ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

Everyone wants clean air and water. The ideological split occurs when trying to determine the best way to enact environmental policy. One philosophy is that government intrusion through regulation is the only way to ensure that businesses and private citizens act in an environmentally friendly manner, while free marketers argue that financial rewards and incentives are the best way to achieve that goal.

The current government environmental regulations require the expenditure of resources. Regulation in general – and environmental regulation in particular – is as much of a fiscal policy concern as spending and tax issues.

The cost of complying with government regulations has become enormous. According to Professor Thomas Hopkins of the Rochester Institute of Technology, businesses and private citizens spend more than $600 billion every year complying with government regulations. Hopkins estimates that environmental regulations make up more than one quarter of that cost, approximately $168 billion.

Although many environmental laws need to be reformed, the three most wasteful and most counterproductive are Superfund, the Endangered Species Act, and wetlands regulations. Should legislation concerning the Kyoto Protocol be passed, it would join these notorious bastions of waste.

Congress created the Superfund program in 1980 to clean up the nation's most hazardous waste sites. Like many other government programs, Superfund is slow and expensive. The General Accounting Office (GAO) reported in February 1998 that average cleanup time for a site listed on the National Priorities List (NPL) in 1996 was almost 9.5 years, compared with 6 years for a site that was listed on the NPL between 1986 and 1990. The current cost estimate to clean up the 1,336 sites on the NPL is $31 billion.

The 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to clean up sites and to compel parties responsible for contamination to pay for the cleanups. Unfortunately, EPA's method of determining liability is faulty. Under Superfund, anybody who can be connected with a toxic waste site can be sued for the cost of cleaning it up. Therefore, innocent parties often end up footing the bill. For example, one man was sued for the cleanup of a Wyoming car-battery cracking plant because he had accepted third-party checks issued by the company that had owned the plant. He had accepted one check in 1977 for a bag of dog food and another check in 1984 for a bag of seed. Under the direction of counsel, the man agreed to pay $3,500 for the plant's cleanup, even though he had nothing to do with the plant.

This method for finding liability also has many unintended effects. Rather than risk getting sued for a toxic-waste cleanup, businesses do not develop brownfields (abandoned industrial or commercial facilities that may be contaminated) – not because of potential health risks, but because of excessive government regulation. It is simply cheaper for them to buy more expensive, pristine land than to deal with government regulations. The intent of Superfund was to help preserve America's beautiful landscape, but instead it leaves the public with only undeveloped brownfields and no undeveloped pristine land.

Superfund also creates unnecessary disruptions for many communities. For example, when the EPA proposed putting Triumph, Idaho on the NPL, there was no evidence that residue from an abandoned lead mine posed a health threat to the town. Subsequent tests showed that the townspeople were perfectly healthy, but when the EPA announced its intentions, Triumph residents saw their property values drop, making it more difficult to sell their homes. This situation, a direct result of government's over-regulation, really made the people of Triumph sick.

EPA's administration does a poor job of assessing risk, but manages to encounter a lot of risk. Professor J. Paul Leigh of San Jose State University said that the risk of accidental death faced by workers when cleaning up Superfund sites is much greater than the risk of a resident getting cancer from the waste at a site.

Superfund dollars are not necessarily spent on cleanup either. A May 1999 GAO report indicated that administrative costs consumed almost 62 percent of the $1.4 billion that was spent on Superfund projects from 1996 through 1998.

Superfund activities should be carried out at the state level. Local enforcement and cleanup would ensure that the dollars spent are more closely scrutinized, that the true polluter is held accountable, and that there is actually a sufficient risk to disrupt the lives of area residents.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is another example of a counterproductive environmental law that tramples on the rights of private citizens – in this case, property owners. Once on the list, it is nearly impossible for a species to be taken off. Very few species (only 31) have ever made it off the list. For example, although the bald eagle has been flourishing in recent years (three have been spotted in the Washington, D.C. area alone), the Department of the Interior (DOI) has not taken the eagle off the list because environmental groups have lobbied to keep the bird on the list. DOI succumbs to such pleas, even when species is no longer endangered. The 1,232 species on the list have more rights than property owners.

The ESA is so onerous that is has had unintended consequences. Because ESA restricts the use of land that is a habitat for an endangered species, property owners have every incentive to avoid reporting endangered species on their property. Destroying potential habitats or even shooting an endangered species, before it is discovered by the government, has become a popular method to avoid having bureaucrats tromping across private land. This practice is known as "shoot, shovel and shut up."

