The Green Machine Is Asleep at the Switch : Environment: Clinton and Gore breathed activism, but the EPA is hobbled by lack of staff and little gets done.

No one is more disappointed with the environmental “dream team” of Bill Clinton and Al Gore than environmental professionals. After 10 months in office, the Clinton Administration has done next to nothing to improve environmental policy.

Amid all the hoopla of George Bush’s ouster, environmentalists have let their expectations get the better of them. They envisioned an activist government that would undo more than a decade of what they called Republican neglect of environmental issues. Dedicated Clinton appointees would breeze through confirmation in the Democratic Senate, embrace tough environmental laws, initiate aggressive new policies and get on with the business of protecting America’s health and ecology.

Instead, Clinton’s environmental agenda seems to have fallen off the radar screen. A case in point is the Environmental Protection Agency itself. As of late September, not a single EPA national program manager--presidential appointees responsible for setting regulatory policies to assure clean air, pure water, sound waste management practices and toxic-substances control--had been confirmed by the Senate. Only one of 10 EPA regional administrators, the people who actually carry out environmental programs, is now in place. How can we build environmental markets and technologies when the leadership can’t, or won’t, secure its staff?

In effect, a year has been wasted while the EPA has operated in a holding pattern. Career EPA staff occupying key policy jobs on an acting basis keep the seats warm, but that’s about all. They aren’t likely to propose significant policy changes with a new boss waiting in the wings. This is causing the agency to lose ground on a number of fronts.

First, the EPA is not participating as actively as it should in the legislative process. It is missing important opportunities to improve environmental laws and launch new market opportunities.

Take the Superfund, for example. Many suspect this law doesn’t work. Since it was passed in 1980, EPA has identified more than 1,200 “national priority” sites where cleanup is needed to protect human health and the environment. Yet after 13 years, fewer than one site in nine has actually been restored. And much of the $20 billion spent on the Superfund so far by government and private companies has gone to pay for endless studies and lawyers’ fees instead of cleanup action.

There is bipartisan support in Congress to change Superfund. A new law could speed the cleanup process, make it more rational and refine the existing liability scheme. House and Senate leaders have asked the Administration to help write a new law that would get the program off the dime and assist vendors who will do the cleanup, rather than just further engage the legal system. But the EPA has been unable to offer anything specific because of the void in the political leadership. The agency may not have much to say about Superfund reform before sometime next year; many think that will be too late. Inaction like this leaves millions of people who live near Superfund sites in the lurch.

Second, the Clinton team is even ignoring chances to score symbolic and morale-building victories. A good example is the legislation to elevate the EPA to Cabinet rank. The bill, endorsed by the President early this year, has languished in the House ever since and may never emerge.

Worst of all, some of our basic environmental protection programs are atrophying while we sit and wait for leadership. Under the federal hazardous-waste management law known as RCRA, for example, more needs to be done to foster compliance with established regulations. Millions of pounds of hazardous discards banned from traditional land disposal sit in warehouses all over the country. This material should be taken to permitted facilities as soon as possible for proper treatment and disposal.

We’ve got the technology and the capacity to get rid of these wastes, even those contaminated with high levels of dioxin and PCBs. We should do so before they create new Superfund sites. What we need is the will and political leadership to implement our environmental protection laws. And we need it now, not sometime next year. The EPA’s public won’t wait much longer.

Perhaps it was inevitable that the dreams of environmental activists could not be fulfilled. Their expectations were too high to begin with. But this Administration has squandered nearly a quarter of its term with no environmental results to show for it. That’s unacceptable. We need to get on down the road.