there is reason to believe that Congress may See notes 18-20 and accompanying text; Sax, Defending the Environment at 240 (cited in note 18) (noting that "the question we must ask ourselves is whether we are prepared to leave the public interest to hired hands"). Sax, who wrote his book before the creation of EPA, overestimates the value of judicial review and underestimates the significance of career staff; after all, the career staff supplied the information that was critical to the favorable judicial outcome in the case study that serves as the initial focus for Sax's thesis. See id at 21-30. The agency staff, not the court, is the true unsung hero in the narrative. Nevertheless, Professor Sax's thesis is the one among the various capture theories that appears to have continuing force even with EPA, although less than his argument might suggest.
344. Murray L. Weidenbaum, Business, Government, and the Public 21 (Prentice-Hall, 3d ed 1981). 345. The extent to which an agency employee's ideology affects her behavior within the agency is also far from clear. See  The more likely result, however, is that Congress will prove to be a much tougher nut to crack. A shift in judicial philosophy has resulted because of the power of presidential appointment of federal judges. And if a change occurs with regard to OMB oversight, it will be because of Congress's great power over the purse strings. Realistically, there is currently no such countervailing authority in a position to compel Congress to change its ways.
Virtually every administrator has complained about the phenomena of fragmented congressional jurisdiction over EPA's programs, excessive congressional oversight, and the harm caused by the imposition of unrealistic deadlines.  51). In 1978, the Administrative Conference recommended two alternatives to the type of rigid statutory deadlines that typify the federal environmental protection laws: (I) "Congress could by statute require agencies to establish their own deadlines for agency decision making [which] would allow the agency (and also the oversight committees in the Congress) to monitor and review the agency's performance"; and (2) "Congress could assign a similar role to a statutory limit by providing that the time limit was not a matter of legal obligation but only established the normal time period during which Congress expected the agency to act." Edward A. with EPA.355 It also provides the legislator with enhanced leverage over the agency when responding to constituent concerns. Hence, persuading the legislators that their initial agency capture concerns were largely illusory is unlikely to make much of an impression on the congressional psyche. Agency capture concerns have been replaced by interest group politics; and the latter and subcommittee government have formed a strong bond likely to resist successfully any efforts to reduce oversight through centralization and consolidation of EPA jurisdiction. Only across-the-board reform of congressional practices is likely to be sufficient, and there is nothing on the political horizon that appears likely to prompt such a dramatic and uncharacteristically altruistic step by Congress. 356

B. Reorganizing the Institutional Framework for Federal Environmental
Protection to Eliminate the Vestiges of Distrust The practical hurdles that may prevent congressional reorganization of its own d~cisionmaking processes with regard to federal environmental policy need not preclude Congress and the White House from now revisiting how best to organize and structure a federal environmental agency. As described above, many of the compromises made by the White House in designing EPA in 1970 were made for narrow political reasons. These compromises have hindered EPA's operations and its delivery of federal environmental protection. It is now time for their undoing.
President Nixon rejected the option of making EPA a cabinet agency. As members of both parties now appear to recognize, EPA should be elevated to cabinet status. 357 Contrary to what some might think, EPA's elevation would not be mere window dressing. It could provide a meaningful opportunity for agency renewal and a fitting occasion for reversing the pathological cycle of distrust that has plagued the agency over the last twenty years.
For example, the endorsement of the agency's mission implicit in such an elevation in status would likely reinvigorate the agency. Agency morale could 355 significantly improve, which would in turn enhance employee retention and recruitment. 358 It would also have the added benefit of ameliorating some of the agency's historical problems. The agency's leverage within the executive branch would be greater, making it theoretically less subject to OMB's influence and . providing the agency head with more ready access to the President when controversies arise. 359 In addition, because EPA's elevation would increase the prestige and visibility of a presidential appointment at the new agency, the reorganization might make it more likely that those nominated and confirmed to top positions are reasonably capable. 360 The creation of a cabinet-level EPA would be one important step, but more would be necessary to redress the institutional vestiges of past political compromises. In particular, fragmentation of environmental protection authority within the executive branch needs to be reduced. To be sure, fragmentation probably can never be eliminated, given the huge scope of activities affecting environmental quality.361 But the degree of fragmentation can be substantially lessened, with a concomitant increase in integration and decrease in interagency conflict.
