Extensions Summer 2016

A Journal of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center

Summer 2016

EPA CLEAN WATER ACTOF 1972

GRIDLOCK 1945-1972 PORK CLIMATE

CONGRESS’S WATER CHALLENGE

Established in 1979 by the Oklahoma Regents for Higher Education and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center is a nonpartisan institution devoted to instruction and scholarship related to the United States Congress. The mission of the Center is defined broadly in terms of academic inquiry into the history, structure, process, personnel, and policies of the Congress, and the relationship between the Congress and other agencies and actors in the American political system.

In the most general sense, the Center is concerned with the problems of modern representative democracy, as exemplified by the Congress.

In pursuit of this goal, the Carl Albert Center performs four principal functions. The first is the development of academic programs in congressional studies at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, which are sponsored in cooperation with the University of Oklahoma’s Department of Political Science. At the graduate level the Center offers a four-year, specialized fellowship program leading toward the doctoral degree. Each Fellow receives a fully financed program of study. At the undergraduate level the Center sponsors a research fellowship program designed to foster collaborative research between faculty and undergraduates.

Second, believing that professional research is the foundation upon which its academic programs rest, the Center promotes original research by faculty members and students into various aspects of politics and the Congress.

The Center encourages publication and provides its faculty and students with institutional and financial support to travel for research purposes and to present research findings at professional conferences.

The third function of the Center is the development of resource materials related to the Congress. The Center’s Congressional Archives, which are among the largest in the country, include the papers of more than 50 former members of Congress. Such prominent Oklahomans as Speaker Carl Albert, Dewey F. Bartlett, Page Belcher, Mickey Edwards, Glenn English, Robert S. Kerr, Sr., Fred Harris, Steve Largent, Dave McCurdy, Mike Monroney, Tom Steed, Mike Synar, and J. C. Watts have donated their papers to the Center along with such distinguished non-Oklahomans as Dick Armey, Helen Gahagan Douglas, and Carl Hatch.

Fourth, the Center actively strives to promote a wider understanding and appreciation of the Congress through various civic education programs. The Center sponsors conferences, speakers, television appearances, and the biennial Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture in Representative Government. The Center also publishes Extensions, a journal which focuses on issues related to the Congress. Taken together, these diverse aspects of the Carl Albert Center constitute a unique resource for scholarship and research related to the United States Congress.

The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center Director and Curator Cindy Simon Rosenthal Associate Director Michael H. Crespin Regents’ Professor Ronald M. Peters, Jr. Director of Administration Katherine McRae Assistant Director for N.E.W. Leadership Lorna Vazquez Assistant Curator Nathan Gerth Archivist Rachel Henson National Advisory Board David E. Albert Richard A. Baker David L. Boren John Brademas Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Joseph S. Foote Joel Jankowsky Thomas J. Kenan Dave McCurdy Frank H. Mackaman Thomas E. Mann Chuck Neal Michael L. Reed Catherine E. Rudder Hon. Tom Cole 4th District, Oklahoma ex officio Managing Editor, Extensions Chip Minty Minty Communications LLC Graphic Designer, Extensions Brandy Akbaran University of Oklahoma Printing, Mailing and Document Services

A Journal of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center

TABLE OF CONTENTS Summer 2016

Editor’s Introduction

2

Water, Water Everywhere?

Special Orders

4

Cindy Simon Rosenthal

The Clean Water Act: A Congressional Achievement Paul Milazzo

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The New Era in Water Policy

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Is Today’s Congress Capable of Modernizing Environmental Policy?

Daniel McCool

Michael E. Kraft

For the Record

24

Congress and Water Policy: A Digital Humanities Course

25

Congressman Jim Jones and The Reagan Revolution

27

News from the Center

Lindsay E. Marshall

Katherine McRae

Images courtesy of AP Images, Flickr.com, Photospin.com and Wikimedia Commons.

Extensions is a copyrighted publication of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center. It is published twice each year and distributed free of charge.

To receive copies of Extensions, or to obtain permission to reprint, please contact Katherine McRae at (405) 325-6372 or e-mail to mcrae@ou.edu. Extensions also may be viewed on the Center’s website at www.ou.edu/carlalbertcenter.

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Editor’s Introduction

WATER, WATER

EVERYWHERE? Cindy Simon Rosenthal Editor’s Note: Extensions editor Ronald M. Peters Jr. is on sabbatical. Carl Albert Center director and curator Cindy Simon Rosenthal is standing in for him for this issue.

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n many ways, U.S. municipal drinking water supplies are a modern miracle that we have come to take for granted... that is until recently. The lead poisoning tragedy of Flint, Michigan and the California water wars precipitated by epic drought conditions have begun to alter our consciousness about this vital resource and our assumptions about its safety and abundance.

Charles Fishman, author of The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water,1 warns that the United States has been lulled by its own ability to engineer systems of water delivery that lead us to under-appreciate the complexities of this vital resource. To meet our 21st century water policy challenge, it is necessary to understand where the water in our pipes originates, how it arrives in our homes and businesses, and what it takes to keep it clean and flowing. As Fishman notes, “Our very success with water has allowed us to become water illiterate.”

Over my 12 years on the Norman City Council (nine as mayor), no issue has been more nagging, challenging, and vexing than supplying safe, clean and plentiful water to the citizens.

We have experienced drought, weathered floods, invested in new water treatment and wastewater technologies, responded to changing water quality standards, and puzzled over what to do about storm water. As 2

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I approach the end of my city service, the topic discussed in this issue of Extensions remains front and center on our local agenda. Unfortunately, only a handful of Americans (beyond municipal utility operators, elected officials, and academic researchers) devote much thought to the public policies which govern this resource.

More than 40 years ago, the U.S. Congress enacted two pieces of landmark legislation – the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 – along with other transformative environmental statutes that helped to create the modern miracle of safe municipal drinking water. The Congress created a complex intergovernmental framework to supply and protect one of life’s most vital resources. These statutes remain on the books today.

The contributors to this issue were asked to consider both the past and the future public policy affecting American water supply and quality.

Burrowing into the legislative history on water gives some insight not only on how our federal system has responded to water policy challenges but also how congressional politics have changed from then to now. We also asked the authors in this issue of Extensions to identify the new public policy challenges on the horizon and to contemplate whether Congress is up to the task. Our contributors in this volume are well equipped

to guide us through this policy domain. Paul Milazzo has written a definitive history of the Clean Water Act’s development between 1945 and 1972. 2 Here he recounts how Congress itself responded to the plethora of local water infrastructure needs at mid-century and adopted new thinking about ecology and systems engineering. Notably, the policy leadership came not from an established grassroots environmental movement but from “unlikely environmentalists” – the members of Congress who saw the opportunity to combine distributive politics and economic development goals. In his essay, Milazzo notes that the Act was “full of surprises” both in terms of the federalism politics, the strange bedfellows among bureaucratic players, the interbranch struggles between Congress and the Nixon Administration, and the sheer sweep of environmental innovation. The final legislation emphasized cooperation and invested broad authority in the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency to protect “waters of the United States.”

While Milazzo focuses on the water quality issues of the mid-20th century – burning rivers, running sewage, and toxic industrial waste discharges – Daniel McCool explores the question of water quantity that led to the pork barrel politics of big dam projects, navigation

channels, locks, and hydropower facilities. McCool, an expert on water resource development, describes how the era of big dams and massive infrastructure projects are intertwined with complex relations between Native American tribes, public lands, and issues of environmental justice.

Certainly Oklahoma’s Senator Robert S. Kerr, whose papers are housed at the Carl Albert Center, reigned as undisputed king of water projects, and his legacy of dambuilding turned the drought-stricken state of Oklahoma into some 55,646 miles of shoreline. The state’s surface waters total more square miles than the state of Rhode Island. Kerr’s crowning achievement – the KerrMcClellan Arkansas Navigation System – was the subject of an historic decades-long court dispute over tribal claims to ownership of the Arkansas Riverbed, a case that was ultimately decided in favor of the Choctaw, Cherokee, and Chickasaw nations.

command-and-control regulatory structures of the 1970s to new policy instruments that harness market incentives, public-private partnerships, and innovative approaches to regulation.

On issues of both water quality and water quantity, our authors remind us of the consequences of bipartisan congressional support for funding local infrastructure that transformed the water landscape of the 20th century. For better or for worse, bipartisan consensus and the mechanism of earmarks, which made big legislative packages possible, are absent in the 21st century Congress.

