An Elusive Balance
Some say Christie Todd Whitman '68 has one of the toughest jobs in Washington--changing the way we talk about the environment.
By Jayne M. Iafrate
It seems as if everyone has a beef with the Environmental Protection Agency and its chief, Christie Todd Whitman. Environmentalists say the former New Jersey governor has allowed the largest rollback of environmental law in U.S. history. Some conservatives say her green leanings hurt industry and, ultimately, consumers. In Whitman's estimation, this criticism means she's doing something right.
"The best way to judge that we're on the right track is when we're being sued equally on both sides," Whitman said in a January interview in her Washington, D.C., offices. "It's never pleasant, but it probably says that we're where we need to be."
There's no question in Whitman's mind that she's where she needs to be. From arsenic to wetlands, Bush Administration policy has placed her at the center of some of the most emotional and controversial issues in the public forum. Two years into her tenure in what many have called one of the most difficult jobs in the administration-she half-jokingly lists "survival" as her expectation for the role--Whitman accepts the criticism and continues to work toward her goals of "cleaner air, purer water and land better protected."
Whitman arrived in Washington in 2001 as one of the most powerful and prominent women in the Republican Party. Born and raised in the GOP-her parents, the late Webster and Eleanor Schley Todd, took her to her first Republican National Convention at age nine-Whitman left Wheaton in 1968 with a degree in government and headed straight to Washington and a job in the Nixon Administration. The project she created for the Republican National Committee, "The Listening Program," sent her across the country--tape recorder in hand--to interview college students, senior citizens and African-Americans about their disaffection for the party. "From each group, I heard that there was opportunity for the GOP if we engaged with them," Whitman recalled. "The project reinforced my belief that I was very interested in public service and the spectrum of people and issues with which I would deal."
She left Washington in 1973 and the next year married John Whitman, an investment banker, and stepped away from political life to raise daughter Kate and son Taylor. Whitman returned to politics in 1982 when she was elected to the Somerset County (N.J.) Board of Chosen Freeholders. She was re-elected in 1985 and served on the board for five years, including terms as director and deputy director. In 1988 then-Gov. Tom Kean appointed Whitman to serve as president of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities; she resigned in 1990 to run a close but unsuccessful challenge to Sen. Bill Bradley--she lost the race with 49 percent of the vote. Two years later, Whitman was elected as New Jersey's 50th governor, the first female to hold the position.
The gubernatorial election propelled Whitman onto the national political scene, seemingly overnight. She was the first governor to rebut a state of the union speech (Bill Clinton's in 1994) and she was invited to co-chair (with George W. Bush) the 1996 Republican convention. In New Jersey, some of her most decisive battles were over green issues as she struggled to balance the interests of industry and environmentalists. Despite downsizing at the State Office of Environmental Protection, elimination of some water-quality monitoring stations, and budget cuts for state parks, Whitman won high marks from environmentalists for policy set in her second term. Beach closings reached a record low, the state earned recognition by the Natural Resources Defense Council for instituting the most comprehensive beach monitoring system in the nation, and a new watershed management program resulted in New Jersey leading the nation in opening shellfish beds for harvesting. Whitman also won voter approval to create the state's first stable funding source to preserve one million more acres of open space and farmland. When the president-elect nominated her for the EPA post, Bush said he was pleased that she "led the way in securing funding to purchase a million acres of land for open space," yet had overseen "the re-emergence of her state as a place where people can find work--a center of economic activity and development." Finding that balance between industry and environment would prove to be Whitman's toughest job during the coming years in Washington.
"I knew how difficult this job would be," Whitman said, "because we're trying to change the way we talk about the environment in this country. We've gotten into the mind-set that this is a zero-sum game-someone has to lose for someone to win. 'Balance' is not a word you can use when you talk about the environment."
