Opportunity for Revolution at EPA

Contact for Interviews:     <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />

Richard Morrison, 202.331.2273

<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Washington, D.C., May 21, 2003—The resignation of Environmental Protection Agency Director Christine Todd Whitman presents the White House with an outstanding opportunity to choose a leader who can bring the agency into the 21st century.  Now is the time for a clear-thinking reformer to overhaul the increasingly outdated legal and regulatory structure that EPA continues to labor under.

“This is the most important regulatory appointment in the Administration and we need someone who can develop thoughtful, innovative environmental policy,” said CEI President and former EPA policy analyst Fred L. Smith, Jr.  “Every EPA administrator, with the exception of Lee Thomas, has been part of the environmental establishment, and they have not been effective in moving environmental policy forward.  There should be no rush to nominate someone from the same old faces.  We need to pick someone from outside the establishment to make any progress.”

Despite massive changes in the environmental challenges facing the nation, the centralized bureaucracy of the EPA hasn’t changed significantly since the agency’s founding in 1970.  A new director will have to confront the erroneous assumption that more federal regulations are the key to achieving greater environmental quality and that government can be expected to act as a better guardian than private individuals.  “It's not going to be easy to reform something as embedded in rhetoric as environmental policy,” said Smith.

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.