KEYNOTE ADDRESS:
IMPROVING THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
William A. Vaughn, Assistant Secretary
for Environmental Protection,
Safety and Emergency Preparedness
U.S. Department of Energy
Washington, DC 20585
The Reagan Administration is committed to protecting the environment. However,
we are also concerned about the growing federal regulatory burden affecting all of us. One
of our key goals is "regulatory relief," or elimination of regulatory requirements that are
unnecessary, inefficient, not cost-effective or not based on sound scientific evidence. It
is through continuing research and analysis, such as that reported each year at this conference, that you can help us improve the effectiveness of our environmental management
without constraining our economic growth.
As the secretarial officer with the legal responsibility for environmental policy within the
Department of Energy (DOE), my office is involved in several of these efforts, generally
in the areas of environment, health and safety issues, as they relate to energy. I have the
responsibility to see that energy demand is met in an environmentally acceptable manner
without unnecessary regulatory delays and costs. In a sense then, I am the "environmental
protection agency" for DOE operations. I am the "occupational safety and health administration" for DOE facilities and that of its contractors and, in a sense, I am the "nuclear
regulatory commission" for DOE nuclear activities and its contractors' activities.
We take this responsibility very seriously and we think that the maintenance of the
independence of our environmental protection perspective from DOE energy programs is
essential. I think from what I have seen of the quality of the National Environmental Policy
Act (NEPA) compliance work done in my office, for example, that such independence has
substantially been achieved. We are also interested in energy use and production as affected
by existing and proposed environment, safety and health laws and regulations. It is in this
area that we are providing effective input into the regulatory reform efforts of the Administration.
GROWTH OF REGULATIONS IN THE 1970s
In the past decade and a half, the proliferation of federal authorities for environmental,
health and safety regulation has been dramatic, and the use of resources to meet the
demands of these regulations is, to a considerable extent, underappreciated. Total resources
(overwhelmingly private) expended on the pollutant controls and procedural regulatory
areas now exceed those allocated to defense procurement, and are double the federal expenditures for education, training, employment and social services. However, perhaps
more importantly, the reach of federal environmental regulatory authority is into every
element of the "private" sector, not just manufacturers, but consumer goods, offices and
even burial at sea.
Between 1970 and 1979, expenditures for major regulatory agencies quadrupled. The
number of pages published annually in the Federal Register nearly tripled, and the number
of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations increased by nearly two-thirds.
Direct governmental expenditures in this area remain relatively modest. However, the
private resources redirected by governmental regulatory action are not modest at all. For
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