Lynton Keith Caldwell: An Environmental Visionary and the National Environmental Policy Act

11. The Years of Going Backward

311 Even before Reagan took office in January 1981 following his landslide victory over Carter, it had become obvious that he did not share his predecessor’s environmental concerns. Instead, during his campaign he had reiterated that, if elected, he would act to restore the flagging economy by weakening or removing those regulations–environmental or otherwise–perceived by Republicans as antithetical to rapidbusiness growth. Reaganalsoannounced hisintentiontocutcosts by shrinking the size of the federal government and transferring agency functions such as environmental oversight to state and local governments , thereby handing over to western states in particular the ability to repeal statutory barriers to renewed fast-track development of public lands. To this end, it quickly became clear that the agency staffs responsible for monitoring and administering environmental programs would become primary targets for downsizing or outright elimination. In the first step of what Samuel Hays has called “a massive assault ontwodecadesofenvironmentalprograms”andwhatRichardAndrews has described as “an aggressive three-pronged policy for reducing the role of the federal government in environmental protection: deregulation , defunding, and devolution,” a special task force headed by Vice President George H. W. Bush soon assembled for review and possible rescinding some 110 environmental regulations to which industry and business objected as being particularly burdensome.1 This list included rules and standards concerned with air and water quality, chemicals production, sewage and hazardous waste disposal, pesticides use and registration, and mining activities. In the next step, the budgets of reguThe Years of Going Backward eleven 312 Lynton Keith Caldwell latory agencies, including the EPA, suffered severe cuts, which, as might be expected, soon “wreaked considerable damage upon EPA’s personnel resources and its key operating and research programs.”2 The third part of the process involved the nomination of antienvironment personnel to head those agencies most concerned with the care and protection of the nation’s natural assets. Among these appointments, James Watt, the prodevelopment president of the conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation, became the new secretary of the interior. The equally pro-use lawyer Ann Gorsuch took over the Environmental Protection Agency despite having almost no previous environmental management experience, while the Bureau of Land Management went to Robert Burford , a rancher and mining engineer. Gorsuch and Burford (who later married) soon became key players in efforts then being made by several western states to claim title to large areas of public lands lying within their borders. Proponents of the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion bills reasoned that, once privatized, these lands, no longer subject to federal environmental laws and regulation, could be opened up to virtually unrestricted logging, mining, grazing, construction, and other forms of economic development.3 The White House then cast aside a proposed environmental program prepared in late 1980 by an advisory committee comprised of experts such as Russell Train and William Ruckelshaus in favor of a highly antienvironment and prodevelopment agenda put together by the conservativeHeritageFoundation .4Similarly,adetailedJanuary1981report, Global Future: Time to Act, prepared by the CEQ and the State Department as a follow-up to the Global 2000 Report, received little attention, even though it covered a range of international environmental concerns and urged the United States to take a leading role in “addressing and resolving long-range global problems, issues of critical importance to our common future.”5 The CEQ itself now became a target of attack. Aware of the political difficulties involved in attempting to abolish a statutorily created council, the administration, following the earlier example set by Nixon, instead disabled it by inflicting deep cuts to its budget and personnel. The ability of the CEQ , left once again with only a skeleton staff and few resources, to continue its important environmental research and over- The Years of Going Backward 313 sight roles as required by NEPA became severely limited. At the same time, its annual reports, which for a decade had provided “a firm source of ideas and action for the public to foster environmental progress,” now became largely “a vehicle for rationalizing the administration’s strategy to restrict environmental objectives.” In an ironic twist, the Conservation Foundation, which had provided financial support for Caldwell’s work on NEPA, stepped into the breach, providing State of the Environment reports in 1981 and 1983.6 In a further move, Secretary Watt determined to exclude environmentalistscompletelyfromthedecision -makingprocess.Inearly1981,at the end of a meeting held with a group of environmental organizations, Watt “announced that there would be no more...