Milazzo worries that the 24-hour cable and internet news environment, redistricting and changes in congressional procedures have intensified partisan politics, and they may prevent the kind of cooperative spirit that makes ambitious policy initiatives possible. Similarly, McCool worries about the sharp partisan

WATER POLICY PROVIDES A UNIQUE WINDOW ON CONGRESS AS AN INSTITUTION, AND TO THE EXTENT THAT PAST IS PROLOGUE THERE IS MUCH TO LEARN. Michael Kraft, a prolific writer on environmental politics, policy, and the role of Congress, provides our final essay, focusing primarily on the U.S. Congress.

He celebrates the leadership demonstrated by the Congress to build political support and establish a consensus that incorporated the conflicting perspectives of industry, environmentalists, state and local governments, and the White House.

The resulting legislation passed by overwhelming margins. He acknowledges the success of the 1972 Clean Water Act, and he recognizes its shortcomings which, led to his call for a new Clean Water Act for the 21st century. Major policy change will require a paradigm shift from the

divide over climate change and the reluctance to invest in infrastructure that might increase the federal deficit and national debt. He also expresses concern about social equity and environmental justice. Describing Congress as “a highly proficient institution for policymaking,” Kraft is perhaps more optimistic that congressional action is possible based on the success of the sustainable community movement.

Our authors call for new policy instruments or at least a rethinking of old ones. For Kraft that means an integrated and comprehensive approach that considers agricultural practices, energy use, transportation, and the environmental consequences of modern life. McCool argues that we

will not only have to meet America’s water needs for the next 200 years but also deal with the legacy of aging infrastructure from our first 200 years.

One of McCool’s three prescriptions for action includes a process to deal with aging and outdated dam infrastructure similar to the base realignment process for closing defense facilities. Interestingly, the base realignment process was proposed when Congress was unable or unwilling to deal with these issues.

The 21st century presents a picture of troubled waters ahead. Quality and quantity of water will continue to be companion concerns, and climate variability will exacerbate those concerns. These questions will not be easy for Congress to confront. But we do know that Congress will be in the forefront of the debate. Is Congress up to the job? We will see.

Water policy provides a unique window on Congress as an institution, and to the extent that past is prologue there is much to learn.

We are fortunate at the Carl Albert Center to be the stewards of many congressional collections on subjects important to this debate – tribal rights, public lands, water, agriculture, infrastructure, and energy. I close by noting that we are using this resource to educate future public policy scholars. Learn more about this opportunity for University of Oklahoma undergraduate students in Lindsay Marshall’s article in this volume, which recounts how archives-based learning can be a transformative educational experience. Further I urge you to visit our traveling exhibit (or its online version) on the congressional role in shaping water policy. For more information, http://www. ou.edu/content/carlalbertcenter/ congressional-collection/exhibits.html.

Notes 1.

Charles Fishman, 2012, The Big Thirst.

Free Press 2.

Paul Charles Milazzo, 2006, Unlikely Environmentalists: Congress and Clean Water, 1945-1972, University of Kansas Press.

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Special Orders

THE CLEAN WATER ACT:

A CONGRESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENT Paul Milazzo | Ohio University Paul Charles Milazzo is Associate Professor of History at Ohio University, where he teaches and writes about 20th century U.S. history, environmental policy, and conservative politics and economic ideas. He is currently at work on a biography of Henry Hazlitt, the influential libertarian journalist. His first book, Unlikely Environmentalists: Congress and Clean Water, 19451972 (University Press of Kansas), is now out in paperback. He can be reached at milazzo@ohio.edu.

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the statute itself, one that predates to navigable waters, and no boats t reads like an old, familiar the upheaval of the ‘60s and early are going to ply a prairie pothole story – or so we think. The ‘70s. The federal government’s anytime soon. And so the lines are Obama Administration involvement with water quality drawn: an assertive executive versus attempts to expand the actually stretches back to the years a reactive Congress. Democrats government’s regulatory reach over just after the Second World War, versus Republicans. Ecology versus the environment using the lever an era identified more with the economic development. T’was of administrative rule making, and Cold War and explosive economic ever thus.

Republicans in Congress mobilize growth than environmentalism. As Or was it? Historians are quick to prevent it. At issue this time is it turns out, the past can intrude to caution that the way things are the exact latitude provided under upon the present in ways we don’t now doesn’t necessarily reflect the 1972 Clean Water Act for even notice, especially in the realm how they have always been. In fact, federal regulation of the “waters of government policy. The federal the categories, characters, and of the United States.” A broad water pollution control program as conflicts we take for granted in interpretation of these words would we know it emerged as a distinct today’s environmental politics had enlarge the definition of “wetlands” outgrowth of older ideas, agendas, little to do with how federal laws to to include areas not all that wet, and institutional and place arrangements not them under typically associated with the jurisdiction the environment. Even as of the the players and priorities Environmental UNFOLDED, THE INTERNAL WORKINGS OF changed over time, these Protection anachronistic influences Agency and CONGRESS MUST TAKE CENTER STAGE. continued to shape what Army Corps the government did of Engineers. and how it did it – right up to the protect our nation’s water supplies Environmentalists applaud this present day. evolved. The 1972 Clean Water heightened level of protection for To observe how this story Act remains the most important of marshes, meadowlands, prairie unfolded, the internal workings of these laws, reflecting a time when potholes, arctic tundra, and similar Congress must take center stage. environmentalism first emerged areas unaffected by tidal action.

This, too, comes as a surprise as a mass movement influential But land owners and business for those conditioned to view enough to demand rigorous interests rally to protest potential the presidency as the epicenter regulatory responses to pollution. restrictions on private land and of federal power and the font But the 1972 Act has a history activities; they insist that the of programmatic innovation. as multifaceted and complex as government’s ambit extends only

TO OBSERVE HOW THIS STORY

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The Constitution suggests otherwise, of course, but so, too, does the broader history of the United States over the last hundred years. Congress may look like a relic sometimes with its decentralized structure and deliberative process, but since the close of the 19th century,

for important policy networks, out of which emerged some of the most influential new government initiatives of the post-1945 era.

Environmental policy was a prominent example. The timing and substance of the nation’s water pollution control programs after 1945 had more to do with

THE TIMING AND SUBSTANCE OF THE NATION’S WATER POLLUTION CONTROL PROGRAMS AFTER 1945 HAD MORE TO DO WITH THE INTERNAL EVOLUTION OF CONGRESS THAN PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP OR INTEREST GROUP LOBBYING. the legislature has modernized in its own way.

Indeed, unlike most institutions at the time, Congress became more modern as it became less hierarchical. It grew as the nation’s population did and responded to an everincreasing workload with a system of standing committees that accommodated the need for policy specialization. In both the House and Senate, formal and informal rules coalesced between the world wars to promote the autonomy of those committees. As seniority became the sole qualification to oversee them, their chairmen grew less beholden to party leaders or caucuses. Free from external interference or sanction, they exercised near total control over agendas, staffs, and information; some even cultivated a culture of bipartisan professionalism and consensus. In this way, ambitious chairmen established their committees as the hubs

the internal evolution of Congress than presidential leadership or interest group lobbying. No grassroots movement existed in the ‘50s or early ‘60s to demand federal solutions to a problem President Eisenhower described as “a uniquely local blight.” But the institutional incentives of the committee system encouraged legislators to pursue them anyway, outflanking the executive and outpacing public demand. These initiatives grew out of, and were filtered through, existing committee jurisdictions and the ingrained networks of interests, experts, and bureaucracies attached to them.

Like new wine from old skins, subsequent environmental laws retained hints of more traditional policies that had aged well in Congress.

Economic development, for one, remained a top priority among legislators. For much of the 20th century, when Americans worried about water, they usually worried about running short of it. Following World War II, as urban-industrial growth led to a surge in demand, extensions | Summer 2016

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better than most how pork made controlling pollution politically palatable. Blatnick, the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Rivers and Harbors, was the architect of the first permanent Federal Water Pollution Control Act in 1956. He realized that any bill seeking to impose even rudimentary standards for water quality faced entrenched opposition from powerful industrial interests. To surmount it, Blatnik first redefined the problem, casting pollution as a waste of water and pitching abatement as a conservation tool to ensure continued economic growth. This

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Congress responded with annual public works budgets for dams and diversions that soared into the billions. Federal water pollution control policy evolved as an adjunct of this extensive pursuit of water development.

