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charge to the subcommittees is to design a balanced environmental 

 R&D program that is scientifically excellent, policy relevant and 

 not policy-driven, well coordinated between Federal agency pro- 

 grams that meets the near and long term needs of the scientific 

 and policy communities, broad enough to catch and respond to sur- 

 prises, and is anticipatory and not just focused on the policy and 

 management issues of today. 



The Administration is also committed to strengthening the man- 

 ner in which the Federal Government performs assessments. Par- 

 ticularly, integrated assessments would provide a bridge for two- 

 way communication between policymakers and scientists. 



CENR is currently developing a set of principles that should be 

 used and mechanisms that can be used to conduct credible sci- 

 entific and technical assessments. We are hopeful that these types 

 of analyses will be useful to you as you develop environmental pol- 

 icy. 



The Administration believes that the imbalance between extra- 

 mural and intramural R&D programs is a significant weakness of 

 our Federal system. The Administration is proposing that all Fed- 

 eral agencies take a careful look at the balance between intramural 

 and extramural R&D activities within their agencies with the goal 

 of increasing the involvement of the academic community by com- 

 petitively awarding more R&D activities in a manner similar to the 

 National Science Foundation and NASA. 



In addition, there may be instances where the quality of the re- 

 search endeavor may be strengthened by combining the intellectual 

 talent residing in universities with the institutional capabilities of 

 the Federal labs, thus improving the overall quality and cost-effec- 

 tiveness of Federal research programs. 



I would just like to add a personal note, Mr. Chairman, that I 

 had an opportunity to testify before you several years ago about an 

 OTA study on non-cancer health risks. I was very pleased to see 

 that the committee is seriously committed to looking at non-cancer 

 risks. I think the pesticide provisions in your bill are excellent and 

 will take us a long way as we begin to look more seriously at the 

 risks pesticides pose to the human health and the environment. 



Thank you. 



Senator REID. I appreciate that very much. 



Dr. Schaefer, would you explain the role that ORD plays in rela- 

 tion to other research programs, like NIH, for example? 



Dr. Schaefer. ORD is working to design its extramural grants 

 program so that they are structured similarly to those at NIH. So 

 they are using NIH programs as a model. I have heard people talk 

 about doing this very recently. I worked for Doug Costle during the 

 Carter Administration and this is something that we started doing 

 then, but EPA has never had a very sizable extramural grant budg- 

 et, so it hasn't made a lot of progress there. 



In terms of interaction with NIH laboratories, they mainly work 

 with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, as 

 you know, in Research Triangle Park. I think they have a good re- 

 lationship with them. The programs complement each other pretty 

 nicely at this point. As you know, a few years ago there was some 

 question about overlap and coordination and so on. 



