Policeman for Pollution

John Mitchell's Justice Department has been considered a sanctuary for Republicans who got their jobs after failing to win political elections. This was true of Assistant Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, loser in a 1968 Senate race against Indiana's Birch Bayh. But Ruckelshaus proved to be a winner in the department, where he soon became one of its ablest young (38) voices of moderation. Last spring he persuaded Mitchell to permit a massive antiwar rally near the White House; he even got his boss to make speeches extolling peaceful protest. Now President Nixon has nominated Ruckelshaus for a crucial job: head of the new Environmental Protection Agency.

Conservationists are pleased because the quiet Indianan turns out to have a significant record of prosecuting polluters. A graduate of Harvard Law School ('60), he got his first whiff of the task as a deputy attorney general in his home state, when he investigated a tomato cannery for emitting such terrible stinks that townspeople suffered from "olfactory fatigue" and could smell nothing. He went on to file suits against numerous corporations and municipalities for their pollution practices. In 1963 he drafted the Indiana Air Pollution Control Act, which imposed strict standards on local governments and empowered the state to enforce them.

Nationwide Attack. As chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, Ruckelshaus will run the nation's most powerful and best-funded ($1.4 billion) pollution-fighting organization. When EPA opens for business on Dec. 2, it will take over 15 component parts of five different (and often conflicting) agencies. EPA will control, for example, the Federal Water Quality Administration and the National Air Pollution Control Administration. The goal is a coordinated federal attack on dirty air and water that will ease the pressure on states, which have long stalled on enforcement for fear of driving away industry. Ruckelshaus will also carry out policies set by the new Council on Environmental Quality, whose chairman, Russell Train, says that "the President has made the best possible choice."

Ruckelshaus says bluntly that the Nixon Administration's stress on "jawboning" has failed to reform air polluters, not a single one of whom the Government has yet sued. He does not intend to "launch a big accusatory tirade" against industry. But he has made it clear that the era of delay is over. He even welcomes help from "public-interest" law firms, which the Internal Revenue Service ruled last week can retain their tax-exempt status. The Ruckelshaus appointment requires Senate confirmation; so far, no opposition is expected.

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