To that end, serious consideration should now be given to transferring to the new department the various pollution control activities that have remained in agencies other than EPA. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency ("NOAA") is a good example. NOAA is currently within the Department of Commerce largely as a byproduct of President Nixon's 1970 compromise with Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans, who was concerned about Nixon's creation of EPA.362 It would seem sensible to combine EPA's and NOAA's two jurisdictions in one cabinet department. 363 A strong argument can likewise be made in favor of merging into that same 358. No less significant in terms of boosting agency morale, self-confidence, and employee recruitment would be moving the agency to a new, less depressing physical loqltion. All who have worked or spent any significant time at the agency recognize the need for such a move, whic~ seems increasingly likely. See Nomination of William K. Reilly  department another relic of past political compromise: the Army Corps of Engineers' jurisdiction over wetland pollution. 364 Other areas of federal environmental protection jurisdiction whose transfer to a Department of Environmental Protection could achieve greater integration and reduce conflict include: surface mining control at the Office of Surface Mining in the Department of the Interior, endangered species protection at the Fish and Wildlife Service in Interior, remaining' parts of the pesticides program still at Agriculture and elsewhere,365 and pollution control aspects of scattered programs within the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Greater consolidation of authority is needed if the new department is going to fulfill its stated mission of being responsible for fashioning pollution control standards, including those ultimately applicable to federal as well as private activities.
Within the existing agency, a shift in perspective may now be in order. While the current media-specific, command and control approach has certainly achieved much success, the returns are diminishing. The current system is very inefficient, at times counterproductive, and ultimately defended as the most we can do in a "second-best" world. The perceived advantages of organizing the agency by function to facilitate a cross-media approach may be substantial; and, even if overstated,366 they are promising enough to be worthy of greater emphasis and experimentation. 367 One lesson of the last twenty years is that such a programmatic shift may also diminish the conflicts underlying EPA's pattern of regulatory failure. Much of that conflict is invited by each decisionmaking unit considering the impact of its decision only on one specific medium, to the detriment of different media about which a different decisionmaking unit is concerned. EPA's current organization exacerbates the problem by promoting further conflict between decisionmaking units by organizing them (in parallel) based on both media and function. 368 Reorganizing the agency by function to facilitate a cross-media approach would likely eliminate many of these past sources of conflict and facilitate and expedite agency decisionmaking. taken place a dozen years ago if advocates could have found a way around committee 'parochialism' that leads members of Congress to defend their committee's jurisdiction at all costs.").
364 367. For an especially lucid presentation of the advantages of a cross-media approach. including some of the associated difficulties of agency re-organization. see   Another change needed within the agency itself is greater emphasis on long-term planning. A major casualty of the current scheme is that it has discouraged meaningful long-term planning; in the case of environmental protection policy, that discouragement can be a recipe for disaster. Serious consideration should be given to the creation of a specific office within a cabinet-level EPA dedicated to long-term planning. 369 There also needs to be a parallel effort to encourage career employees, especially those professionals with technical expertise, to remain at the agency, where turnover has historically been high. Otherwise the agency will lack the continuity of technical expertise necessary for the creation and subsequent infusion of long-term planning within the agency. The National Academy of Public Administration recently offered several recommendations concerning incentives that might lessen turnover at EPA.370 Finally, the institutional framework within the Executive Office of the President warrants modification. OMB has been the lead unit within the EOP during EPA's twenty years, while the president's Council on Environmental Quality ("CEQ:') has had a diminishing voice. As a result, one perspective dominates the dialogue with EPA; because of OMB's basic opposition to the precepts underlying the federal environmental laws, the upshot has been an unhealthy, escalating competition with Congress for agency control.
Reduction of OMB's oversight is one option,371 but a complementary, and perhaps more significant measure, would be to establish a more balanced voice within EOP itself. 372 There is, at bottom, a pressing need for an "environmental policy decisionmaking unit" within EOP to serve the clearinghouse function that OMB has served, but with a broader outlook. 373 There needs to be an office within EOP with the clout of the Council of Economic Advisors or even the National Security Council that is in a position to give thoughtful consideration to the many environmental protection issues that cut across important questions of national policy.374 Environmental 369. Professors Bruce Ackerman and William Hassler made a similar recommendation in the aftermath of their study of EPA decisionmaking in mandating the use of scrubbers for air pollution control. See Ackerman & Hassler, Clean Coal, Dirty Air at 128 (cited in note 236). 370. One recommendation provided greater opportunity for advancement through the conversion of certain high-level positions from political appoimments to career slots. See NAPA, Steps Toward A Stable Future at 4 (cited in note 265); see also Comminee Report at 17 (cited in note 247). Recent legislative proposals for EPA's elevation to cabinet status included a provision that served that end. It discouraged the filling of certain positions based on political affiliation and provided that governmental service in environmental affairs is a qualification for the job. See (1973); see also Sierra Club l' Costle, 657 F2d 298, 406 (DC Cir 1981) ("An overworked administrator exposed on a 24-hour basis to a dedicated but zealous staff needs to know the arguments and ideas of policymakers in other agencies as well as in the White House.").