In the ‘50s and ‘60s, conventional concerns about water quantity often shaped legislative approaches to water quality. Unprecedented loads of domestic sewage and industrial effluent accompanied the postwar boom. These wastes clogged rivers and lakes with particulate matter, starved them with oxygen-

Rep. John Blatnik, D-Minn, (right) with presidential candidate John F. Kennedy

depleting organic compounds, and tainted them with synthetic chemical byproducts. As contemporary policy makers saw it, pollution impeded the reuse of limited surface waters for industrial, recreational, and municipal purposes, posing an ominous threat to continued regional growth. So the same public works committees that dispensed local pork barrel projects also presided over the fledgling expansion of what would become the federal government’s largest environmental regulatory program.

A little known Democratic representative from Minnesota named John Blatnik understood 6

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rhetorical strategy reflected his own New Deal faith in natural resource management. But it also resonated more with fellow legislators than appeals to public health, since advances in sanitary engineering had reduced the incidence of water borne diseases dramatically over the previous three decades.

Next, he worked to enlist new interests that might serve as political counterweights to industry. Conservation groups spoke for sportsmen and wilderness advocates, but lacked the requisite political clout or an extensive network of lobbyists. Blatnick turned instead to municipal governments and organized labor,

luring them with a federal grant-inaid program to construct sewage treatment facilities. Persistent corporate pressure ensured that his legislation’s enforcement mechanisms never amounted to much. But by making the federal program a source of financial assistance to cities and employment opportunities for unions, Blatnik helped create reliable new constituencies with a vested interest in water pollution control.

Blatnik also knew how to exercise the institutional advantages of his chairmanship.

As one of his admiring staffers put it, he “made pollution controllers out of every member of Congress who had a channel to dig, a harbor to deepen, a bridge to build, [or] a post office to name.” To pry the bill from a recalcitrant House Rules Committee, for example, he secured a critical “yes” vote in exchange for a dredging project.

His mastery of such “distributive” politics also helped overcome subsequent partisan opposition on the floor. Republicans objected in theory to the grant program’s cost and intrusion into local affairs. But the final, lopsided vote in its favor suggested that few were willing to forego federal subsidies for desperately needed infrastructure.

It didn’t hurt that Blatnik had rigged the funding formula to benefit small towns and cities disproportionately, guaranteeing that nearly every congressional district stood to benefit. By 1961, the government had awarded over $200 million ($1.6 billion in today’s dollars) for more than 2,500 sewage treatment projects nationwide.

John Blatnik made the most of his opportunities, but his influence faded as the 1960s progressed.

Newer legislation designed to impose more of the costs of cleanup on polluters hit a persistent roadblock in the House Public Works Committee. The committee’s unwieldy size made consensus

Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center Congressional Archives

building difficult, especially with its limited staff support.

More than a few of its members also represented industrial districts, and the immediacy of biannual elections rendered them exquisitely attuned to disgruntled local interests.

But even as the House imposed structural limits on policy innovation, the post-World War II Senate offered its own institutional incentives to promote legislative entrepreneurship. In this setting, Edmund Muskie of Maine launched his career as Congress’s foremost authority on pollution and the environment – a career he neither wanted nor sought when he first arrived on Capitol Hill in 1959.

Muskie’s eventual turn as the Senate’s “Mr. Clean” did not reflect the hue and cry of the electorate, or even his own passion for the outdoors, so much as Lyndon Johnson’s ire at an uppity newcomer. By employing the “Johnson Rule,” the powerful Majority Leader had recently revised Senate norms and allowed freshman Democrats access to influential committees right away, rather than having them toil through a prolonged “apprenticeship.” Of course, in return for such plum assignments, the imposing Texan expected loyalty and obeisance. Not long after arriving in Washington, Muskie

Portrait of Robert S. Kerr later in his life resisted his entreaties to support a change in parliamentary procedure.

Johnson hit the roof and banished him to the Public Works Committee, a repository for perceived trouble makers policed by another powerful southerner, Oklahoma’s Robert Kerr. Kerr’s sudden, fatal coronary in 1962 made membership less punitive, but no more promising. A year later, the new chairman, Patrick MacNamara (D-MI), proceeded to put his colleague from Maine in charge of a temporary Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution. Now it was Muskie’s turn to hit the roof. What seemed like a dead end gig held little appeal

JOHN BLATNIK MADE THE MOST OF HIS OPPORTUNITIES, BUT HIS INFLUENCE FADED AS THE 1960s PROGRESSED. NEWER LEGISLATION DESIGNED TO IMPOSE MORE OF THE COSTS OF CLEANUP ON POLLUTERS HIT A PERSISTENT ROADBLOCK IN THE HOUSE PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE.

for a recent two-term governor with greater career ambitions than chasing smog and sewage.

But it didn’t take long for Muskie to reconsider his prospects and embrace the opportunities his new position offered. The proliferation of subcommittees after World War II represents another of Congress’s notable adaptations. Although the 1946 Legislative Reorganization Act had streamlined the unwieldy pre-war committee structure, it did nothing to diminish the workload.

Subcommittees multiplied to pick up the slack. As it turned out, they also helped to alleviate the regional disparity in the Senate’s distribution of power. Southern incumbents faced fewer electoral challenges, and so traditionally controlled a disproportionate number of committees thanks to seniority. In the ten years following the 1958 midterm election, newly minted subcommittees provided an influx of more liberal Northern senators with the institutional means to distinguish themselves.

Muskie’s initial disappointment stemmed from his failure to secure a seat on the Rivers and Harbors Subcommittee, where he had watched Robert Kerr build his influence by converting pork into political currency. But Muskie charted an alternative path to power by learning to broker another indispensable legislative resource: knowledge. He realized that his modest subcommittee provided an institutional base from which to publicize new social problems, develop legislation, cultivate supportive constituencies, and build prestige within an organization where members respected and deferred to specialists.

Muskie was a quick study and within eighteen months had transformed himself into the Senate’s leading expert on air and water pollution. He leveraged this authoritative knowledge to build

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A small section of the crowd sits shoulder to shoulder at Philadelphia’s first Earth Day observance in April 1970. (AP photo)

consensus in favor of legislation that introduced regional water quality standards for lakes and streams. The Senator utilized his talent for mastering arcane technical details to win over colleagues, but like any good entrepreneur, he also understood the importance of publicity to capture the attention of an apathetic public. As late as 1965, Gallup polls indicated only 17 percent of respondents considered pollution a serious enough problem to warrant federal action. To publicize the issue, Muskie hit the road, holding field hearings in cities across the country and adhering to a rigorous schedule of media appearances and speaking engagements.

But he also hit the big screen. In 1963, the Public Works Committee released Troubled Waters, the first-ever Senate-produced motion picture. The $200,000, 30-minute documentary introduced Americans to the nation’s water pollution crisis in vivid Technicolor. Wastes flowed undeterred from meatpacking plants, textile factories, and steel mills in varying shades of red, orange, and brown; acid mine 8

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drainage, detergent suds, algae, and oil slicks added their own distinctive hues to the putrid rainbow. Henry Fonda lent his talents as narrator, content not to compete with sewage for screen time. “If America’s waters are troubled, it is because they are overworked,” the actor intoned, admonishing the audience to heed the “lessons of Babylon.” It was left to Muskie to explain at the end how his legislation might keep the desert at bay and the water clean enough to accommodate ever-expanding industrial and recreational demands. As a leading man, the Senator and his wooden demeanor posed no threat to Fonda, but Troubled Water succeeded nonetheless in getting the message out to schools, libraries, and civic groups across the country.

The 1965 Water Quality Act was a testament to the tools at Muskie’s disposal and the context – political, institutional, and ideological – that shaped it. Muskie cultivated two critical committee resources that paid dividends in the long run: an independent, knowledgeable staff and a culture of bipartisan cooperation. The Senator allowed

his administrative assistants and committee staffers a great deal of discretion on legislative issues and day-to-day decisions. His most trusted aides brought backgrounds in law, journalism, and (in later years) ecology to bear on the challenges of pollution. They sought out expertise, parsed information, drafted most of the statutory language, and on occasion introduced entirely novel regulatory approaches. Their work received a respectful hearing and thorough vetting, thanks to Muskie’s efforts to encourage debate and dialogue among all subcommittee members, regardless of party. He carefully cultivated working relationships with minority members, who enjoyed access to information and staffing resources on an equal basis. Over the years, Republicans like Caleb Boggs, Del., Howard Baker, Tenn., and even William F. Buckley’s brother, James Buckley, N.Y., all contributed in important ways to the substance of the subcommittee’s bills, and defended them in the face of external criticism – including, eventually, that of the Nixon White House. This united front helped Muskie’s air and water pollution laws pass by overwhelming margins.

