N.VTl-RAL RESOURCES AND THE EXVIRONM1 VI 



975 



the National Weather Service; the National Environmental Satellite Service, and the 

 research and development activities of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 

 Administration 



The obvious first priorities when the 95th Congress got under way 

 in 1977 were to get the EPA and ERDA authorization bills cleared 

 for the initial March 15 deadline set by the House Budget Committee. 

 The EPA bill presented some of the toughest parliamentary problems. 

 For two years, the Brown subcommittee had been patiently trying to 

 discharge its responsibility to authorize all EPA R. & D. This was a 

 responsibility, although not written into any statute or rule, which 

 Brown seized on and assumed. In 1975, the EPA R. & D. bill cleared 

 the House, but was not passed by the Senate until late 1976. It was 

 signed into law long after the subcommittee started its work on the 

 new 1976 authorization. Therefore, the subcommittee started in 1977 

 to tackle another new authorization, not knowing what would happen 

 in the Senate or with the new Carter administration. 



The whole issue of EPA authorizations was complicated by the 

 fact that EPA drew its authority from a mixed bag of different pieces 

 of legislation which had in the past done the authorizing job for all 

 of EPA, including R. & D., in most cases on a multiyear rather 

 than an annual basis. EPA drew its authority from the Clean Air 

 Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, the Toxic Substances 

 Control Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Solid Waste Disposal 

 Act, the Public Health Service Act, the Resource Conservation and 

 Recovery Act, the Noise Control Act of 1972; and the Marine Protec- 

 tion, Research and Sanctuaries Act; finally, the Federal Insecticide, 

 Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. 



FROM CHAOS TO CONFUSION 



The insistence of Brown on plunging into the thicket of annual 

 authorizations was not only for the purpose of furnishing monetary 

 figures for particular programs, but also to exercise organizational 

 oversight over the much-criticized management of EPA's Office of 

 Research and Development. Since its inception, the EPA R. & D. effort 

 had gone through three reorganizations and three different heads in 

 its six years of existence — a factor which obviously added to its 

 burdens. Since EPA had to produce the scientific information and 

 technology on which control and abatement programs were based- 

 all within the challenges of this mish-mash of differing statutes — there 

 were frequent occasions when deadlines in the regulatory legislation 

 imposed impossible demands on research programs. You can't just pick 

 research off the shelf the minute you need its results. So EPA was 

 constantly being criticized for being unresponsive to the regulatory 



