EPA style in mid-1970s

Q: What did EPA employees face in the 1970s in terms of taking a new piece of legislation and implementing it? What difficulties did they face that might have slowed down processes?

MR. ALM: There were not that many difficulties other than just the typical difficulties of bringing on new people, training them, etc. But, then, there was a newness, a freshness. The Agency was not as mired down in bureaucracy. And because of this, we were, for example, able to issue all the water pollution control permits in a few years. There was a realization at that time that progress was really critical and perfection could be the enemy of progress. The theory we had on the issuance of the water permits was, "let's get them issued fast, let's get the abatement underway, and then we will come back later and fix the permits that weren't so good." Well, it turned out that the rather rough and ready approach that was used, "good engineering practice," tamed out to be pretty good and most of those permits didn't have to be dramatically altered.

In the Superfund program today, for a lot of legalistic, political and bureaucratic reasons, the attempt at perfection drives up the cost and subjects people to unnecessary hassles. It is just a different world.

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EPA style in mid-1970s

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