Without a broad base of grassroots support or a powerful national environmental lobby, Muskie pitched his legislation in a political and professional vernacular that resonated with contemporaries. His commitment to “creative federalism” ensured that state officials would take the lead in setting and enforcing regionally specific ambient standards. Muskie deemed ambient standards – which determined the water quality of the lakes and streams themselves, not the pollutant content of the effluents flowing into them – more practical to negotiate and more accommodating of variations in geography or local prerogatives for use (recreation vs. waste

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

disposal, for example). He also deferred to the expertise of sanitary engineers, who controlled state-level regulatory agencies, in defining the technical criteria for standards and treatment methods.

The legislation emphasized cooperation: between the new Federal Water Pollution Control Administration and state agencies, and between state regulators and industrial polluters. Although in theory, standards provided a new basis for enforcement, the process for sanctioning offenders remained slow and cumbersome.

Like Blatnik, Muskie also tapped the language of economic development to sell pollution control. Not only did the Senator expand his predecessor’s public works-oriented construction grant program, but as the script from Troubled Waters suggests, he emphasized the same connection between quality and quantity.

Indeed, the biggest political boost to his legislation came not from the Johnson White House, but from the weather. A severe drought settled over the Northeast in the mid-’60s, taxing the distant reservoir systems of major cities like New York. The specter of scarcity underscored the unusable condition of more proximate urban rivers like the Hudson, casting pollution control in a new, more urgent light.

“When all is said and done,” one congressional aide remarked in 1965, “our best friend on the water

Edmund Muskie addresses the crowd as the keynote speaker for Philadelphia’s first Earth Day observance in April 1970.

pollution bill was the Northeastern drought. If anything gives a guy courage to thumb his nose at a lobbyist, it’s 400 housewives screaming about watering their lawns.”

Fast-forward five years, and Edmund Muskie found himself grappling with a much different climate – and not just because the rains had returned. The political and cultural climate that had taken hold by 1970 rejected the assumptions about development, expertise, and localism inherent in Muskie’s approach to pollution control.

The roots of environmentalism

WITHOUT A BROAD BASE OF GRASSROOTS SUPPORT OR A POWERFUL NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LOBBY, MUSKIE PITCHED HIS LEGISLATION IN A POLITICAL AND PROFESSIONAL VERNACULAR THAT RESONATED WITH CONTEMPORARIES.

extend more deeply into the 20th century than we often recognize; nonetheless, the first Earth Day in April 1970 seemed to herald a sudden shift in public values and perceptions. The science of ecology, as interpreted by popular authors like Rachel Carson and Barry Commoner, described the natural world as diverse, complex, interconnected, and fragile. This holistic perspective offered a new way to comprehend environmental damage and a rationale to critique the excesses of industrial society. In 1969, media coverage of an oil spill near Santa Barbara fueled outrage, and the burning Cuyahoga River in Cleveland became a national symbol of ecological degradation, whereas similar fires in years past had gone unnoticed.

Muskie was slow to adopt ecological language and concepts – the 1965 act made no reference to either (nor did it need to).

Meanwhile, the cooperative regulatory system he created soon came under fire from a new generation of public interest groups. Staffed with young, middleclass activists, these organizations set up shop in Washington to push for a more punitive government response to corporate polluters.

With 50 percent of Gallup respondents now describing pollution as a critical government concern, Washington proved willing to listen. Muskie soon found himself surrounded by a new generation of legislative entrepreneurs who no longer had to manufacture receptive constituencies for their environmental agendas. The Nixon administration joined this list of challengers, creating the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 and seeking to outflank Muskie on air and water pollution initiatives. Nixon himself had little personal investment in the issue.

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election, he instructed his closest White House advisors to “keep him out of trouble” on the environment.

Several of the president’s men, including John Ehrlichman, Russell Train, John Whitaker, and William Ruckelshaus, took an active interest in environmental issues and followed through with alacrity on Nixon’s request.

In this context, the 1972 Clean Water Act may appear at first glance as little more than the product of Muskie’s reflexive reaction to external pressures.

The law outbid its competitors and outstripped its predecessor by replacing ambient stream standards with precise limits on the pollutants

an ambitious plan introduced in committee by a freshman Senator, John Tunney D-Calif. In 1971, Tunney proposed a national ambient standard for all the nation’s lakes and streams, requiring a level of water quality sufficient to support fishing and swimming within ten years. So rigorous a standard, applied uniformly regardless of local conditions, struck Muskie as a non-starter.

But Tunney’s inspiration had come from a respected, if unexpected, source: his state’s aerospace engineers. Veteran architects of Cold War missile programs and the space race placed great faith in systems

NO MODERN DAY MUSKIES HAVE EMERGED IN THE INTERVENING YEARS TO RECAPTURE THAT OLDER COOPERATIVE SPIRIT. GIVEN THE PREVAILING SECULAR TRENDS OF THE LAST FOUR DECADES, FEW ARE LIKELY TO. flowing from pipes, determined in exclusive reference to state-of-theart removal technology. It coupled those standards with rigorous timetables, stricter enforcement through a new federal permit program, and an ambitious goal (to say the least) of eliminating all discharges into the nation’s waters by 1985.

Although Muskie was responding to a changed political environment, the substance of the 1972 Act demonstrated once more how legislative policymaking blended new priorities with older agendas and institutional influences. Muskie’s decision to abandon ambient standards was a testament to the influence of ecological ideas, but it came about in response to 10

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analysis, a method for solving large-scale problems and managing complex systems. They believed this technical, interdisciplinary approach could address social as well as military challenges if ambitious goals were used to mobilize expertise and stimulate technological innovation. In short, Tunney designed his standard to prompt a moon mission for the environment. It was articulated in a way that appealed to both the public at large and to postWorld War II policymakers who appreciated “systems thinking” as a method to manage complexity – be it administrative, mechanical, or environmental.

Muskie answered by turning to another systems science: ecology.

Far removed from its softer, somewhat countercultural popular image, post-1945 ecology drew technical inspiration from wartime cybernetics and funding from the Atomic Energy Commission.

Professional ecologists advised Muskie’s subcommittee beginning in 1970; staff members with ecological training provided the conduit. Their input ultimately led the committee to reject the Tunney Standard – in favor of an even more ambitious approach that monitored discharges exclusively, demanded technology to remove pollutants at the source, and mandated their ultimate elimination.

The sheer audacity of the Clean Water Act caught even environmental advocates by surprise. Then again, the law was full of surprises. Its commitment to zero-discharge had less to do with the lobbying efforts of environmentalists than of the Army Corps of Engineers. The corps, of course, ranked as the most notorious developmentally oriented federal agency, widely condemned for its ecological insensitivity. Yet, in a pitch to revamp its reputation in the ‘70s, agency planners drew upon regional designs for urban wastewater reclamation dating back to the Northeastern drought of the mid-’60s. Confident it had the technology and management prowess to supply pure water to metropolitan areas, the corps convinced committee staffers that its own brand of systems thinking could help realize their unprecedented ecological goals.

The final version of the Clean Water Act managed to minimize the corps’ responsibility for regional wastewater management, but it still set the agency up for one last unanticipated environmental role – thanks to the twists and turns of bicameralism. When the House and Senate Public Works Committees convened in conference to reconcile their versions of the Clean

Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center Congressional Archives

Water Act, certain items on the agenda remained uncontroversial.

Both sides agreed to authorize billions more for John Blatnik’s construction grant program, which, much to the chagrin of Nixon’s Budget Office, worked to neutralize opposition as it had since the ‘50s – Congress easily overrode the president’s subsequent veto.

But the House conferees showed less enthusiasm for the Senate’s ecological experimentation and did their best to mitigate some of the more radical regulatory changes. They also ensured that the Corps of Engineers retained authority separate from the EPA to oversee permits for “dredge and fill” materials in navigable waters, which were considered pollutants under the Senate’s broad definition. But then the Senate also defined “navigable waters” broadly – as “waters of the United States” – assuming ecological and hydrological boundaries to be more relevant to pollution control than nautical ones. As a consequence, even though the Clean Water Act makes no specific mention of wetlands, they too became subject to the legislation’s enforcement provisions. And the corps, once the foremost federal destroyer of wetlands, came to serve as their principal protector, since dredge and fill activities posed one of the more serious threats to these endangered landscapes.

