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EPA, the states, and the cities
Q: How was your relationship with the states and municipalities?
MR. TRAIN: I am tempted to say, like every other relationship that EPA had, very edgy (laughing), very controversial. It is difficult to typify. In the Office of the Administrator, we worked hard to maintain good working relationships with the states and with the mayors. We met with them quite a lot. We were, of course, in the process of handing over a good deal of authority to a lot of the states, including permit authority under the Water Pollution Program. Money was always an issue. We used to have a small grants program to assist the states in their administration of environmental laws, which OMB always tried to cut back. They usually succeeded in getting rid of most of it.
During my time at EPA, I think an important development in our state and local relationships was the Sewage Waste Treatment Construction Grant Program, which we got going with full force. When I came in, the Sewage Treatment Program was probably operating on something like $200 million a year; it was something like three or four billion dollars by the time I left. It became a huge, huge program with all sorts of Congressional interest, and a lot of money falling to the states and local communities. It therefore became a very important element in the federal-state relationship.
Another, more abrasive question involved some of the transportation control plans proposed under the Clean Air Act. We ran into situations like Los Angeles, where the EPA was ordered by a Federal Court in California to impose commuting restrictions (such as carpools and prohibitions on driving during certain days of the week). It was an effort to bring the ambient air quality to acceptable norms in the Los Angeles Basin. Of course, there was no way to comply, short of calling out the National Guard. I suspect some legal decisions of this kind probably involved sweetheart cases cooked up between our more evangelical air people and a couple of the public interest law firms. Nonetheless, we tried to institute quite a number of transportation plans around the country, most more modest than the one I described for Los Angeles. But they tended to be controversial. Our efforts ceased after a member of the House Appropriations Committee added a provision to the Clean Air Act, saying that no monies appropriated under its titles could be used to implement any transportation plans. This marked the end of that program. It had involved us in all parts of the country, connected us with many mayors and governors, and encouraged an awful lot of interaction with the states.