Congress has discovered a way to satisfy the ``environmental protection'' machine without political cost: the unfunded mandate.

Congress can pass a law requiring a new, cleaner standard and mandate that cities comply with the law. Cities must then use local property taxes that would otherwise pay for police, firefighting, schools, and public health measures to pay for compliance costs. Local officials face the storm of protest for raising taxes; Congress takes the credit for a cleaner environment.

For example, the municipality of Anchorage, Alaska, was told by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that complying with the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System of the Clean Water Act would cost about $50,000. As of September, Anchorage had spent $1.5 million on the permit application, and the cost of implementing the program if a permit is issued cannot yet be calculated. According to the Stormwater Quality Task Force of the American Public Works Association, ``currently available stormwater management practices or technologies cannot achieve numeric water quality objectives...[I]n the Clean Water Act, stormwater agencies will be held to a standard of performance that is not achievable.'' Yet noncompliance can result in fines of up to $50,000 per day and prison terms for responsible officials.

Compliance with currently existing requirements would cost the city of Anchorage about $430 million ($20,000 per capita) between 1991 and 2000. For the city of Columbus, Ohio, the cost over the same period would be $1.6 billion. These calculations do not include the requirements of laws for which regulations are not yet written.

What is the basis for the mandates? One criterion for measuring acceptable risk is the ``one-in-a-million'' chance of developing cancer in a lifetime. Originally, this standard was a screening level used as a guideline for measuring carcinogenic materials in animal tests under the 1958 Delaney Clause. In a paper presented at the 84th annual meeting of the Air and Waste Management Association, Dr. Kathryn E. Kelly said: ``What the FDA intended to be a lower regulatory level of `zero risk' below which no consideration would be given as to risk to human health, many federal and state agency decisions somehow came to consider a maximum or target level of `acceptable risk'.''

Kelly identified Nathan Mantel, a biostatistician at the National Cancer Institute, as the originator of the ``one-in-a-million'' criterion, who said ``...we just pulled it out of a hat.'' This arbitrary standard has forced government and industry to waste untold billions of dollars.

The purpose of standards is to avert premature deaths. Here is a sampling of the resultant cost in terms of cost per premature death averted, from Office of Management and Budget data:

Aircraft cabin fire protection $100,000

Auto fuel-system integrity standard 400,000

Trenching and excavating standard 1,500,000

Asbestos ban 110,700,000

Hazardous waste disposal ban 4,190,400,000

Proposed solid waste standards 19,107,000,000

Atrazine drinking water standard 92,069,700,000

(The atrazine drinking water standard is 3 ppb─equivalent to half an aspirin dissolved in a 16,000 gallon railroad tank car.)

extracted from Eco× Logic columns #37-39 by Meritt Lamb

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DDP will sponsor an educational civil defense exhibit at the First Annual ECO Conference at the Reno Hilton Hotel, February 18-20. The theme of the conference will be ``Environomics: Protecting the Free Market Economy.'' For further details, call ECO at (708)344-1556 or DDP at (602)325-2680.

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ECO× LOGIC: People balancing the environmental equation. A 32-page monthly is published by ECO at the address above. The December, 1992, issue features: ``The capitalist rainforest: a bionomic view,'' and ``The Equal Access to Justice Act.''

NWI Resource: the voice of reason on the environment. The fall, 1992, issue focuses on the Endangered Species Act and the new Clean Air Act. It gives some insight into what to expect from new Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, League of Conservation Voters President and former Governor of Arizona: ``We must identify our enemies and drive them into oblivion.'' Individual membership $25. [National Wilderness Institute, 25766 Georgetown Station, Washington, DC 20007.]

World Climate Review, vol. 1, no. 1, Fall 1992, considers the questions: ``Greenhouse Effect: Fact or Fiction?'' and ``Hurricane Andrew: a Sign of Things to Come?'' ``Planet Watch'' provides the best current data on global temperature measurements. The quarterly journal is edited by Patrick Michaels, Dept. of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903.

Projections No. 7/8, Autumn-Winter 1992, concerns ``Science and the Environment'': the Heidelberg Appeal, hazardous substances, the ozone layer, the myth of overpopulation, and risk analysis (low doses of carcinogens, asbestos, dioxin, ionizing radiation). [Editorial office: Editions de Santé, 19, rue Louis-le-Grand, 75002 Paris.

At the conclusion of the Rio Summit, more than 400 scientists appealed to heads of state to consider that: ``the greatest evils which stalk our Earth are ignorance and oppression, and not Science, Technology, and Industry.'' The scientists warned against ``decisions which are supported by pseudoscientific arguments or false and nonrelevant data.'' They expressed their concern about ``the emergence of an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress, and impedes economic and social development.''