Official Sounds a Warning on Proposed Waste Agency

Gov. George Deukmejian’s top advisers were warned Friday that creation of a new department of waste management could aggravate the state’s pollution problems if the effort cuts into the power of the independent boards that oversee water quality.

In blunt testimony before a panel of state agency directors, Carole Onorato, who heads the Water Resources Control Board, said she is sorry if her views do not “fall in line” with the Administration. But she said the best way to take “the politics out of toxics” is to leave the water board with its existing powers.

If the new department sticks to toxic cleanup and related issues, it will be a “major step forward in the fight against toxic pollution,” Onorato said during the last of two public hearings on formation of the new department.

But, she said: “If you juggle water board or regional water board authority in that process, the result will be delays in implementation of needed controls, confusion (and) loss of public confidence. And, most alarmingly, it could lead to increased toxic pollution of California waters.”

Onorato’s testimony marked the most serious criticism to date of Deukmejian’s proposal to create a new department to coordinate and centralize enforcement of laws regulating hazardous and non-hazardous waste. Deukmejian, in announcing the plan during his State of the State address, intentionally left the exact functions and structure of that department undefined.

The plan has been resisted by environmentalists because it will leave major areas of concern such as pesticide control untouched, and by industry and agricultural interests who fear their established relationships with state agencies could be disturbed.

Administration sources have emphasized, however, that in order to end the duplication and confusion that plague the state’s toxic-control efforts, the new department would have to take over many functions now controlled by independent panels, such as the state Water Quality Control Board and its regional boards.

Of particular concern to environmental groups and others is that the new department, which would be placed under the jurisdiction of the state Health and Welfare Agency, would not have the extensive public appeals procedures that are built into the independent boards.

Onorato testified that an appeals mechanism is critical so the public and industry can “have a fair and equal opportunity to present their case in public.”

She said the existing state board system “does this and thus takes the politics out of toxics.”

But under questioning from Health and Welfare Secretary David B. Swoap, Onorato, an appointee of former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., conceded that some of the resistance to the new department stems from self-preservation. “You become very protective of your agency,” she said.

Swoap, who chaired Friday’s hearing, emphasized in his questioning that unless all toxics regulations can be placed under a single department, the governor’s efforts would be useless.

“If none of this transfer occurs . . . how do you achieve the single most important objective of the governor--a single focus of responsibility so that someone can be held accountable?” Swoap asked. “One of the problems now is that the citizenry is genuinely confused and frustrated.”

In an acknowledgement of the growing controversy surrounding the governor’s plan, Swoap used the hearing to announce three appointments to a new citizen advisory committee that will help design the new department.

The three are William Gianelli, former director of the state Department of Water Resources, and former state Sens. Howard Way and Gordon B. Cologne. Way once chaired the Senate Agriculture and Water Resources Committee. Cologne is a recent appointee to the state Water Commission.