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Freedom Books of the Month for September, 2002:
Out of Bounds, Out of Control: Regulatory Enforcement at the EPALead Astray: Inside an EPA Superfund Disaster
by Peter Samuel
Pacific Research Institute 2002, trade paper, 241 pp.
ISBN: 0-936488-86-7
The Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development is over. According to many in the environmental movement, government and corporations "won." I'm not sure about that, but assuming that it's true, we're in big trouble, at least when it comes to government-led environmentalism in the U.S. This month's Freedom Book of the Month co-winners explain why, delivering solid indictments of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Out of Bounds, Out of Control: Regulatory Enforcement at the EPA is a slim volume that can be read quickly, yet is loaded with data condemnatory of the EPA. From the first page, where DeLong comments that if the EPA were to list every entity it deals with on certain items, every U.S. landowner would be included, to the closing chapter addressing the uphill battle of EPA reform, the book assails the idea that the EPA is about cleaning the environment. Where DeLong perhaps shines brightest is in the opening chapters, describing how completely arbitrarily EPA prosecutes "violators" (many of whom simply cannot successfully run the maze of paperwork EPA requires, and are targeted for paper snafus rather than pollution violations). Civil or criminal suits (or both), prosecution under old law or new law, changing the interpretation of a finding -- the method doesn't matter to the EPA; they'll do whatever it takes to go after whomever they want.
Case after case documents that that's exactly what EPA officials do: target those they don't like, or who don't appear submissive and repentant enough. Why do they do this? As others before DeLong have also pointed out, environmental quality in the U.S. was improving *before* the EPA was established, and that trend has continued as market forces showed that consumers value minimizing pollution. To keep their budget and staffing in place, the EPA has to do something to justify their expenses -- so they pad their statistics with meaningless cases. With few serious polluters to target, the EPA has become a bureaucratic fiefdom, wasting taxpayer money on small pollution cases and paperwork violations. Out of Bounds, Out of Control is a potent indictment of the general workings of the EPA.
Lead Astray: Inside an EPA Superfund Disaster is an equally strong book, aimed directly at the EPA's incompetence in handling lead cleanups. Peter Samuel traveled to many lead Superfund cleanup sites, and in most cases the stories were remarkably similar: arbitrary demands, ignorance, and the expectation that everything the EPA wants, it gets. In concurrence with DeLong's general observations, Samuel presents evidence that problems due to lead in the environment have been declining, yet EPA often zealously pursues "offenders." Particularly egregious are the cases where companies, upon discovery of a problem, tried to act responsibly but were chewed up by EPA's relentless grinding.
Samuel is a patient author, starting at the beginning and explaining in clear language the potential problems with lead. He documents the science of detecting lead levels and of handling various lead hazards, and shows how EPA often ignores these and proceeds according to its own agenda, even when it costs millions and may hurt rather than help. Invaluable in a book like this are the stories where individuals and corporations successfully challenge EPA, and get it to stop its action or proceed in a different direction. Samuel includes several such cases, with enough detail that they're helpful to others who find themselves confronting an EPA superfund cleanup.
Taken together -- and these two books play off each other very well -- Lead Astray and Out of Bounds document the persistent, pervasive problems with a state-based approach to environmental issues. Both are fact-filled, yet accessible to a lay audience. The tone is interesting and engaging. While neither offers a clear solution to the problems with the EPA, the latter shows that the EPA can be moved aside, and both encourage concerned individuals to work at ridding this country of perhaps its largest environmental menace -- the EPA.
from Laissez Faire Books, $8.95.
from the Pacific Research Institute, $24.95.
More book information for September 2002
edited by Sunni Maravillosa
August 2002: Boston's Gun Bible II by Boston T. Party
July 2002: Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan
June 2002: Net Assets by Carl Bussjaeger
May 2002: The Ballad of Carl Drega by Vin Suprynowicz
April 2002: Toward Liberty: The Idea that is Changing the World edited by David Boaz
March 2002: Liberty for Women edited by Wendy McElroy
February 2002: The State vs. the People by Aaron Zelman and Claire Wolfe
Freedom Book of the Year, 2001: Hope by Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith
January 2002: Death by Gun Control by Aaron Zelman and Richard W. Stevens
December 2001: The American Zone by L. Neil Smith
November 2001: Ayn Rand and Business by Donna Greiner and Theodore Kinni
October 2001: Junk Science Judo by Steven J. Milloy
September 2001: Jonathan Gullible by Ken Schoolland
August 2001: Hope by L. Neil Smith and Aaron Zelman
July 2001: Dissenting Electorate edited by Wendy McElroy and Carl Watner
June 2001: Tethered Citizens by Sheldon Richman
May 2001: Lever Action by L. Neil Smith
April 2001: The Cato Handbook for Congress from the Cato Institute
March 2001: The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand by David Kelley
February 2001: Crypto by Steven Levy
January 2001: Total Freedom by Chris Matthew Sciabarra
Freedom Book of the Year 2000: Forge of the Elders by L. Neil Smith
December 2000: The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto
November 2000: Escape from Leviathan by J.C. Lester
October 2000: The Art of Political War by David Horowitz
September 2000: An Enemy of the State by Justin Raimondo
August 2000: The Triumph of Liberty by Jim Powell
July 2000: A Generation Divided by Rebecca Klatch
June 2000: Law's Order by David Friedman
May 2000: Forge of the Elders by L. Neil Smith
April 2000: Reciprocia by Richard G. Rieben
March 2000: The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers by Ayn Rand
February 2000: Addiction is a Choice by Jeffrey A. Schaler
January 2000: Revolutionary Language by David C. Calderwood
Special December 1999 Feature: The Freedom Book of the Year: Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998 by Vin Suprynowicz
November 1999: Conquests and Cultures by Thomas Sowell
October 1999: A Way To Be Free by Robert LeFevre, edited by Wendy McElroy
September 1999: Assassins (Left Behind) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
August 1999: Don't Shoot the Bastards (Yet): 101 More Ways to Salvage Freedom by Claire Wolfe
July 1999: The Mitzvah by L. Neil Smith and Aaron Zelman
June 1999: The Incredible Bread Machine by R.W. Grant
May 1999: Send in the Waco Killers by Vin Suprynowicz
April 1999: It Still Begins with Ayn Rand by Jerome Tuccille
March 1999: The Dictionary of Free-Market Economics by Fred Foldvary
February 1999: Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand edited by Mimi Reisel Gladstein and Chris Matthew Sciabarra
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