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EPA in the international setting
Q: Were there heavy demands on you in the international arena?
MR. TRAIN: Yes, there were demands on me, but that was probably because I was more interested in it than were others. I had been involved with many of the initiatives when I was at CEQ. When he was Administrator for the first time and I was at CEQ, Bill Ruckelshaus agreed to let CEQ handle most of the international activities. This kept the two of us from developing bureaucratic problems. In any event, at CEQ I had been the President's representative to the NATO Committee on the Challenges of a Modern Society (CCMS). CEQ had also written the environmental agreement with the USSR that Nixon signed at his first summit meeting in Moscow in June 1972. The Soviet agreement was an extremely active bilateral - one that required me to go to the Soviet Union at least once a year. So, I carried both those enterprises with me when I went to EPA. Of course, we had an international office at EPA in the Office of the Administrator, which I inherited from Ruckelshaus. It was kept very busy during those years with a good deal of bilateral activity with Japan, Germany, Poland, Mexico, and Canada, among others. We signed with Canada a highly developed Great Lakes water quality agreement which was negotiated when I was at CEQ. International activities were very important to me when I was at EPA.