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FEDERAL GOVERNMENT POLLUTION Mr. Kasten writes to remind us of the fact that the Federal Government is the largest polluter in the United States. He brings to our attention anecdotes from the states, which illustrate the states' difficulties enforcing local environmental laws on the federal government. He writes about the federal government's lack of accountability in cleaning up its own toxic waste sites and its attempts to push cleanup responsibility and costs to local levels of government and to private landowners. According to a Boston Globe article last year, ''federal agencies have contaminated more than 60,000 sites across the country and the cost of cleaning up the worst sites is officially expected to approach $300 billion, nearly five times the price of similar destruction caused by private companies.'' In contrast, private Superfund site clean up is estimated at a fraction of the federal government at $57 billion. The article goes on to say that the EPA Inspector General has found that, federal agencies are increasingly violating the law, with 27 percent of all government facilities out of compliance in 1996, the latest year figures available, compared to 10 percent in 1992. Department of Energy and Department of Defense environmental clean up budgets are routinely last priorities in the appropriations processes. For example, this year I worked to cut construction funding in the Energy and Water Appropriations bill for the doe's National Ignition Facility (NIF)--a bottomless money pit that the GAO has determined to be mired in waste and technological difficulties—and suggested that this funding be transferred to the doe's waste management account, where I believe the money could be put to better use. The final appropriations bill increased the Defense Environmental Restoration and Waste Management fund by $490 million dollars. In comparison, the NIF project, which is 100 percent over budget and 6 years behind schedule, was appropriated $130 million for FY 2001. The NIF boondoggle was granted nearly one-third of the total increase of the environmental clean up budget. Clearly the federal government has other agendas than the environment. We need to look more closely at Federal Government's own environmental problems. The State and Federal Government can work together to modernize environmental laws, streamline the bureaucratic process, and focus less on punishment and more on figuring out the best way to reach high environmental standards and compliance. The Honorable Robert Kasten's article
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