And so we come full circle to revisit contemporary controversies.

Today’s polarized environmental politics invite a certain nostalgia for an earlier era, when leadership and professionalism in Congress made ambitious policy initiatives possible.

No modern-day Muskies have emerged in the intervening years to recapture that older cooperative spirit. Given the prevailing secular trends of the last four decades, few are likely to. Redistricting, changes to congressional rules, and reforms that left committee chairs more

Portrait of Edmund S. Muskie taken in 1968 beholden to party caucuses have all worked to intensify partisanship and render compromise difficult.

Twenty-four hour cable news networks, internet media, and a shifting economic outlook have also ratcheted up the level of conflict.

Yet given the weighty issues at stake in environmental politics, conflict is not necessarily something to bemoan. The Clean Water Act has lived up to its name, but not without misallocating resources and setting unrealistic goals and deadlines. Moreover, the act itself bears at least some responsibility for ongoing political battles. Although the specificity and complexity of Muskie’s legislation was designed to limit the discretion of environmental regulators, in practice it delegated many procedural details and unanswered technical issues to bureaucrats.

A proliferation of interest group lobbying and litigation, expansive judicial interpretations of statutory language and an explosion in administrative rulemaking rushed in to fill the vacuum. Collectively, these activities have empowered the executive branch by extending its regulatory scope.

Republicans in Congress have sought in turn to reassert legislative prerogatives and reign in the EPA’s perceived overreach. They have cut the agency’s budget or narrowed its freedom to act without the consent of the states. Critics charge that this counteroffensive has undermined federal protection of the nation’s waters. Conservative watchdogs, meanwhile, question the EPA’s priorities and basic competence, accusing administrators of diverting resources to address complex issues like “climate change” at the expense of core functions like monitoring water quality.

Recriminations flew in both directions recently when agency contractors allowed three million gallons of toxic mine waste to contaminate Colorado’s Animas River, and EPA officials responded sluggishly to lead-contaminated drinking water in Flint, Michigan.

In the near future, congressional battles over oversight, overreach, and underperformance will likely trump its role as an initiator of complex and costly new environmental policies, but only time will tell. For now, the lack of consensus within Congress on environmental issues like water pollution suggests that the institution accurately reflects the mood of the nation it serves.

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THE NEW ERA IN

WATER POLICY Daniel McCool | Professor of Political Science, University of Utah Professor McCool’s research focuses on water resources, Indian voting and water rights and public lands policy. His recent books include: River Republic: The Fall and Rise of America’s Rivers (Columbia University Press 2012); The Most Fundamental Right: Contrasting Perspectives on the Voting Rights Act (Indiana University Press 2012, edited); Native Vote: American Indians, the Voting Rights Act, and Indian Voting (Cambridge University Press 2007, co-authored); and Native Waters: Contemporary Indian Water Settlements and the Second Treaty Era (University of Arizona Press 2002). He has served as an expert witness in seven Voting Rights Act cases.

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of clean water to a rapidly growing nation, and recommend national policy innovations that will help move water policy into what promises to be a tumultuous new era.

Undoubtedly the biggest challenge facing water policymakers today is climate change and the attendant manifestations of drought and extreme weather events such as floods. Perhaps the most vivid example of drought has occurred in California, where a four-year drought has caused widespread water shortages and forced dramatic changes in state water policy. In 2015 Gov. Jerry Brown ordered mandatory water restrictions as part of an aggressive and ambitious water conservation program that helped urban Californians reduce water use by nearly 25 percent. But the lion’s share of water in the state is used by agriculture, which was hit hard by reduced water deliveries.

The crisis in California vividly demonstrates the water conflicts that will become routine in the future in many areas of the United States: farmers versus urbanites, water-rich regions versus water-poor regions, dams versus conservation.

But California’s response to the drought also demonstrates that water conservation strategies can be very

Photo credit: Photospin.com

I

to do with the water projects from n the annals of congressional our first 200 years. In this article, I spending, there is a long examine some of the major challenges history of using water projects as to providing a sufficient quantity a way to funnel federal money to a home district or state. Indeed, the concept of “pork-barrel spending” may have been coined to describe the tendency of Congress to spend lavishly on water projects.1 As a result, there are literally thousands of federal water projects scattered over every congressional district in the nation. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has built 11,750 miles of levees, 12,000 miles of navigation channels, 276 locks, 350 hydropower facilities, 925 harbors and 692 dams. The Bureau of Reclamation has built 476 dams and 348 reservoirs, 58 hydropower facilities, 56,000 miles of conveyance systems, and irrigation projects that provide water to 10 million acres. 2 These projects paid big dividends to legislators trying to keep their seats and include Corn plants show signs of drought a vast assortment of water stress. Farmers are increasing their projects that range from the reliance on irrigation systems that essential to the absurd. The draw water from the declining Ogallala Aquifer, which underlies challenge now is two-fold; how much of the nation’s Midwestern to meet America’s water needs Farm Belt. for the next 200 years, and what

effective in curbing water demand, and are much cheaper than building new dams and delivery infrastructure.

Another example of severe drought has occurred in the Colorado River Basin. The situation in that basin has been exacerbated by the “Law of the River,” a large body of statutory law, case law, interstate agreements and treaties—all of which are based on the 1922 Colorado River Compact. That Compact allocated water based on faulty assumptions of volume that assumed the river could deliver more than actual flows. This overestimate, combined with climate change and new diversions, has had dramatic consequences. Both Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the largest reservoirs in the system, are less than half-full. Scientists have predicted even lower flows in the future. 3 This will force a dramatic new policy direction for this river.

California and the Colorado River Basin are just two areas of the country experiencing drought. Even traditionally humid regions, such as the Chattahoochee River Basin, have recently experienced prolonged dry spells. NASA scientists predict wide-spread and prolonged drought in the American Southwest and the

Water intake pipes that were once underwater sit above the water line along Lake Mead in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area near Boulder City, Nev. Federal water managers predict Lake Mead will drop to levels in January 2017 that could force supply cuts to Arizona and Nevada. (AP photo)

but will be catastrophic in the long run. Recent studies indicate that the American Southwest has been groundwater “mining,” meaning that withdrawals exceed inflow, at a much greater rate than was previously known. 5 Groundwater mining is also occurring in relatively humid areas such as Florida and central Texas.

UNDOUBTEDLY THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE FACING WATER POLICYMAKERS TODAY IS CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE ATTENDANT MANIFESTATIONS OF DROUGHT AND EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS SUCH AS FLOODS. Great Plains region.4 It is clear that drought is the new normal in many regions of the country, and a new era of innovation must occur if we are to meet our future water needs.

One way California farmers responded to reduced water deliveries was to drill more wells and tap into groundwater. This strategy created short-term gains,

Eventually, this will lower the water table, forcing all well owners to dig deeper, often into water strata of lower quality. Eventually, aquifers will be reduced to the point where it is no longer practical to access the water.

Groundwater mining can also cause land subsidence; as underground water chambers are drained, they can no longer support the overlay, resulting in cave-ins, sinkholes and

reduced ground surface elevation.

This in turn can result in saltwater incursion in coastal areas and flooding due to lower ground surface.

Perhaps the worst case of groundwater overdraft has taken place in the Great Plains region overlaying the Ogallala Aquifer.

This region produces an enormous quantity of grain, but relies heavily on irrigation water pumped from the Ogallala. Because of over pumping, experts agree that the aquifer will be essentially drained in about 20 years, with the southern end of the aquifer draining even faster.6 The demise of the Ogallala will have a devastating effect on the region and significantly reduce U.S. crop acreage.

Groundwater mining, combined with the effects of climate change and the overdraft of surface water supplies, has all the hallmarks of a nationwide disaster. To put it bluntly, the U.S. has lived beyond its water means, and the time of reckoning is upon us. Policies that made sense in the past when water supplies were abundant are now expediting the disaster. Solutions to this crisis will require unconventional thinking, extensions | Summer 2016

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Photo credit: Flickr.com

State and Federal wildlife agencies have taken significant steps to restore the San Joaquin River, one of the largest salmon runs in California. Additional actions planned on Oregon and California rivers could further benefiting salmon habitat. new approaches, and in some cases the realization that some uses of water, in some areas, are no longer sustainable and must be abandoned or significantly curtailed.

