Toxic Image

Reagan's environmental woes

Yes, the photo opportunities were substantive: President Reagan aboard a skipjack on Chesapeake Bay; a windblown Reagan atop an observation tower at Maryland's Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge; Reagan touring Mammoth Cave National Park, posing amid the stalactites in the world's most extensive cave system. Reagan was again embarked on one of his "theme" weeks, this one designed, somewhat awkwardly, to create an image as a champion of environmental concerns. Yet even a top aide admitted that the conservationist crusade "was a little thin," and environmentalists howled that it was also loose with the truth.

On Theodore Roosevelt Island in the Potomac, Reagan signed the 14th annual report of the Council on Environmental Quality, paying tribute to an agency that his Administration had tried to cut from the budget. In a speech before some 20,000 members of the National Campers and Hikers Association, Reagan pledged to "take all necessary steps to protect the American people against the menace of hazardous wastes." All the while, he was dogged by questions about his recent appointment of Anne Burford to the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere; Burford was forced to resign as head of the Environmental Protection Agency last year amid allegations of conflict of interest and mismanagement of its toxic-waste fund. The EPA payroll had been reduced by 4,300 employees because of Reagan's budget cuts, and work has been completed on only 120 of the nation's 7,000 hazardous waste sites since he took office. Said Adrienne Weissman of the Sierra Club: "He must think we've been living in a cave, while he has waged a 3 1/2 -year war on the environment." For the first time in its 14-year history, the League of Conservation Voters, a political-action committee with representatives from major environmental groups, will spend money on a presidential campaign; it has lined up $200,000 worth of radio commercials to defeat Reagan.

William Ruckelshaus, who replaced Burford at EPA, concedes it will be hard to defuse the issue. "Reagan's environmental image is hurt by the style and the approach of both my predecessor and [former Interior Secretary James] Watt," Ruckelshaus told TIME. "What happened here in the first couple of years of the Reagan Administration is not easy to defend." -