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An Environmental Question Mark By Craig Timberg SMITHFIELD, Va. –– This riverside town calls itself "The Ham Capital of the World," but for several years it was also a battleground in the war between federal environmental regulators and the administration of then-Gov. George Allen. Tensions have since eased. But as Allen (R) seeks election to the U.S. Senate, both his supporters and detractors see the Smithfield case as offering insights into the governor he was and the senator he might be. The Pagan River is by most measures cleaner today than it has been in decades, thanks to the hooking up of Smithfield Foods' meatpacking plants to a regional sewer system. Gone is the flow of treated hog waste that in 1997 prompted a federal judge to fine Smithfield Foods $12.6 million--a record amount at the time--for thousands of water-quality violations. Wildlife is flourishing. "It even tastes better," said Smithfield Mayor James B. Chapman, 74, who swims in the river. That, say Allen and his supporters, is the kind of bottom-line environmental progress he championed; the priority was ending the pollution more than levying big fines against an important regional employer. "That was finally accomplished when I was governor," he said. "That is a success." But environmentalists say it was a victory in spite of--not because of--an Allen administration that prized economic development over the environment and coddled polluters such as Smithfield, whose chairman gave $125,000 toward Allen's political ambitions. Allen said the contribution had no effect on regulation of Smithfield, but federal officials criticized his administration's handling of the case as lax and took the unusual step of preparing their own legal action against the company. State officials, after learning of the impending federal lawsuit, filed one of their own, prompting accusations that they were finally moving against the company to shield the state against tougher federal action. Allen denies that, but for environmentalists the incident symbolized his resistance to tough enforcement against polluters. "I don't think they deserve any credit" for a cleaner Pagan River, said retired state delegate W. Tayloe Murphy Jr., a Northern Neck Democrat regarded as an environmentalist. "I didn't see any executive branch leadership on environmental issues during Governor Allen's administration." Nearly every major environmental organization active in Virginia tangled with Allen during his governorship, from 1994 to 1998. Several, including the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, have made defeating his Senate bid a priority. They are running ads and distributing literature depicting Allen as a threat to clean air and clean water. Allen attributes the criticisms to Democrat-leaning environmentalists eager to damage his Senate candidacy. His approach to protecting Virginia's natural resources, he said, encouraged the goodwill of businesses and individuals before resorting to cops-and-robbers enforcement actions. The results, he says, were environmental improvements with fewer of the regulatory hassles that can hurt economic development and waste money better devoted to cleaning up air and water. He would like to see federal environmental officials follow a similar model of setting broad goals, then leaving industry and state officials flexibility on how to reach them. "The point is the results," Allen said. "You can argue all you want about the methods." He is a hunter and fisher whose first date with his wife, Susan, was on a canoe trip on the New River in Southwest Virginia. And Allen got passing grades from environmentalists during his years as a state legislator. In his law office in Richmond, Allen keeps a trophy with a bear sculpture that represents his being named "Legislative Conservationist of the Year" in 1991. Edward E. Clark Jr., president of the Wildlife Center of Virginia and a longtime environmental activist who has served on several state boards, recalled Allen's push as a legislator to require that hunters make an effort to eat or otherwise use the wildlife they kill. Clark also praised Allen for traveling to Washington in 1984 to urge Congress to set aside 54,000 acres of national forest land in Virginia as pristine wilderness. "When George Allen became governor," said Clark, "I was not anticipating the environmental disaster that flowed from his administration." Clark and others are particularly critical of the turmoil in the state Department of Environmental Quality under Allen and his combative relationship with the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Some of the blame, they say, goes to Allen's appointment of Becky Norton Dunlop, a conservative activist with little experience in Virginia, as secretary of natural resources, the Cabinet position that oversees DEQ. Her handling of the department drew a broad and bipartisan backlash. General Assembly auditors found that enforcement actions and inspections for clean air and water fell to the lowest levels in the region. Surveys done for their audit found that only 20 percent of agency employees believed that their leadership "values environmental protection." After Allen left office, legislative auditors also reported that a database of toxins in state waterways was kept secret during his administration, which refused access even to the EPA. One DEQ reorganization under Dunlop drew protests not just from environmentalists but also from the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, the Virginia Manufacturers Association and the Virginia Municipal League. Del. George W. Grayson (D-James City) wrote of her, "No one since Gen. Ulysses S. Grant has posed a greater threat to our resources and our people." In 1997, the EPA threatened to take over DEQ, which it called ineffective. The controversies grew so intense that even Republican James S. Gilmore III, in his successful bid for governor that year, promised to replace Dunlop. Allen stood firmly behind her. Dunlop, now a vice president at the Heritage Foundation, dismisses many of the criticisms as the product of politics and a resistance to change by Virginia Democrats, environmentalists and the EPA. Dunlop and Allen both profess pride in their battles with an EPA they found too controlling and unwilling to trust Virginia to find its own ways to meet environmental goals. The Allen administration, for example, defeated in court a federal plan to require that Northern Virginia drivers have car emissions tested at only a dozen or so facilities. Allen favored the system allowing testing by hundreds of independent garages. Allen also says that faster permitting at DEQ helped recruit clean, high-technology businesses that are the engine of Virginia's surging economy. And he touts spending $60 million for Chesapeake Bay cleanup. "It is a cleaner state," said Allen. "It is a more prosperous state." On that score, he is right, though there is sharp disagreement over the causes. Three of four areas listed by the EPA for their dirty air in Virginia were dropped from that list during his administration. A Virginia Commonwealth University report analyzing a half-million pieces of data showed that Virginia's environment reversed years of decline in 1994 as Allen became governor. Allen says that's partly due to his environmental policies. The report's author, VCU environmental scientist Greg C. Garman, calls that conclusion "absurd" because natural systems take years to respond to government policy shifts. The improvement, Garman says, is far more likely to have resulted from decades of initiatives by the same federal environmental officials Allen battled. But Garman also warns against the contention of some environmentalists that Allen's administration damaged the quality of air or water in Virginia. "I don't have any specific evidence that suggests that," Garman said. "I think the thing that may have been damaged the most is the level of confidence the public may have had in the environmental stewardship" by the state. © 2000 The Washington Post Company
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