Improving Environmental Management

Executive Summary

Along the San Francisco Bay/Delta, the most human-altered estuary on the
West Coast, a one-mile stretch of shoreline may be affected by the
decisions of over 400 government agencies. This one-mile stretch points
up how environmental policy is marked by duplication and overlap, turf
battles, and political jockeying. Numerous agencies participate.

Consider this: The Bureau of Land Management oversees 60 percent of the
federal lands for multiple purposes; the Forest Service manages our
National Forests; the Fish and Wildlife Service manages our National
Wildlife Refuge System; the National Park Service oversees the National
Parks and Grasslands for recreation and preservation; the Environmental
Protection Agency implements national waste management and air and water
quality laws; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
manages coastal zones and living marine resources; and such agencies as
the Bureau of Reclamation, the Federal Highway Administration, the
Department of Energy, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Department
of Defense run programs with significant environmental impacts.

With environmental regulation spread out among so many players,
President Clinton is seeking a dramatically new approach, --ecosystem
management -- exemplified by the Forest Plan that he announced shortly
after his April 1993 Forest Conference in Portland, Oregon. Under the
concept, land and resource managers consider how to handle natural
processes and human activity within a given region. The government will
organize its activities around ecosystems, not political jurisdictions.

The Federal Role.

The federal government, however, sends out signals not just through its
policies but also its daily operations -- how it manages the lands,
buildings, and other facilities that it owns or operates. In that arena,
too, past practices have raised questions about Washington's commitment
to a clean environment.

The government operates office buildings,housing developments,industrial
plants, parks, and golf courses. It manages lands used in a variety of
activities. It provides aid for research and development. And it
regulates many private activities. To support these functions, the
government owns or operates over 500,000 facilities- about 430,000
residential, with the rest office buildings or industrial and research
facilities. The government also manages about a third of all land in the
United States. Thus, the federal government's sheer size makes its
impact on the environment apparent. In those daily operations, the
government has generated significant amounts of pollution and caused
other stresses on our ecological systems. The government and the nation
continue to pay through higher operating costs, clean-up costs, and the
loss of our natural resources and a clean environment. Instead of being
a model environmental actor, the government has become part of the
problem.

A Vision for Action

In this report, the National Performance Review (NPR) lays out a new
vision for federal action, one that builds upon the changes already
underway in the White House, in departments and agencies, and at the
state level. The NPR foresees the federal government as a continuing
force for positive change to:

** promote sustainable economic development,

** prevent environmental degradation, **reduce costs, and

** maintain the long-term health of the nation's ecological systems.

Our specific recommendations on "reinventing environmental management"
should help create a government that, as the NPR's summary document
promises, "works better and costs less".  It will work better by
reducing its negative impacts on the environment and ensuring
productive, sustainable natural systems. And it will cost less by
incorporating environmental considerations into its decisions and, from
a fiscal as well as an environmental standpoint, operating its
facilities and programs more efficiently.

In how it incorporates environmental matters into its activities, the
federal government sends an important signal to the nation. NPR wants to
help make that signal a resoundingly positive one. So, too, does
President Clinton. In his 1993 Earth Day address, he stated that the
federal government needs to "stop not only the waste of taxpayers' money
but the waste of our natural resources."

This report offers two sets of recommendations for fundamentally new
approaches.

Improve Implementation of Environmental Management.

For environmental management, Washington has traditionally used
pollution control techniques, rather than the more desirable pollution
prevention strategies. One key reason is the government's current
accounting and financial analysis methods. Because they do not include
environmental costs, these accounting and financial methods encourage
public officials to choose alternatives that appear cheaper in the short
term -- although government and society pay more through expensive
clean-up, environmental degradation, and litigation costs over the long
term. The government clearly needs to develop a system of environmental
cost accounting to help federal managers evaluate all costs -- including
the environmental ones -- associated with government's decisions.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Defense Department should
convene an interagency working group to develop demonstration projects,
over the next two years, to test the use of environmental cost
accounting in the federal government. The President then should issue a
directive to implement environmental cost accounting where appropriate.

As we have seen, environmental management is divided among numerous
federal agencies with inconsistent mandates and conflicting
jurisdictions that follow bureaucratic, not ecological, boundaries.
Consequently, the government spends far too little time focused on the
health of whole ecosystems. And while several agencies have developed
ecosystem management statements, they (and divisions within the
agencies) differ in just what that concept means. For the concept to
work, the agencies should develop collaborative programs around common
goals.

Thus, the President and top administration officials must work to break
down bureaucratic barriers that prevent agencies from working together
to protect the environment. The President should issue a directive that
would establish ecosystem management as a national policy as well as
specific steps to implement it. The director of the White House Office
on Environmental Policy should establish a high- level inter-agency task
force to develop ecosystem management demonstration projects, while the
Office of Management and Budget should review proposed agency activities
in selected ecosystems as part of the fiscal year 1995 budget process.

Improve Environmental Performance at Federal Buildings and Facilities.

In fiscal year 1991, the federal government paid nearly $3.75 billion in
energy costs for its buildings. Without losses in comfort or
productivity, the government likely could conserve 25 to 40 percent of
the energy used in those buildings through commercially available,
cost-effective, efficiency upgrades. Water conservation measures also
could help alleviate not only water problems in local areas, which
anticipate or have experienced water shortages or rate increases, but
also reduce energy use. By conserving water, the federal government not
only will help keep costs down, but will lessen local pressures for new
water treatment facilities and power plants.

While the 1992 Energy Policy Act requires that the federal government
conserve energy and water -- that is, cut energy usage 20 percent by the
year 2000 and install all energy and water conservation measures that
pay for themselves within 10 years -- current funding and procurement
processes are interfering with that goal. Agencies' inability to retain
cost savings achieved through energy and water efficiency projects also
creates a disincentive for the agencies to carry out these projects.

In this area, the President should issue a directive that addresses the
need for energy and water conservation in federal facilities and either
encourages or directs agencies to adopt policies that rely on less
polluting forms of energy. He also should propose legislation that would
allow the Defense Department to retain savings generated through water
efficiency projects. At the same time, agencies should develop rules,
procedures, and legislation to allow them to keep rebates from utility
companies beyond the fiscal year, and to apply them to additional energy
efficiency and water conservation projects or to cut the facility's
future utility bills.

Federal facilities also require substantial landscaping activities.
Modified landscaping techniques not only would help the government
demonstrate environmentally sound behavior, they would also save money.
By using native plant species, for instance, the government can
significantly improve an area's ecological value. And by using less
water and chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, the
government can generate economic and environmental benefits.

Consequently, the President should issue a directive to require the use
of environmentally beneficial landscaping for federal lands and
facilities, and federally funded projects, where appropriate. The
directive should be designed to increase the use of native plant species
in all federal landscaping activities, reduce the quantity of chemicals
applied to federal landscapes, use water-efficient technologies in
federal landscaping projects, provide educational and conservation
opportunities to the public, and create a governmentwide Environmentally
Sound Landscape Program.