U.S. Agencies Ordered to Cut Pollution : Cleanup: Clinton’s directive calls for a 50% reduction in toxic emissions. Records will be made available to the public.
In a move to bring the government into compliance with some of its own environmental laws, President Clinton has ordered federal agencies to cut their toxic emissions in half by 1999 and to make their toxic pollutant records public.
The Environmental Protection Agency hailed the executive order signed by Clinton Tuesday evening as a move that will put the federal government--the nation’s largest landowner and, by all reports, a major polluter--in the forefront of efforts to fight pollution.
“Now we’re playing by the same rules that we ask American industry to observe,” EPA spokeswoman Melissa Bonney said. “Rather than tell corporations, ‘You have to abide by these restrictions, but we don’t,’ we now will be leading by example.”
EPA Administrator Carol Browner, whose agency took the lead in pressing for the shift, said that the move was overdue and touted it as a significant step toward bringing the federal government into line with prevailing environmental policies.
“The federal government has never done this,” Browner told The Times. “Essentially, the federal government has been outside many of its laws and this brings us inside for the first time. This is something many of us have wanted from the moment we got here.”
Considering the government’s vast size and resources, its pollution reduction efforts will have effects far beyond the gates of its installations, Browner said. The EPA chief said that the initiative will help build markets domestically and abroad for so-called “green technologies,” which reduce pollution during the production of goods and services.
Under Clinton’s directive, each federal agency will draw up a plan to cut its toxic emissions in half by the end of the decade.
The President ordered that the 50% goal should be achieved by reducing or eliminating the use of toxic chemicals in production processes. That, he said, would reduce the stockpile of toxic waste that the federal government must dispose of.
In addition, each agency that manufactures, processes or uses toxic chemicals will have to report to the EPA--and to the states where its facilities pollute--how much toxic wastes are produced or released. Under federal law, the public can obtain those reports from a national computer data base and from each state.
As a result, even the highly secretive Defense and Energy departments--which use and produce vast stockpiles of hazardous materials--will be required for the first time to reveal the extent to which they pollute.
Browner said that the reporting requirement also will have a potent and immediate impact on reducing toxic wastes.
“People don’t want to have to report this stuff, so they will make changes,” she said.
