Bad Choice, Worse Timing

President Reagan, who has been working hard to spruce up his tattered image with environmentalists, planned to have a peaceable luncheon last week with leaders of five of the nation's major conservation groups. But instead of a fence-mending meeting, the President got a showering of Third of July fireworks. The cause: his announcement the previous day that he was appointing Anne Burford, who was forced to resign last year as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as chairwoman of the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere. Emerging from the stormy 90-minute session, Jay Hair, executive vice president of the National Wildlife Federation, blasted the President for having made the Burford appointment "casually and carelessly and arrogantly."

In fact, the three-year appointment to the unsalaried 18-member advisory panel, which advises Congress and the Ad ministration, was made quite deliberately. When Burford left EPA in March 1983 amid charges of mismanagement of the agency's toxic-waste-cleanup fund, Reagan told her he would eventually want her back. But the decision to make the controversial move the day before the luncheon was unplanned. Said White House Chief of Staff James Baker: "We all approved the appointment, but none of us approved the timing."