These are daunting problems, and solving them will require not only scientific and engineering skills, but also a commitment to fairness and social equity—two laudable goals that were often absent in past water policies. The injustices of past water allocations must now be rectified while we also meet unprecedented demands for more water. Two very different examples will illustrate the significance of this challenge.

The Klamath River in Oregon and California has been at the center of a fierce fight over water that pits American Indian tribes against Anglo farmers. The tribes want sufficient flows in the river for both anadromous fish species on the lower river (salmon, steelhead) and suckerfish at the upper end of the river. In between is a massive Bureau of Reclamation irrigation project and four hydropower dams. The tribes sought the removal of the dams and curtailment of water diversions by farmers. This conflict reached a crescendo in 2001 and 2002 when drought hurt both farmers 14

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and fish. When the parties appeared to be on the verge of violence, some stakeholders began working on a negotiated solution. That prolonged effort finally yielded three settlement agreements, which required federal funding.

The deadline for Congress to authorize and fund the settlements, which would have removed all four dams but also reserved water for both fish and farmers, was December 31, 2015. However, some members of Congress scuttled the bill because they did not want to pass legislation that included dam removal. Ironically, this did not stop dam removal that will proceed apace, but it put into doubt how much water and cheap power (necessary to power irrigation pumps) will be available to farmers in the Bureau project. The Klamath River, with four dam removals, will be the largest river restoration project ever attempted, and will, if successful, bring back the third-largest salmon run on the West Coast. It will also help rectify the past injustices done to the tribes along the river.7 This type of highstakes conflict will undoubtedly play out in other river basins as demands exceed supplies.

The drama in the Klamath Basin is not the only area where the rights of American Indian people, and the effort to correct past injustices, are in the forefront of water policy change.

The decision to remove dams on the Penobscot River in Maine was largely instigated by members of the Penobscot Tribe, who live on an island in the river. Their traditional food was Atlantic salmon, which were driven nearly extinct by dams on nearly every East Coast river. With the dams removed, the salmon are making a comeback. The same is true for the Elwha River in Washington; two dams were removed on that river, after a long political struggle led by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. The tribe’s traditional food—anadromous fish—are now returning in significant numbers.

Native American tribes have also had a leading role in altering the way the Columbia River and the lower Snake River are managed to improve fish habitat.

A second example of water policy driven by social justice is the restoration of the Anacostia River in Maryland and the District of Columbia. This area of the District was first populated by slaves escaping from the South during the Civil War; Washington was the first free territory they encountered. The area remained poor and nearly all Black.

When Washington, D.C. designed its sewage system, most of the outlet pipes were placed on the Anacostia River. The few pipes that drained into the Potomac River were cleaned up in the 1960s; they affected areas of significant wealth and power. But the Anacostia remained so polluted it was a health hazard. That began to change when an organization called the Anacostia Watershed Society formed in 1989 and began working with local neighborhood organizations to clean up the river and transform it from a stinking eyesore to an attractive community asset. Eventually the Anacostia Watershed Society sued the District and forced it to substantially re-build its entire sewage treatment

system. The river is currently experiencing a renaissance, although significant issues remain. 8 Conflict over the Anacostia is reflective of the situation in many cities. Due to historic settlement patterns, many communities of color located along watercourses that became undesirable real estate. But today these riverside properties have become much sought after; as a result, ambitious riverfront restoration projects in cities such as Pittsburgh, Chicago, Portland and Denver have had a direct impact on these communities. Restoring urban rivers in a manner that is socially just and respectful of all communities will be a significant challenge to water policymakers in the coming decades.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has become a major driver of water

runs in the basin were estimated to be at least 10-16 million—and perhaps much higher. By the 1970s, they had plummeted to 2.5 million.10 A proposal in the 1990s to breach four dams on the lower Snake River led to a bitter conflict that pitted wheat growers, barge companies, and hydropower interests against fishermen, environmental groups and a powerful coalition of tribes called the Columbia River Intertribal Fisheries Commission. The breaching idea has been temporarily set aside, but the larger issue of how to save the fish runs remains a major challenge to water planners in the basin. In recent years, fish numbers have recovered somewhat, but are still a tiny portion of their historic run. Solving the ESA problems in that basin will be a daunting challenge.

THESE ARE DAUNTING PROBLEMS, AND SOLVING THEM WILL REQUIRE NOT ONLY SCIENTIFIC AND ENGINEERING SKILLS, BUT ALSO A COMMITMENT TO FAIRNESS AND SOCIAL EQUITY—TWO LAUDABLE GOALS THAT WERE OFTEN ABSENT IN PAST WATER POLICIES. policy, largely due to the fact that many animal species favor waterborne or riparian habitats. Immediately after passage of the ESA in 1973, it was implemented to save a small fish called the Snail Darter, which temporarily stopped construction of the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River.9 The ESA was later amended, and the dam was built, but this case gave clear warning that the ESA would be a major force in many future water conflicts.

One of the longest ongoing conflicts over water policy and endangered species has occurred in the Columbia River Basin, where 250 dams block, or at least impede, the passage of anadromous fish species. In historic times, salmon

The Endangered Species Act has played a determinative role in many other river basins. Often, the decision involves the need for a dam owner to replace an expiring permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. When dam owners discover that they must install fish passage, dam removal is sometimes the most viable option. Dams have been removed on the Kennebec and Presumpscot rivers in Maine to restore fish runs, including Atlantic salmon and alewives. Embry Dam on the Rappahannock River in Virginia, Condit Dam on the White Salmon River in Washington, and Savage Rapids Dam in Oregon were all removed to restore fish runs. And habitat protection for endangered species, and other flora

and fauna, was a major reason why the Corps of Engineers began a multibillion project to reverse the damage it had done to the Kissimmee River in central Florida and restore it to its natural channel. Looking ahead, we face two objectives. First, we must meet America’s insatiable demand for water, and we must protect rivers that play huge economic roles.

Meanwhile, we must simultaneously meet mandates under the Endangered Species Act. These conflicting objectives will test our commitment to biodiversity and require the utmost in creative problem solving.

Solving the problems highlighted above will require a substantial investment, at a time when the national debt tops $19 trillion. But realistically, we cannot afford to operate, maintain and replace the projects we have already built. The current annual budget for the Corps of Engineers exceeds $4.5 billion; the Bureau of Reclamation has an annual budget of $1.2 billion. According to the National Inventory of Dams, there are more than 84,000 dams in the U.S. over 25 feet in height.11 There are an estimated 2.5 million smaller dams. An estimated 85 percent of the dams in the U. S. will be at the end of their engineered lifespan by 2020.12 The cost of rebuilding or replacing this infrastructure boggles the imagination. The American Society of Civil Engineers issues an infrastructure “report card” every four years; the most recent survey estimated that the nation needs to spend $18 billion on inland waterways, $298 billion on wastewater treatment, $21 billion to repair high-hazard dams (all 14,000 of them), $1 trillion for safe drinking water systems, and $100 billion for levees.13 In other words, the nation needs to spend significant sums of money to meet the new challenges identified above, but at the same time must finance the rebuilding, operation, and maintenance of our current failing infrastructure—all at a time when there are public demands to reduce taxes, reduce the annual budget deficit and extensions | Summer 2016

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the national debt, and spend money on numerous other priorities. To make matters worse, many of the existing water projects subsidize wasteful water practices and encourage or support economically irrational water use. What is the solution?

Cleary, the water policy status quo is no longer tenable. The problems facing us are enormous, unprecedented, and ubiquitous.

There are three national policy shifts that could contribute significantly to the resolution of these problems. The first is to create what I call a “Water BRAC”—the water project equivalent of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission. The BRAC process, through five rounds of base closures, saved taxpayers $12 billion.14 I propose the creation of a “Water Resources Assessment Program” (WRAP) that would emulate the decision-making process of BRAC, and allow the nation to support the most necessary and useful projects while terminating those that no longer serve the national interest. The nation has a choice; we can support the projects of the past, or we can support the new, innovative solutions that will be required to solve 21st century problems. We do not have sufficient funding to do both.

Second, Congress should consider creating a tax rebate program for individual water users, perhaps similar to rebates for investing in fuel-efficient cars or solar energy.

There are several tried-and-tested urban water efficiency programs that significantly reduce demand for water, including rebates for turf lawn removal, subsidies for replacing water-wasting appliances in the home such as toilets and washing machines, and the installation of rain barrels. A direct tax rebate to homeowners who voluntarily implement these changes would be very popular among voters and dramatically reduce the need for new hugely expensive dams and diversion structures.

