REVIEWS

...When, in 1980, Congress created a billion-dollar "Superfund" to clean up hazardous waste, the people of Globe assumed that they would soon be helped...

...From the day she arrived in Washington, her purposes were lofty...

...The second front of Reagan's attack was institutional...

...With a self-confidence untempered by understanding, Reagan's people briskly cast aside the accepted norms of scientific method...

...That's the great irony: the "extreme environmentalists" are more responsible defenders of capitalism than Reagan is...

...Such subtleties elude Ronald Reagan...

...Regulation does nothing to contribute to production...

...The record is even more revolting than you thought...

...That the house is burning doesn't trouble him...

...Asbestos is "one of the most powerful of known carcinogens...

...At first glance, Lavelle and Burford's refusal to act seems to be an example of what Herman Melville called "motiveless malignity...

...This book is filled with examples of how destructive that lust can be...

...You might say that Stockman achieved the impossible: he made Burford look like a defender of public health...

...The aim of the extremists was clear: in the words of James Watt, they sought to "weaken America...

...Even the strong connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer in humans," they remind us, "took 40 years to establish...

...and Rita Lavelle, the assistant administrator for the EPA's Solid Waste and Emergency Response division, who listed her professional goals: 1. Change perception (local and national) of Love Canal from dangerous to benign...

...More than once, after Burford had cut some program's budget enough to cripple it, the OMB told her that she had to cut it again...

...Burford had come to Watt's attention through her exertions in the Colorado legislature as a leader of a band of conservatives who called themselves "the crazies...

...Economic tragedies" were caused by "environmental extremists" and "bad science...

...The only problem 133 with this, as the authors of A Season of Spoils point out, is that until we divest ourselves of our quaint taboo against giving people cancer intentionally, such proof will remain practically impossible to come by...

...He ordered a further series of tests, which took 21 months to complete...

...As soon as Ronald Reagan became president, he set out to deliver private enterprise from the bondage of regulation...

...In the meantime, Burford was also busy— trying to redefine the Superfund's mandate in order to free it of responsibility for cleaning up mining waste sites such as the one at Globe...

...The great merit of A Season of Spoils is that it makes that comfortable illusion impossible...

...The point has been made before, but it bears repeating: this is hardly conservatism...

...Farmers attract pests to their land because they don't rotate crops...

...On the advice of James Watt, he chose Anne Burford to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency...

...then they have to use pesticides, which poison both their land and their workers...

...He wanted proof that lead could also be found in the students' blood...

...Good science," as John Hernandez explained, "makes good economics...

...The eggs are roasting nicely, and he is very pleased...

...3. Provide credible proof that industries operating today are not dangerous to public health...

...when his appointees took over the EPA, the era of "good science" began...

...What Francis Bacon said about "extreme self-lovers" can also be said of profit-seeking corporations: "they will set a house on fire and it were but to roast their own eggs...

...As the authors of A Season of Spoils explain, his thoughts on the matter were straightforward: Industrial production results in wealth and progress...

...One thought the lesson had been learned with Franklin Roosevelt: part of the job of government, in a capitalist society, is to save capitalism from itself...

...Wealth and progress keep us strong...

...It's mere recklessness...

...Whenever a group of tests showed contradictory results, they erred on the side of recklessness, giving credence to findings most favorable to industry...

...And, under David Stockman, it was concerned solely with cutting costs...

...cut back on the required paperwork for EPA projects...

...The congressional investigators found a note in Burford's files: "We are trying to avoid Son of Superfund.' " • Ronald Reagan had ascertained that economic tragedies were being brought about by "bad science...

...A RECURRING THEME in this book is the observation that Reagan's people were less concerned with keeping the public safe than with keeping the corporations happy...

...Producers of toxic waste dispose of the stuff cheaply and sloppily...

...They accepted without hesitation a controversial theory claiming that some carcinogens are harmless below a certain threshold of exposure...

...it conserves nothing...

...They let Dow Chemical rewrite the EPA report on dioxin contamination in the Great Lakes...

...The clean-up was not undertaken until two years after the original findings were made—when both Hernandez and Burford had resigned...

...The idea was to spend as little of the Superfund money as possible, so that when the fund became eligible for extension Reagan could argue that it wasn't needed, since it had been so little used...

...Lead contamination causes brain damage in children...

...they sought to increase the amount of lead allowed in gasoline...

...Governmental action that interferes with the strength and progress of America makes no sense and must be stopped...

...There isn't even an economic excuse for mucking up the environment...

...THE BOOK is not without faults: it provides no historical perspective, it isn't well organized, and its prose is slapdash...

...on the contrary, it is a hindrance...

...132 Other appointees were equally distinguished: John Hernandez, the deputy administrator, who replied, after a member of his staff mentioned acid rain, that "there is no such thing...

...Instead, they spent the next two years petitioning, begging, and finally suing EPA offi: cials in an effort to make them act...

...Reagan's attack on the environmental protection system was twofold...

...In May 1983, after Lavelle had been fired and Burford had become the subject of a congressional investigation, the EPA finally drew on the Superfund to compensate the 50 families for the cost of their homes...

...And they derided experiments involving laboratory animals, arguing that no substance should be regulated unless it has been proved to cause cancer in people...

...First, he hired people committed to "regulatory relief...

...Within a month of taking office he had signed Executive Order 12291, which gave the Office of Management and Budget something like veto power over the proposals of federal regulatory agencies, as well as "a broad retrospective mandate to 'revise and rescind' " existing regulations...

...Having been informed by the Centers for Disease Control, by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and by EPA scientists that the 50 families were in great danger, Rita Lavelle hired her own consultant, who advised her not to be swayed by alarmists...

...and years later, when the public cleans it up, we have to spend ten times what it would have cost to do it right in the first place...

...The cost to society of not regulating pollution" was outside its domain...

...The OMB enjoys an extraordinary freedom from public scrutiny—"it makes no record of what it does or why...

...Consider: i• After a high level of lead was found in the soil around two schools in Dallas, John Hernandez canceled the emergency clean-up that had been ordered by the regional EPA...

...It reminds us that lives are at stake...

...But its indictment of the Reagan administration's environmental policies is exhaustive and convincing...

...Lavelle then suggested that EPA scientists send their evidence to the scientists of the asbestos industry trade association, who would check to see if these methods were sound...

...Environmental regulations seemed to him particularly odious...

...Far from being enemies of the system, most of them seek only to mitigate its most harmful effects...

...THIS BOOK gives a detailed account of the changing of the guard in Washington and cites a series of case studies of "regulatory relief' in action...

...2. Obtain credible data that 50 (150) of the nation's most dangerous hazardous waste sites have been rendered benign...

...Many of us, when we hear about the abuse of the environment, think it means the ruin of the landscape...

...It becomes more understandable when we learn of the secret agreement between the White House and the EPA brought to light by the congressional investigation...

...The meaning of "regulatory relief' is simple: it's the sanction, by government, of the lust for quick profits...

...As she put it in her first speech to her staff, "The EPA of the Reagan administration will be remembered for the money it saved taxpayers because we streamlined regulations, cut down on permit-processing time, and...

...they regularly granted "emergency exemptions" to laws banning dangerous pesticides, when the only emergency in sight was the chance for someone to make a fast buck...

...In 1979, in Globe, Arizona, 50 families were informed that the land on which they were living had once been the site of an asbestos mill, and that their soil and air were saturated with asbestos...

...Unregulated, it lays waste the land and the people that together are the basis of its survival...