374. See 136 Cong Rec S8930 (June 28, 1990) (remarks of Sen. Nunn: "However, I am persuaded that there is also a new and different threat to our national security emerging-the LAw AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 54: No.4 protection must become fully integrated in the workings of the entire federal government-ranging throughout the implementation of federal tax, energy, agriculture, and international policies 375 -which is a task beyond the capability of anyone agency outside the EOP. A reinvigorated CEQ could play that role, but the council has historically failed to do SO. 376 Finally, presidential leadership on environmental issues will be required. Presidents have historically been less sensitive to environmental protection matters and more attune to shifts in national economic indicators. This may in part be because the electorate has traditionally held the President more accountable for the performance of national economic indicators, or at least for the effects of their performance on economic measures that strike voters more closely to home, such as stock market activity and interest rates. To provide the President with the proper incentive, national economic indicators need to be modified to take into account the impact of environmental pollution and resource utilization on the nation's environmental wealth. For instance, as recently described by EPA's Science Advisory Board, "[n]ational accounting schemes typically characterize revenue generated by activities that deplete or degrade environmental resources as 'income' while failing to consider the resulting depletion of society's environmental capital asset. "377 To promote presidential environmental leadership, EPA needs to make it a high priority to develop a methodology to redress this discrepancy in national economic indicators. 378

C. Bridging the Gap Between Public Aspirations and Understanding and
Public and Agency Perception of Environmental Risk Only public education, including a sustained effort to promote environmental literacy in the public, will bridge the gap that has persisted between public aspirations for environmental quality and public understanding of the complexity of the associated trade-offs. Only bilateral education of both the public and EPA will bridge the recent gap that has developed between agency and public perception of the nature of environmental risk and of environmental protection priorities.
A revolution has taken place in this nation's environmental laws over the last twenty years. No accompanying revolution occurred, however, in the nation's classrooms to enhance the public'S appreciation of the underpinnings destruction of our environment. "); National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1991, S Rep No 101-384, IOlst Cong, 2d Sess 223 (1990) ("The committee believes that threats to the environment should be regarded as national security threats .... ").
375. EPA, Reducing Risk at 6 (cited in note 250 of the environmental laws and their ramifications. More environmental educators and fewer environmental lawyers are now necessary. Creative environmental curricula need to be developed and made a regular part of secondary school education. The subject matter warrants intensive coverage as an independent course in every student's curriculum. 379 Public education will also do much to bridge the gap between public and agency perceptions of environmental risks and priorities, but more than that will be necessary. The gap finds its roots in the very different perspective each brings to the pollution problem. Much of the public starts with the premise that pollution is morally and culturally unacceptable; by contrast, the agency professional seeks to determine the optimal level of pollution for a specific human activity at a particular location. Little common ground exists at the outset, and whatever there might have been is quickly lost in the aftermath of repeated agency regulatory failure and its repeated denunciation by elected representatives, environmentalists, and industry.38o To bridge the existing chasm, EPA must supplement formal public education with candid explanations of the competing factors, including the scientific uncertainty underlying its decisions. 381 In addition, EPA must not view the dialogue with the public as a one-way street, with the "expert" agency having the responsibility to educate the "ignorant" public. The success of a program of public risk management depends on its acceptance by the public. EPA therefore must educate itself about public perception of risk at the same time that it seeks to enhance the public's understanding of the agency's perspective. Risk assessment is not simply a technical matter. It also depends on value judgments that turn on basic notions of justice and equity. Both EPA and the public therefore have much to learn from each other. 382 Moreover, when EPA ignores the public's distinct perception of risk, the agency's resolution of acceptable levels of risk and relative agency priorities will find little acceptance where the agency needs it most: in the public. 383 If nothing else, 382. EPA, Reducing Risk at 12 (cited in note 250), 383. In a recent article, Professors Gillette and Krier make a forceful case for the proposition that federal agencies might systematically make decisions in favor of too much risk, as viewed from the public'S perspective. Systematic bias is likely because risk producers have greater access to the administrative process thim do risk consumers, and because agency officials commonly refuse to acknowledge the ethical and political dimensions of public risk that are of concern to the public. See Gillette & Krier, 138 U Pa L Rev at 1027, 1061, 1068, 1085 (cited in note 261). Gillette and Krier argue that the present challenge of public risk management "is to devise solutions as powerful as the programs they confront. . . . We need to imagine institutional breakthroughs that match our LAw AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS [Vol. 54: No.4 the last twenty years make clear that EPA cannot afford the tragedy associated with that result.
technological ones, and we may need a new politics to replace the old." Id at 1109. Professor Donald Hornstein likewise warns against undue reliance on comparative risk analysis as part of his even broader critique of such analysis based on its inability to accommodate either relevant equitable considerations or legitimate public judgments regarding risk. See Donald Hornstein, Reclaiming Environmental Law: A Namwtive CriliqlU! a/Comparative Risk Analysis, Columbia LJ (forthcoming 1992).