Third, current federal water supply projects nearly always deliver water at a fraction of its market price. These 16

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enormous subsidies for both urban and agricultural water users encourage waste, and do not reflect the true value of water in our economy. We should take a lesson from free-market economics and begin pricing water as a function of supply and demand.

This will encourage users to become more efficient and re-direct water to uses that generate greater economic return. This would require changes to the authorizing legislation for most federal water projects, but we can no longer afford to subsidize wasteful water practices, especially when the waste creates a demand for even more federal spending to build more expensive water projects. A dose of free-market thinking would assist us in meeting our future water needs in the most efficient and costeffective manner.

In 1950, there were 157 million Americans; today there are 314 million.

With that many people, and that level of population increase, we cannot make water policy like we did in 1950.

Today, every allocation of water should be made with regard for the many people around us. We are at a decision point in terms of our water resources.

We must embrace the concept of stewardship, which means developing a long-term planning horizon that can be sustained over a long period of time. We owe it to future generations of Americans to carefully protect and efficiently utilize our water resources so they can experience at least the same quality of life that we have enjoyed. The future of the nation depends on our ability to create resilient and sustainable water policies.

This has important implications for the nation’s two principle water agencies, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation. Both agencies must reflect a national shift away from supply-side solutions, which require massively expensive new infrastructure, to demandcontrol solutions. Each must become the nation’s “Water Efficiency Assistance Bureau.”

If we fail to act in a decisive manner, the problems will only grow more intractable, and the solutions will become ever more expensive.

Dramatic innovation is no longer just pie-in-the-sky; it is essential to the long-term viability or our economy, our environment and our national well-being.

Notes 1.

C. C. Maxey, “A Little History of Pork.”

National Municipal Review (Dec. 1919): 691-705.

2.

Daniel McCool, River Republic: The Fall and Rise of America’s Rivers. Columbia University Press (2012): 28, 62.

3.

James Powell, Dead Pool: The Colorado River, Global Warming, and the Future of the Water in the West. University of California Press (2011); U. S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, “Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study.” (7 Sept. 2014).

4.

Benjamin Cook, Toby Ault, and Jason Smerdon. “Unprecedented 21st Century Drought Risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains.” Science Advances 1(12 Feb. 2015).

5.

Stephanie Castle, et. al. “Groundwater Depletion During Drought Threatens Future Water Security of the Colorado River Basin.”

Geophysical Research Letters 41 (Issue 16, 2014): 5904-11; Dennis Dimick, “If you Think the Water Crisis Can’t Get Worse, Wait until the Aquifers are Drained.” (19 Aug. 2014).

6.

“World’s Largest Aquifer Going Dry.” U.S. Water News (Feb. 2006); Elizabeth Brooks, “Depletion and Restoration of the Ogallala Aquifer,” in Encylopedia of Global Change, Andrew Goudie and David Cuffs, eds. Oxford University Press (2002).

7.

Jeff Mapes, “Klamath Basin: Water Pact Crumbles in Congress After Years of Work.” The Oregonian (Dec. 19, 2015); Holly Doremus and A. Dan Tarlock, Water War in the Klamath Basin.

Washington, D. C.: Island Press (2008).

8.

John Wennersten, Anacostia: The Death and Life of an American River. Chesapeake Bay Book Company (2008); Daniel McCool, River Republic, pp. 204-211.

9.

Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153, 156 (1978).

10.

Northwest Power and Conservation Council, Briefing Book, Council Document 2005-1 (2005); Steven Hawley, Recovering a Lost River.

Beacon Press (2011).

11. http://nid.usace.army.mil/cm_apex/ f?p=838:1:0::NO::APP_ORGANIZATION_ TYPE,P12_ORGANIZATION:1, 12.

Martin Doyle, et. al., “Dam Removal in the United States: Emerging Needs for Science and Policy.” Eos (Jan 28, 2003).

13. http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/ a/#p/overview/presidents-message (2013).

14.

Government Accountability Office, “Military Bases: Opportunities Exist to Improve Future Base Realignment and Closure Rounds.”

GAO-13-149 (Mar. 2013).

DO FACTS MATTER?

Information and Misinformation in American Politics ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

JENNIFER L. HOCHSCHILD AND KATHERINE LEVINE EINSTEIN A democracy falters when most of its citizens are uninformed or misinformed, when misinformation affects political decisions and actions, or when political actors foment misinformation—the state of affairs the United States faces today, as this timely book makes painfully clear. In Do Facts Matter?

Jennifer L. Hochschild and Katherine Levine Einstein start with Thomas Jefferson’s ideal citizen, who knows and uses correct information to make policy or political choices. What, then, the authors ask, are the consequences if citizens are informed but do not act on their knowledge? More serious, what if they do act, but on incorrect information? $29.95 HARDCOVER · 248 PAGES ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

VOLUME 13 IN THE JULIAN J. ROTHBAUM DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES

Analyzing the use, nonuse, and misuse of facts in various cases—such as the call to impeach Bill Clinton, the response to global warming, Clarence Thomas’s appointment to the Supreme Court, the case for invading

Iraq, beliefs about Barack Obama’s birthplace and religion, and the Affordable Care Act—Hochschild and Einstein argue persuasively that errors of commission (that is, acting on falsehoods) are even more troublesome than errors of omission. While citizens’ inability or unwillingness to use the facts they know in their political decision making may be frustrating, their acquisition and use of incorrect “knowledge” pose a far greater threat to a democratic political system.

Do Facts Matter? looks beyond individual citizens to the role that political elites play in informing, misinforming, and encouraging or discouraging the use of accurate or mistaken information or beliefs. Hochschild and Einstein show that if a well-informed electorate remains a crucial component of a successful democracy, the deliberate concealment of political facts poses its greatest threat.

THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY INSTITUTION. WWW.OU.EDU/EOO

2015 Extensions Ad.indd 1

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IS TODAY’S CONGRESS

CAPABLE OF MODERNIZING ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY? Michael E. Kraft | University of Wisconsin-Madison Michael E. Kraft is professor of political science and Public Affairs Emeritus Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Environmental Studies Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. He received his Master of Arts and doctorate degrees in political science from Yale University, and he has held visiting faculty appointments at Oberlin College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He currently teaches in an online sustainable management master’s program in the UW System.

F

rom the late 1960s through the end of the 1970s, Congress enacted more than a dozen major statutes that continue to form the bedrock of U.S. environmental policy. These include the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The Clean Water Act of 1972 has a distinctive history compared to the others in that it received minimal presidential support. It was the only one of these acts to face a presidential veto, forcing Congress to overturn the president’s action.

Most of these core environmental laws have enjoyed considerable success over the four to five decades since they were adopted. The result is that the nation’s air is far cleaner, the quality of rivers and streams has improved substantially, drinking water is safer than it was before (despite recently highlighted lead contamination in Flint, Michigan and other cities), and hazardous and toxic chemicals are now much less likely to jeopardize public and environmental health. Yet more needs to be done to reach the environmental quality goals set in the 1970s and that the American public continues to 18

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endorse today. At the same time, most public policy experts doubt that the statutes, even with their many revisions over time, are up to the task of meeting those goals.

These policies, including the Clean Water Act, are in some respects stuck in the mindset of the 1970s, with an emphasis on top-down, command-and-control

regulation that is becoming both more expensive than it needs to be and less effective than it can be.

There is no question that federal and state regulation needs to continue to be a core feature of national environmental policy. But that policy could benefit from additional approaches and tools that would improve effectiveness and efficiency

A Water Quality Notice sign hangs near the beach at Big Creek State Park in Polk City, Iowa. Iowa natural resources officials have signed an agreement with the EPA to inspect more livestock farms and more strictly enforce clean water regulations in an effort to improve the state’s water quality often degraded by manure spills and runoff from farm fields. (AP photo)

Photo credit: Photospin.com

by coordinating government and private-sector efforts.

At its heart, such policy change should be grounded in the emerging concept of sustainability, which suggests more integrated and comprehensive approaches to environmental management.

That approach should take on environmental issues from a system perspective that recognizes the multiple causes and effects of problems and sees the environment as integrally linked to the economy and society. It also suggests the importance of diverse policy tools that include flexible regulation based on environmental results or performance, greater use of market incentives, use of public-private partnerships, use of information disclosure to supplement regulatory efforts and more.1 Does Congress have the institutional capacity to take on an expansive environmental policy reform agenda at this time? In some respects, the answer is mostly yes.

