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Significant accomplishments
Q: Looking back could you characterize the direction on which you set EPA, or that you continued or furthered? What has been your most lasting influence on EPA's direction?
MR. COSTLE: I can't judge that directly. Ultimately, you define success in terms of the air and water becoming cleaner. And that was the result of many people's efforts. To that extent, we persevered.
Q: What about such innovations as regulatory negotiations?
MR. COSTLE: The concept of regulatory negotiations was a process success. But it was only one of a number of ideas that we were beginning to develop. I subscribe to the notion that you want EPA to be able to innovate to get its job done. If the Agency was to continue to enjoy the public's support, which it needs to succeed, we had to convince the public we were doing it well. Elements in Congress were gunning for EPA, and frustrations were building. For a time, a large part of our job was re-establishing the Agency's credibility with Congress.
Q: You're describing a management style that is almost that of a leader of a jazz band. You're encouraging lots of improvisation.
MR. COSTLE: I suppose there's some truth to that. The rap on EPA from the Democratic side of Congress was that we've written these laws, but the Nixon administration hasn't implemented them. Note that these were criticisms made without the benefit of any of the people on the Hill ever having had to run a program or implement a law that they had passed.
For years the Forest Service was the envy of the Civil Service. It had a reputation for professionalism. I considered myself to be a student of public administration, and I thought that example was worth emulating. It also provided a shield against being politicized. As long as you could communicate your professionalism to the public, you could ward off much political meddling. We had to hold ourselves out as a place where good professional people wanted to come and work, because the problems were tough and worth our best efforts to solve.
David Hawkins once gave me a little inscription that said, "The tough problems are those that fight back." The problem is not a worthy adversary unless it fights back. We were able to recruit top talent for that fight.
The world runs in political cycles, and we had an open window that we needed to take advantage of, in a smart way. As a result of Reagan's election, the window closed a little faster than I had hoped. But I think some good came even from that, in the form of what amounted to a public plebiscite. The public revulsion against the first crew of Reagan appointees gave EPA a renewed lease on life. Any agency will suffer hardening of the arteries if it's not kept fresh by challenges and problems that fight back. EPA will always have problems that fight back. In may ways, that's an indication that the Agency is getting something worthwhile done.
One of our accomplishments was to bring into focus the public health aspect of environmental protection. This was important high ground for the agency. But we certainly didn't intend that it would cause people to think that we weren't concerned about broader environmental quality issues. The perception that we were almost narrowly oriented to health issues was partly due to press coverage. At that time, health-related problems got more coverage than other issues.
We did succeed in helping to push through the first major revisions to EPA's organic statutes, and we helped get some important new laws and amendments on the books. This rounded out EPA's legislative authority; the major legislative era really ended at that point. If the agency then used its authority creatively, it could tackle most of the newer problems that it was coming up against. We also accelerated the rate at which we built the larger institutional infrastructure, building up the state programs so that there would be more institutional capacity to deal with problems day-to-day.
I think we showed that EPA could hold its own with the other cabinet departments and the intellectual councils of government. Not only were we able to make a positive contribution, but we could also help moderate policies of other departments that were inimical to environmental interests. I believe we did so in an honorable fashion, which gained public and political respect.
We battled with some powerful industries, autos and steel among them. While it started out as trench warfare, we got through the confrontations to a point where we could effect positive changes. The economy helped, in that respect. For example, for economic reasons alone the steel industry had to shut down a lot of obsolete plant equipment. They initially tried to blame the Agency for this, but they couldn't make that case stick. We forged an alliance with the steelworkers that helped keep those companies honest. When I left, I thought the Agency had a real sense of pride in itself. EPA people felt they were engaged in important work. The Agency was inundated with applications from top-quality people who wanted to work there.
I'm very reluctant, however, to say that we did something that my two predecessors didn't or wouldn't want to do. I saw it as a continuum, really. The Agency was six -- almost seven -- years old when I arrived. My feeling was that we didn't break stride. Much of what went on was natural evolution, which we just took to the next step. I'm convinced that Bill and Russ would have done the same things. In the Carter administration, the Agency did benefit from a better, more respected role and set of relationships within the Executive Branch. While Russ, for instance, had wonderful working relationships with some of the other cabinet officers and with Hill members, below that level of amicability between the principals it was often a different story. I think EPA earned respect at the working level, up and down, through its performance during events such as the energy crisis. The Agency staff demonstrated that they had a real soul for public administration.
Q: Why did they have this soul? What do you attribute that to?
MR. COSTLE: Conscience -- a commitment to the idea that government was necessary, was an essential part of American life. We demonstrated that government had an important role to play in setting the rules of the road, while at the same time recognizing that government couldn't do everything -- and shouldn't try to. It had to operate surgically and intelligently. The free enterprise system would not create clean air and clean water. So government had to step in and leverage minimal resources to get that larger societal job done, in a very complex industrial economy.