Cleanup Time

UNDER the mismanagement of Reagan-appointed administrator Anne Gorsuch Burford, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has suffered its worst year ever. Charged by environmentalist critics with moving slowly in toxic-waste cleanup efforts, the Agency is currently under investigation by the Justice Department and a half-dozen congressional subcommittees seeking answers to allegations of mismanagement of the $1.6 billion Superfund and of the use of cleanup decisions for political leverage. Each day the list of charges grows longer, highlighting the agency's failure to meet its responsibilities, and raising serious questions about Burford's understanding of her job description.

Burford herself lately became the highest-ranking official ever to be cited for contempt of Congress when she refused to hand over documents concerning the Superfund. Various news sources suggest that some of the papers may have been shredded and computer disks erased to keep them from Congress. Investigators also hope to learn why money from the Superfund, which was set up to clean up sites whose polluters cannot be identified, have only trickled out, though the EPA managed to lose $53.6 million through bookkeeping errors.

With toxic wastes posing health hazards to hundreds of thousands of Americans, the EPA has a task crucial to the nation. Just last week the Agency had to spend over $30 million to buy the entire town of Times Beach. Mo., to protect its 2500 former inhabitants from poisonous dioxin, a suspected carcinogen. With 14,000 dumps to monitor and clean up, the EPA has its work cut out for it. Yet Burford has been remarkably reluctant to begin the task in earnest.

Burford's inability to clean up America's hazardous wastes may stem from a number of sources. She may have been thwarted by Superfund administrator Rita Lavelle, whom Burford recently fired for her connections with chemical-industry polluters. But many insiders see Lavelle as Burford's scapegoat. Burford herself may have business or personal links amounting to a conflict of interest: the EPA recently awarded a $7.7 million cleanup contract to a company accused of being a polluter in its own right--a company represented by Denver attorney James Sanderson. Sanderson, who is currently being investigated by the FBI, recently finished a 15-month stint as a part-time consultant to Burford.

But the most likely--and frightening--explanation is that Burford is trying to dismantle the EPA. Her plan to slash federal support of state pollution-control efforts and to cut federal programs by up to 55 percent reveals her hostility to a nationally run system. Her adherence to Reagan's New Federalism is hardly surprising, but her inefficacy underlines the problems inherent in that philosophy.

Whether intentionally or not, Burford is not doing her job, controlling and cleaning up pollution. If she will not follow the Congressional mandate which created the EPA she should resign, leaving her agency free to clean itself up and recommit itself to making America safe.