FOR too long, the US Environmental Protection Agency has been a matter of
some envy on this side of the Atlantic. But last week ministers announced that
Britain too is to have an 鈥淓nvironment Agency鈥�. The absence of the word
鈥減rotection鈥� in the title is no mere accident.
So control of pollution of Britain鈥檚 rivers, coastal waters and air, as
well as lisensing of waste disposal, is to come under one body. The theory is
that it will be properly controlled 鈥� not just switched between the local
river, the local air and the local waste dump, depending on which set of
pollution regulators is toughest. The new agency is introduced in the name of
integrated pollution control. Three cheers for that.
But what point is there in creating a large, strong and intelligent
watchdog if you are going to draw its teeth and order it not to bark? The new
agency, it emerged, will have no clear mission to clean up the environment,
nor even to prevent it deteriorating further (see This Week).
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In place of a call to arms, environment secretary John Gummer鈥檚 draft
legislation charges the new agency with the job of 鈥渉aving regard to the
desirability of conserving and enhancing natural beauty and of conserving
flora, fauna and geological or geophysical features of special interest鈥�. At
the same time, the agency must also 鈥渉ave regard鈥� to the costs and benefits of
its actions: industry must not be inconvenienced. This is a recipe for legal
challenge to the agency鈥檚 every move.
Three years after John Major first promised the agency, two years after his
commitments to the Earth Summit, a year after the government published its
much-hyped but vague strategy on 鈥渟ustainable development鈥�, Britain is to be
landed with a pollution watchdog demonstrably less well armed in law than its
predecessors.
Even before it opens for business the new agency is likely to have enemies
at the Department of Trade and Industry. It will certainly be hounded by
Conservative politicians if it tries to impose environmental directives from
the loathsome European Union. And it will be harassed in the courts by
companies if it so much as suggests that cleaning up might cost them
money.
An environmental agency should be an advocate for the environment and an
apostle of innovation in pollution control 鈥� not an apologist for the
polluters. It should be a police force, not a consultancy service.
Gummer should give the new watchdog some shiny, sharp teeth.