Whitman and the Bush Administration believe that the U.S. can't have a thriving economy if the environment isn't healthy, and can't have a healthy environment if the economy isn't strong. This thinking is at the heart of the government's current push toward market-based initiatives, which seek that elusive balance and instead have found intense opposition. Whitman says that the financial resources made available by a healthy economy provide the technology to clean the air, to buy open space and wetlands, to encourage watershed-based management. "The two can--and must--go together."
Market-based programs rely on industry to police compliance with federally mandated standards on pollution, shifting focus away from regulation and enforcement. Such policies have critics up in arms--most environmentalists believe these programs pander to corporate interests--and they placed Whitman at the center of national debate early in her tenure at the EPA. During the first months of 2001, the Administration reneged on a campaign promise to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that are believed to cause global warming, withdrew from international negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol, and delayed regulations to reduce arsenic in drinking water. The arsenic issue still frustrates Whitman.
"Career staff at EPA admit that it was an around-the-clock effort to get the arsenic legislation out in the waning days of the last administration," Whitman said. "It was going final within 24 hours when I said I wanted to take a look at it. Not because I want people to drink arsenic, as you would believe if you read the newspapers, but because I wanted to make sure we had the best and most up-to-date science and because I knew about the unintended consequences of making a decision like that. I wanted to make sure we were as smart as we needed to be on helping to defray the costs.
"We pulled it back, and the reaction was brutal. I couldn't imagine how people could believe the kinds of ads I saw on television about the Bush Administration wanting you to have your daily dose of arsenic. At the end of the day we came back with the same 10 parts per billion [as the Clinton plan], but we identified new funding sources and ways to help the small and mid-sized water companies, particularly in the Southwest where arsenic is naturally occurring, to defray the costs. The arsenic issue has been with us ever since. When people want to talk about how bad the Bush Administration is on the environment, they say 'Look at the arsenic; they're trying to poison you.' It's just mind-boggling that people who are as well-respected as some of our senators and congressmen can play the issue that blatantly. They knew better than that; they knew that wasn't what we were doing."
Whitman said that the EPA will never leave cleanup to industry 100 percent; there will always be regulations and there will always be enforcement. "The implication from environmentalists is that if you get into a market-based program you walk away from regulatory responsibility. It's not black-and-white, one-or-the-other," she explained, pointing out success in the acid-rain trading program. Despite early opposition from environmental groups, the program is "the most successful program we run," according to Whitman. "There are standards--they are mandatory--and we have the ability to enforce penalties. Because market-based programs are based on a cap-and-trade program, we haven't brought a single enforcement action; we haven't had to. The sulfur content in the air has gone down faster and at less cost than we thought when we introduced the program."
The administration has faith in the market-based approach to pollution control because compliance is in the best interest of industry, Whitman continued. She believes the private sector is far more creative in finding solutions to pollution issues, particularly when there's a competitive advantage to be gained by doing it better and faster and cheaper. "We'll help them where we can, and we will always have the regulatory hammer--that's not going away. To judge success in the environment based on how many fines you've enforced or how many penalties you've collected or how many people have gone to jail just doesn't make the environment any cleaner."
Although there remains disagreement about the long-term ramifications of market-based programs on environmental policy, there has been much agreement about several recent EPA proposals, such as brownfields legislation, the expansion of children's health programs and initiatives to make household appliances more energy efficient. The EPA ordered the long-sought dredging of the Hudson River in 2002 to remove an estimated 150,000 pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). This year alone the EPA forced several coal-fired power plants to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the air. And just last month Whitman announced a proposal to dramatically reduce emissions from off-road diesel engines used in construction, agricultural and industrial equipment. The program requires stringent engine controls and reductions of sulfur in diesel fuel, which she touts as "the most far-reaching diesel programs in the world today."
Despite the inevitable controversy her job invites, Whitman says she is committed to implementing the vision of "cleaner air, purer water and land better protected." Last December rumors of her impending resignation swirled around Washington and the national press. Whitman denies there's any truth in the reports, shaking her head slowly and smiling slightly.
"No," she said, "I'm here."
