What government agency would spend $ 1 million to give the taxpayers $ 5 worth of benefits?The Pentagon, you'd say, mindful of $ 600 toilet seats, $ 117 soap dishes and $ 999 pliers.
Wrong, I'd say. It's another government agency -- the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency -- and if a new study is right, what the agency will accomplish with its much-ballyhooed Great Lakes Initiative will make the toilet seat/soap dish/pliers fiascoes look like small potatoes.
You may have forgotten all the hoo-ha over the EPA's initiative a few years ago, but the municipalities and industries in the Great Lakes Basin states, including Illinois, that must cough up hundreds of millions of dollars annually to halt 20 "point source" pollutants, certainly haven't.
Back in 1993 after taking office, EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner rushed to propose the regulations, which she said "for the first time will ensure consistent protection of humans, wildlife and aquatic life throughout the Great Lakes basin" that now are "extremely vulnerable to persistent pollutants."
Even though 90 percent of Great Lakes pollutants come from airborne and sources other than the municipal and industrial pipes that lead into the lakes, the EPA pressed ahead, claiming that imposing a whole set of new standardized rules would be a cost-effective "great step forward."
But now that the regulations have been in place since 1995, a scientist has concluded that the effort isn't worth it. Daniel W. Smith is senior limnologist for the Exton, Pa., office of Conestoga-Rovers & Associates, a worldwide engineering, environmental and construction services firm. His study was financed by the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which will make EPA apologists say, "Ah-ha! A conservative group. No need to read further."
Others with more open minds, however, will be interested in reading the numbing figures. The EPA's own cost-benefit analysis asserted that the initiative was a "cost-effective," "common-sense" regulation that "will restore the health and economy of the Great Lakes." Smith, however, found that the cost-benefit ratio was 185,000-1. In other words, each $ 1 million invested in the initiative would produce a benefit of around $ 5.
The EPA's benefits analysis estimated that between 25 and 47 cancers would be averted over 70 years for Great Lakes fish consumers. But Smith says the benefits don't even approach that level. More likely, between 0.008 and 0.015 cancer deaths would be averted over that 70 years. At most, in other words, that's one cancer death likely to be averted over the next 6,000 years.
Smith believes that this is more than a simple blunder by the EPA, and accuses the agency of intentionally using assumptions, erroneous data and methodologies that violate its own guidelines. For example, he said, the EPA assumed a rate of fish consumption roughly three times higher than possible, given the Lake Michigan fish catch; assumed that all the fish are as contaminated as lake trout, and assumed that point sources contribute to between 5 percent and 10 percent of Great Lakes pollution, an estimate that's at least 630 percent too high.
This isn't the first time that the EPA has found itself targeted for misusing science. A federal judge has overruled the EPA's decision to classify secondhand smoke as a Class A carcinogen. More than a dozen EPA scientists and contractors have gone public with charges that the agency stifles dissent and misuses science.
The least we can do is listen to Smith's recommendation for an independent review of the EPA's "science." No, he's not for doing away with the EPA or relaxing important environmental standards. "These indeed are serious times," he said. "The environment continues to face extreme pressure from human activities and the shortsightedness of human thought. But this is all the more reason that regulatory agencies such as EPA must function at the highest possible level of accuracy and honesty."
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