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Significant issues at EPA
Q: What were the biggest issues you dealt with as administrator?
MR. COSTLE: I think, first, the power plant standards were high-stakes poker for the whole administration. I am very proud of the way we handled that, and I think it made us all feel we knew something about public administration when we were done.
Q: Why?
MR. COSTLE: Because within the Administration that was the cleanest debate on the merits on the record, and the least politicized. It was politicized on the Hill, but that was inevitable.
The ozone standard revision was very tough.
Responding to Love Canal and choosing the Oil Spill Contingency fund as the model for Superfund, because it allowed the government to take action and sort out the liability later. Getting Superfund through after the election, in a lame duck Congress, was no small accomplishment. There were some good, tough battles inside the Agency over how to implement Superfund. The Washington staff tended to prescribe how the entire program would be implemented. There was too little Washington appreciation, in my judgment, of the diversity of the problem. I think Superfund implementation has probably hurt EPA in the long run, because it was so Washington-focused. The irony was that Burford played right into that. But it would have been a tough statute for anybody to implement under the best of conditions, because it is a tough problem.