As I read Adam Sowards’ perspective, “Where NEPA fell short” (January 2020), I reminisced about my long-ago days at the Environmental Protection Agency during the second term of EPA Administrator Bill Ruckelshaus (May 18, 1983, to Jan. 4, 1985). I disagree with the assertion that NEPA fell short. It did not. It was, and still is, the accumulation of bureaucrats that fall short, those who lack the fortitude to abide by their agencies’ missions and charters. They chose, or choose, to kowtow to politics and budgets. Today, we might well replace the “P” in “EPA” with “pillage” or “plunder.” I’m sure Ruckelshaus, who passed away in November 2019, was deeply saddened by the current administration’s “streamlining” of NEPA and other policies and protective acts.
—Bill Christie, via email
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Bureaucrats, not NEPA, fall short.
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