Science and an EPA mission statement.

The Environmental Protection Agency needs a mission statement. It needs this mission statement for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is to enhance the development and use of science pertinent to protecting the environment. Given the constraints of our nation's deeply legalistic approach to environmental problems, the amount of scientific information that has been developed and incorporated into environmental protection should be a source of pride to everyone involved. Yet much more could have been and still can be done, particularly now that easy solutions to environmental threats are in our past. Providing a simple mission statement , a credo which focuses attention on a healthy environment beyond the pressures of a regulatory deadline, could be one effective step in that direction. EPA was put together by President Nixon's administrative order in 1970. In contrast to federal regulatory organizations such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which have a defining piece of legislation that serves as their rationale and guide for action, EPA was formed from pieces of various federal agencies. The original EPA began with intact bureaucracies already administering existing laws, to which have been added yet new laws to regulate. There is no single statement that defines to EPA's employees its mission, its credo, or its reason for being. Too often in administering its many different laws, EPA has found itself at cross purposes with what ought to be its goals, that of protecting public health and the environment. Intermedia issues, such as whether to burn wastes, place them in a landfill, or dump them in the ocean, tend to be dealt with on a piecemeal basis, often with conflicting regulatory approaches from different parts of the agency, and often at the expense of obtaining and using the best available scientific information. Consider, for example, the past practice of ridding wastewater of volatile contaminants by stripping them into air, allowing these contaminants to be breathed. At other times slavish adherence to regulations that are later rescinded makes EPA the butt of ridicule, at the cost of the respect that is necessary to enlist citizen participation in its goals. A recent example that left Alaskans both hooting and indignant was the attempted ban on the sale of pepper spray as a bear repellant while permitting its continued sale to repel human muggers. Alaskans enjoyed asking which EPA employee planned …