By Bernie DeGroat
News and Information Services
Partnerships between environmental regulators and industry would go a long way to encourage waste reduction and pollution prevention, according to a
U-M alumni panel of environmental policy experts.
Speaking at the Institute of Public Policy Studies’ 25th anniversary conference Oct. 22, the panel discussed whether environmental regulators should act as partners or police.
Lynn Vendinello, a pollution prevention policy analyst with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, D.C., believes the EPA needs to help industry comply with environmental laws in a cost-effective way.
“I think we need to change from an agency that cares about penalty dollars and the number of enforcement settlements,” she said. “The thing that we can do best is to provide certainty to industry about our regulations, and to do that, we need to be very honest early-on about the regulations.”
While Vendinello supports partnerships between her agency and industry, she also sees the need for the EPA to play a police role.
“I think it’s also very important for us to create a level playing field,” she said. “No business that is progressive wants to feel like the company down the road is dumping and isn’t going to get in trouble. I think policing lends credibility to what we’re trying to do.”
Kathryn Sargeant, an EPA environmental protection specialist based in Ann Arbor, also believes a fundamental police presence is necessary.
“The law requires it and the general public demands that their health be protected,” she said. “But I don’t think policemen have to stand at arm’s length from the regular community.”
However, John Schuster, project manager for ICF Resources Inc. in Fairfax, Va., thinks a police regulator “must definitely stand apart from industry.
“But that’s as far as we really need to go, in terms of having a police role,” he said. “I think regulators have an obligation to be partners because industry is, after all, the one that pays the bills for clean-up and control, and also has valid interests of its own, including job creation.”
Schuster believes regulators should not only help businesses achieve compliance with environmental laws, but should also discuss what the environmental goals should be.
“What I don’t see happening is industry and regulators working together to say ‘this is the goal we want to progress toward … this is a pollutant that clearly has a bad impact … we want to reduce these costs,’” he said. “I don’t see, at this point, a real willingness to look forward and try to come to common goals.”
While Schuster may believe that the EPA is the chief environmental policeman, Bob McNally, an EPA program analyst in Washington, D.C., thinks communities are the real policing agents.
“Policing really comes from public opinion,” he said. “The EPA’s role is to get the information and provide it to the public. We’re really an intermediary, as opposed to a policeman with a club.”