Another example of the counterproductive, costly effects of ESA is seen in the case of the kangaroo rat. The government sought to protect the habitat of the Stephens' kangaroo rat by preventing homeowners in Riverside County, California, from clearing firebreaks. Consequently, fires swept through that region in 1993. The fires destroyed 29 homes, including the habitat of the kangaroo rat.

The federal government (the largest single property owner in the country) should use the land it owns to provide habitats for endangered species, instead of restricting the use of private land. Or the government should do more to encourage private property owners to protect these species, rather than discouraging these owners by violating their property rights.

Largely because of the wetlands restoration programs run by the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, the United States has not lost any wetlands. Yet EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, armed with a dubious interpretation of the Clean Water Act, continue to keep private owners from developing private land.

Under wetlands regulations, the family of Mr. Bill Stamp has been blocked for 11 years from developing 70 acres of their property in Rhode Island. Even though the federal government keeps the Stamps from developing their land, it taxes the Stamps at rates determined by the land's industrial value. The family pays up to $72,000 annually on land that it cannot use privately.

James Bovard's 1995 book, Lost Rights, chronicles many instances like the one above that show the federal government's long arm of regulation. For example:

• Mr. Ocie Mills, a Florida builder, and his son were sent to prison for two years for placing clean sand on a quarter-acre lot he owned;

• A small Oregon school district was hit by a federal lawsuit for dumping clean fill to build a baseball/soccer field for its students. The district had to spend thousands of dollars to remove the fill; and

• Mr. Ronald Angelocci dumped several truckloads of dirt in the backyard of his home because a family member had allergies that were aggravated by the plants growing in the backyard. The Army Corps of Engineers decided to make an example out of Angelocci, launched a full-court offensive, and had him jailed for violating the Clean Water Act.

The Army Corps of Engineers requires wetland owners to apply for permits and prepare mitigation plans in order to use their own land. Compliance with regulations can cost the Army Corps of Engineers hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect an acre of wetland. The Department of Agriculture's Wetland Reserve Program, meanwhile, can restore an acre of wetland for less than a thousand dollars. Rather than allow regulatory bureaucracies to intrude on the rights of property owners and tie up land in litigation, programs that work, like the Wetland Reserve Program, should be expanded.

Since 1997, the Clinton Administration has been trying to gain passage of the Kyoto Protocol. The Protocol requires signatory countries to reduce carbon dioxide and other gas emissions in order to combat global warming. According to the treaty, the United States would have to reduce emissions to about 7 percent below the 1990 emissions level by the year 2012. This would require cutting energy use by 30 percent and carbon emissions by about 40 percent.

According to Constance D. Holmes, chair of the Global Climate Coalition, compliance with the Kyoto Protocol would have drastic economic effects. The U.S. economy would lose about $300 billion per year by 2010. The average household income would fall by $2,000 and 2.5 million fewer jobs would be created over the next 10 years. Private investment would be reduced by $35 billion a year. Furthermore, a new study sponsored by minority business groups finds that the protocol would cost Black and Hispanic workers 10 percent of their earnings and that they would end up paying 10 to 20 percent more for housing and energy if the Protocol goes into effect.

Even more startling is the fact that the Protocol would cause gas prices to rise by $0.65 per gallon. Yet the Clinton-Gore Administration insists that "Big Oil," and not excessive taxation or regulation, is at fault for current inflated gas prices.

Further compounding the expected economic impact is the fact that the Protocol has no impact on nonsignatory countries. These countries could continue producing high levels of greenhouse gases, nullifying the reductions made by the signatory countries. Many developing nations, which will soon be emitting the highest amounts of greenhouse gases, have not signed the Protocol. Those that have signed have had no specific reduction amounts imposed on them. Therefore, the United States could make a huge economic sacrifice, only to see the problem worsen.

If the Protocol is passed, a government handout program designed to help companies with compliance is likely to follow. The Clinton Administration has already tried to go through the back door and start to implement pieces of Kyoto despite a Senate resolution against such activity. For example, in 1997, $675 million in grants was given to the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), an agency of the World Bank, by the U.S. government. That money may have been used to help implement the Protocol worldwide, even though Congress stands firmly against implementing the Protocol at home. If the administration succeeds, it will mean a huge hidden tax on American consumers, a growth spurt for the federal bureaucracy, and disaster for the economy.