Leaving a "Righted" Ship

By Ed Magnuson

Ruckelshaus quits EPA after a brief tour of duty

What did he see or what did they tell him?" That question was posed by an official of the Environmental Protection Agency after the sudden resignation of EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus last week following a meeting with White House aides. According to one line of speculation, Ruckelshaus had been told that the agency would be asked to accept a 30% budget cut, despite the President's pro-environment campaign pledges.

Nonsense, said Ruckelshaus, 52, who took over the scandal-ridden agency 18 months ago from Anne Burford after she was pressured into resigning. "The ship called EPA is righted and is now steering a steady course," wrote Ruckelshaus in his resignation letter to the President. In an interview with TIME, he added, "It's time to move on. Agencies need new blood from time to time." He said he had talked to White House aides and to Reagan about his desire to leave, and there had been no mention of sharp budget reductions at EPA. "I don't think they're going to cut much," Ruckelshaus said. "And if they do, Congress will restore it, and the President will sign it." Also departing was Alvin Aim, whom Ruckelshaus had recruited as his top deputy.

Environmentalists generally agreed that Ruckelshaus, who launched EPA as its first Administrator in 1970, had restored morale and raised the competency of the agency's top officials during his brief return. He fired all ten of the presidentially appointed bureaucrats and replaced them with able administrators. He took the task of cleaning up toxic-waste dumps away from officials friendly to polluters. Ruckelshaus ordered that nearly all of the lead in gasoline be phased out by 1986 and banned the use of the cancer-causing pesticide EDB.

Still, some environmentalists remained ambivalent about Ruckelshaus. "He was a very talented apologist for the President's horrible policies," contends Marion Edey, executive director of the League of Conservation Voters. "But," she concedes, "when he wasn't busy defending bad policies, he was working hard to improve them." Environmental groups complained that the toxic-waste program, while freed of favoritism, still moved much too slowly. Ruckelshaus urged action to reduce the impact of acid rain, but when he was overruled by the White House, he stoutly defended the Administration's decision merely to order more studies of the problem. Critics also note that Ruckelshaus opposed early renewal of the $1.6 billion waste-cleanup superfund. "He leaves almost nothing of permanence as a legacy," says Jonathan Lash, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Moving quickly to prevent another sag in spirits at EPA, the President announced that Ruckelshaus would be replaced by Lee Thomas, 40, a blunt, hard-driving administrator. A former South Carolina public safety official, Thomas had been with the Federal Emergency Management Agency when it played a key role in the federal purchase of many homes in Times Beach, Mo., because of dioxin contamination in 1983. Ruckelshaus placed Thomas in charge of the U.S. toxic-waste program.

Thomas is respected at EPA, but will have less clout than Ruckelshaus in urging the Administration to place a higher priority on environmental issues.

--By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Jay Branegan/Washington

With reporting by Jay Branegan