September 21, 1986
"Cutting through Hype on Toxics - Proposition 65 does not Affect Cleanup or Push Recycling"
San Jose Mercury News
By Timothy Taylor
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TOXIC chemicals are the big issue in California politics this fall, with more sex appeal than the economy, more human interest than Rose Bird, more danger to more people than AIDS or drugs. Tom Bradley has been hanging on to the toxics issue like a water skier behind a boat, hoping it will pull him all the way to Sacramento.

But it's a paradox of representative government that too much public concern can be a bad thing, because elected representatives trip over and kick aside their own good sense in trying to pacify the voters.

Gov. Deukmejian, for example, tried to get a toxics bond issue on the November ballot that was just the sort of loose- jointed, omnibus, throw-money-at-a-problem jumble one would expect a conservative governor to fight against.

Part of the money would have gone to the state Superfund, although that fund has over $100 million lying around unspent. Although Deukmejian had been vetoing additional staff for the state water quality control boards for the past several years -- when the additions were passed by a Democratic Legislature -- he was proposing to borrow money with a bond issue to pay salaries.

Deukmejian also proposed making cleanup a local responsibility, rather than a state one, a provision that wouldn't work politically or practically. And he proposed having the state set up disposal sites for hazardous waste, rather than following his normal pattern of setting standards and leaving the rest to private industry.

The easiest and perhaps the only way to resolve the contradictions and inconsistencies of Deukmejian's hodge-podge bond issue is to remember that challenger Tom Bradley was qualifying his own toxics initiative for the November ballot.

Proposition 65, the "Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986," was partly written by Bradley campaign aides. Bradley has said that the gun control initiative on the 1982 ballot cost him the election, because it brought extra Deukmejian voters to the polls. With 65, Bradley hopes to bring out a few more of his own supporters.

Proposition 65 has a number of flaws -- this newspaper editorialized against it last Sunday, despite a long record of supporting environmentalist initiatives. But there are also claims that it is just as political and ill-considered as Deukmejian's proposed bond measure.

Assembly Majority Whip Steve Peace, D-Chula Vista, writes: "Proposition 65 was cooked up as a political ploy to use against the governor and other Republican candidates. As such, it was purposely drafted in an irresponsible manner in order to ensure that neither the Legislature nor the governor could embrace it. "While I support Mayor Bradley's effort to be elected governor," continued the Democratic assemblyman, "I do not intend to subvert sound policy judgment in the interest of political gain. Proposition 65 would embroil this state in a permanent state of litigation with little or no prospect of improving water quality."

As the election approaches, the toxics issue is being taken over by hype. Bradley campaign advertisements claim that Deukmejian takes money from toxic polluters, and then blocks enforcement of the law against them. The Deukmejian campaign counters by calling Bradley "the biggest polluter in the state of California," mainly because of the problems of the city of Los Angeles with treated sewage. (Proposition 65, in a convenient twist for the Bradley campaign, would exempt all government agencies.)

Set aside the politics for a moment, and start from the basics. Everyone agrees that California has a problem with toxic chemicals. But what is the nature of that problem?

First, California has to clean up decades of mistakes and shortsightedness that have led to contamination all around the state. Solving that problem means assuring contamination is found quickly, mainly by frequent testing of water supplies, and then by having the manpower, money and expertise to move the cleanups along as fast as technically possible.

The question of who pays for cleanup is important, but it too often becomes a diversion. Those who caused the contamination should pay when possible. But just as criminals can't be expected to pay for police and prisons, and arsonists won't pay for fire-fighting, I suspect responsible parties won't be available or able to pay all cleanup costs. Contamination should be cleaned up first; those arguments over responsibility can be sorted out later.

The second part of California's toxics problem is more intractable. The California economy relies heavily on five chemical-intensive industries: agriculture, aerospace and defense, electronics, petrochemicals, and oil refining. These industries employ over half the state's manufacturing work force, according to a report last year from California's Commission for Economic Development. Chemicals are symbiotic with the California economy. So how do we live together?

The answer in the past has been to bury waste or pour it into a body of water. But every major land disposal site in California leaks, and water has an unfortunate tendency to flow into other water or evaporate into the air. Either way, these disposal methods have turned out to be no more than a way to shuffle waste around and postpone dealing with it.

A consensus seems to have developed that land disposal doesn't work and that recycling and treatment are the only alternatives. The arguments are over how fast the transition can proceed, and how best to encourage it.

The state can raise the costs for land disposal, provide financial incentives for treatment, and help develop and spread information on new technologies. Studies from the Congressional Budget Office and Office of Technology Assessment confirm that every chemical can be made less hazardous by one method or another. Eventually, the state could decide to accept legal liability for waste that has already been treated.

If this is a fair description of what needs to be done for California's toxic problems, then Proposition 65 is misaimed. It does not affect cleanup. If it encourages the transition to recycling by setting different chemical safety standards, it does so only in an indirect way.

Deukmejian has responded to criticism of his administration's toxic control policies by arguing that critics should remember how little the state was doing when he took office, and recognize how much progress has been made since. Deukmejian did back a 1984 bond issue to raise money for the California Superfund, and he has signed a variety of toxics bills into law.

There's half a truth in his argument. Progress has been made on toxics issues. But here's the other half of the truth.

No matter who was governor, spending on toxics would have increased since 1982. Deukmejian has not been a leader or innovator in that trend.

He has repeatedly vetoed staff additions to the water boards. He delayed the implementation of a cancer registry with more vetoes. He vetoed a needed reorganization of the toxics bureaucracy because it only gave him 95 percent of what he had asked for. Just last year, the EPA refused to let the state spend federal Superfund money because the program administration was so poor.

As Democratic legislators are fond of pointing out, Deukmejian has often vetoed toxics legislation backed by Democrats and then supported the same idea when authored by a Republican. If toxics is now a partisan political issue, Deukmejian helped to make it so.

I believe Deukmejian to be a man of integrity. Bradley's commercials implying he is on the take from polluters are crude mud-slinging. But Deukmejian has underestimated the importance of the toxics issue, and has blocked or delayed needed steps. He deserves heat.

But I think Deukmejian is just a visible and extreme example of someone who talks big on toxics and does little.

When legislators list their priorities, they often run through education, prisons, transportation and toxics, as if those were comparable expenditures. But they aren't even close.

The state will spend $21 billion this year on education. The voters have passed $1.6 billion in prison-building bond issues since 1981. The five-year highway construction plan calls for spending $12 billion.

But the total amount spent for all toxics efforts -- including air and water, emergency response, pesticides, fish and game, everything -- is about $140 million this year. If you doubled that budget, it would still be less than 1 percent of state spending.

That's not going to cut it. California already has 350 sites on either the state or federal Superfund list, not to mention hundreds of other smaller sites. Changing the orientation of major industries to recycling is a huge step. The Commission for Economic Development made a rough estimate that contamination is costing California $4 billion every year in law enforcement, clean up, health problems, and so on.

I don't mean to be hysterical. Chemicals have not run out of control, yet, and useful steps like requiring double- tanking to prevent leaks from spreading have gone into effect. But there's a limit to what can be done with new rules, reorganizing bureaucracies, prodding officials along, and the slow process of the courts.

If a strong California economy is a worthwhile goal, heavy chemical use will be needed. And if those chemicals are to be monitored and contained as completely as possible, there are no substitutes for a major infusion of money, staff and expertise.

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