![[logo] US EPA](http://www.epa.gov/epafiles/images/logo_epaseal.gif){kind=logo}
Road to EPA
Q: How did you arrive at EPA?
MR. RUCKELSHAUS: Well, the experience I had with the environment--to the extent I had any experience--was gained as a result of the Indiana Attorney General appointing me counsel to the State Board of Health after I had been in his office about six months. Environmental and public health issues in those days in Indiana were all managed out of the State Board of Health. There was a Stream Pollution Control Board and an Air Pollution Control Board, both under the aegis of the State Board of Health. I was assigned to the Board of Health and worked with a man who had been in the Indiana Attorney General's Office for some time. We actually sat in the State Board of Health building (rather than the State House) for several months; probably a little over a year. I helped interpret the statutes and manage the pollution agencies which were housed there, and also helped write the first Indiana air pollution law, passed by the legislature in the early 1960s.
This was the kind of experience I had in the environment. We also tried several gross pollution cases in the Stream Pollution Control Board. My impression in those days was that pollution was essentially a problem caused by competition among the states for the location of industry within their borders. When we began to enforce pollution laws, they were pretty broad in modem terms and only addressed flagrant pollution. I mean, there were a lot of cities without any sewage treatment and there were industries discharging absolutely untreated material into the waterways, killing fish. But whenever we pushed a major company very hard, there was always the threat they would move to the south where the governors said, in effect, "Come on down here, we don't care, we need your business, we need jobs." My impression was, if you simply centralized all of this oversight and enforcement activity, you could bring such states and governors in line because there wouldn't be any place for them to run and hide.
For me, this simple view obscured the depth of the issue enormously. In Indiana, I never understood its complexity (as I later did at EPA) because we didn't need to. We were dealing with absolutely gross polluters. There was no question they were polluting the waterways. The whole issue was, could we enforce compliance? The Governor's office, which was another party to the process, would occasionally call if we pushed hard, and ask what we were doing. They reminded us the offending industries would leave the state if pressed too much. So there was very little public support--except in the locally affected areas--for strict enforcement of pollution laws.
When I was at the State Board of Health I worked with a state assignee from the U.S. Public Health Service named Jerry Hansler. He and I used to investigate these cases. He was a sanitary engineer by training, and we would go around the state in a panel truck and collect samples out of streams choked with dead fish, the result of gross discharges. We would call those responsible before the State Pollution Control Board and try to bring them into compliance. We had a lot of success because the pollution was so obvious. But the Stream Pollution Control Board, which backed us up, had never really done anything like that before, even though it was in the statutes. Hansler and I both had a very good time doing that for about a year and a half. He then went back to the Public Health Service.
When I went into the legislature, I lost track of Hansler. I heard from him every now and then, but not nearly as frequently as when we traveled together. Then, when I was in the Justice Department as an Assistant Attorney General in the Nixon Administration, he called me one day in spring 1970 and said, "Have you heard of this new agency called EPA?" I said, "I don't know what you're talking about." He said, "The [Roy] Ash Commission has recommended that the president create this new agency. I would like to recommend you as the new administrator." I said, "I don't know anything about it, let me look into it." I looked into it, he called me back, and I said, "That's about as big a long shot as I've ever heard." Hansler said, "I've got a friend at Newsweek. I'll have him run your name as a possible candidate in the Periscope column in Newsweek. Let's see what happens."
After my name appeared there, it started showing up in other places. He started it. Hansler did the whole thing! I finally talked to my boss, Attorney General John Mitchell about it. I said, "Look, I have had nothing to do with these leaks, let me tell you how it's happening." Then I explained the story to him. I said, "This guy Hansler is doing it. I'm not stimulating this myself." He said, "Are you interested in the job?" I said, "The leaks have stimulated me to think about it. I've read all the material about it and the answer is yes, I am. But I'm not eager to leave the Justice Department. That's not something I'm burning to do." Mitchell said, "We've got a couple of people we're talking to now, but let's wait and see." About a month later he called and said the other two guys turned it down! I never knew who they were. Mitchell said "We need somebody over there and I'm going to recommend you to the president." I said, "Well, all right." That's how it happened.
Q: Do you recall your first meeting with President Nixon?
MR. RUCKELSHAUS: I met him during the political campaign of 1968, when I was running for the Senate, and he was running for president. I did meet him earlier, but as part of a big crowd of people shaking hands with him. I actually campaigned with him a little bit in 1968. We weren't close by any means, I had just known him. I was really selected for the Justice Department position by John Mitchell, whom I met during the campaign. I never would have been appointed to the EPA job except that Mitchell recommended me. It wouldn't have occurred to the president to appoint me to the agency.