The key committees, and their staffs, and the congressional support agencies – the Congressional Research Service, Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office – do have the requisite personnel and resources to study contemporary environmental problems, to gather the best information available on what is needed to address them, and to formulate appropriate solutions. As always, Congress may draw upon the considerable resources of other federal agencies, universities, think tanks, and research institutions as well. Of course, Congress is also limited in all of these respects because of long-standing institutional weaknesses, including fragmentation of authority in the committee system and reduction in both committee staff and staff in the support agencies over the past 20 years.

Yet Congress currently lacks the political capacity and will

Fertilizers and other chemicals used in domestic lawn and garden maintenance are among unregulated pollutants entering the watershed though storm runoff. These sources are beyond the scope of traditional command and control enforcement measures currently used by federal and state regulators.

to handle the difficult tasks of major policy change of this kind.

Increasing partisan polarization on environmental issues makes bipartisan cooperation difficult, and declining public trust in government further constrains what House and Senate members may be willing to do to modernize environmental policy. Unlike the 1970s, there also is little sense of public urgency about the environment that might stimulate creative legislative action. Moreover, there might well be significant opposition to legislation that could impose new regulatory mandates or raise the costs of compliance for industry, agriculture, as well as state and local governments. On the other side of these disputes, the major national environmental groups are likely to oppose any statutory changes that in their judgment weaken the nation’s commitment to environmental quality. So the result is often policy stalemate or gridlock.

The present policies, with all of their recognized defects, continue in force.

It is worth noting that nearly all of the major national environmental protection policies in this country,

including the 1972 Clean Water Act, owe their existence to the U.S. Congress. It was Congress far more than the White House that recognized deteriorating environmental conditions and public concern for them, and it was Congress that put the issues squarely on the national political agenda in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was also Congress that formulated the policies and built the required political support for taking action. The body accommodated the conflicting interests of environmentalists, the 50 states, industry and the White House to ultimately enacted legislation by – in many cases – exceptionally large margins. 2 The role of Congress in formulating and approving the Clean Water Act, formally the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, differs from all of the other major environmental statutes of this era in at least one respect. As noted earlier, Congress had to override a veto by President Richard M. Nixon, who was concerned about the steep price tag extensions | Summer 2016

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of the new act. In exercising his veto power, the president was responding to widespread concerns in industry about the new act’s impacts on operations. Some state and local officials objected to the costs they would have to bear in modernizing sewage treatment plants even with the federal government heavily subsidizing those efforts. But the measure was strongly supported by increasingly powerful environmental groups, and members of Congress were convinced at the time that the American public strongly favored environmental protection actions.

The 1972 act was far reaching in its scope and likely impacts on the nation. The law dramatically altered the original Water Pollution Control Act of 1948, which had emphasized research, investigations and surveys of water problems. Under the 1948 act, there was no federal authority to establish water quality standards or to restrict discharge of pollutants into the nation’s waterways.

Yet by the early 1970s, it was evident that the 1965 law was administratively and politically unworkable and ineffective. There was too much variation from state to state in economic resources, bureaucratic expertise, and commitment to water quality goals to clean up the nation’s waters.

Through the efforts of key lawmakers in both the House and the Senate – call them policy entrepreneurs – the Clean Water Act was designed to correct these deficiencies in the same way the 1970 Clean Air Act Amendments established definitive federal authority to control air pollution.

In both cases, Congress in effect nationalized environmental policy.

It provided for national water quality criteria and standards, with enforcement through the newly created Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA was to work closely with each of the states and tribes through its 10 regional offices.

AS IS THE CASE WITH ALL OF THE 1970s-ERA ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES, THE CLEAN WATER ACT NEEDS TO BE RECONSIDERED AND REDESIGNED FOR MANY OF TODAY’S ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES AND THOSE COMING IN THE DECADES AHEAD. Amendments to the 1948 act adopted in 1956 also failed to establish any meaningful control over the persistent discharge of pollutants into streams, rivers, and harbors. A 1965 Water Quality Act went further by requiring states to establish new water quality standards for interstate bodies of water and to develop implementation plans to achieve those standards. There also was some federal oversight of these state actions.

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The Clean Water Act required permits for discharge of pollutants to surface waters through a newly created National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, managed by the states as long as they follow federal standards and guidelines.

Under those EPA guidelines and taking into account the uses of a given body of water (e.g., fishing, boating, waste disposal), the states are asked to establish water quality criteria. These standards define the

maximum concentration of pollutants allowable in surface waters and do so at levels that will pose no risk to individual organisms, populations, species, communities or ecosystems.

Critics have long complained, however, that industry underreports its discharges into waterways, and states have been lax in enforcing the law. Citizens concerned about such lapses in performance have taken advantage of the law’s provision of private citizen lawsuits against polluters to help enforce the policy, a right upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in early 2000.

The act also set tight deadlines for pollution control. For example, it called for elimination of the discharge of pollutants into navigable waters by 1985 and stated ambitiously that all the nation’s waters were to be fishable and swimmable by 1983. The act encouraged technological innovation and area-wide planning (essentially, planning based on a river’s watershed) to reach those goals. It also funded construction of municipal sewage treatment plants across the nation with generous grants of up to 75 percent of the capital costs of construction, which helped to make the act popular with elected officials despite the costs imposed on industry.

Congress revised and strengthened the law in 1977 and again in 1987, although without making any fundamental alteration in either the goals or the means to achieve them. Congress did postpone several deadlines when it became obvious that they would not be met, and it added provisions on toxic water pollutants. Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, Congress remained deeply divided over how to revise the act, and those conflicts continue to this day, much as they do with other major environmental laws.

It was perhaps inevitable that the Clean Water Act would fall short of the goals that Congress set in 1972.

Photo credit: Photospin.com

For example, as the 1977 revision of the act stated, the phrase “fishable and swimmable” was supposed to mean that water quality provided for “the protection and propagation of a balanced population of shellfish, fish, and wildlife” as well as recreation in and on the water. Yet the tasks that industry, states and local governments faced were of a staggering magnitude. For example, some 90,000 industrial facilities have water pollution permits, covering a half-million sources.

In addition, many industries actively opposed the act’s implementation and frequently challenged the EPA in court out of self-interest. The 1972 act relied on what was called “technology forcing” provisions. The problem was that the pollution control technology that industry and the states were to use proved to be costly, and thus industry fought such requirements both in the agencies and in court.

Moreover, planning for control of nonpoint sources (such as agriculture and urban runoff) was not well funded and difficult to establish, as it still is today. In light of such problems, it is hardly surprising that deadlines were postponed frequently and reaching the statute’s goals suffered accordingly.

These statutory deficiencies affected what the act could accomplish. The limited achievements of the Clean Water Act can be seen in regular reports on the nation’s surface water quality compiled by the states and made available by the EPA. The agency notes in the most recent state reports that only 48 percent of rivers and streams were considered to be of good quality, and 51 percent impaired to some extent, meaning that the water bodies were not meeting or fully meeting the national minimum water quality criteria for beneficial uses, such as swimming, fishing, drinking water supply, or support of aquatic life.

Some 67 percent of lakes, ponds,

The Clean Water Act set an ambitious goal of fishable and swimmable waters by 1983. Some have met that standard but most have not.

and reservoirs also were found to be impaired along with 72 percent of the nation’s estuaries and bays.

Tellingly, most of what are called point sources, such as industrial discharge pipes into rivers, are fairly well controlled today under the existing system of water pollution permits managed largely by the states. But with substantial control of industrial and municipal point sources such as sewage treatment plants, the remaining sources of water pollution become more important. These are now agriculture, atmospheric deposition of chemicals, human modification of waterways, urban and stormwater runoff, and municipal discharges (in that order). As might be expected, these sources are much more difficult to control through a regulatory or command-and-control system that was established in the 1970s when point sources were the main focus of concern. As a result, most states have relied on voluntary approaches, using “best management practices” to deal with nonpoint sources, such as farms and urban runoff.

As is the case with all of the 1970s-era environmental policies, the Clean Water Act needs to be

reconsidered and redesigned for many of today’s environmental challenges and those coming in the decades ahead. This is preeminently a job for the U.S. Congress, not the White House, the EPA, the states or cities.

However, revising the Clean Water Act or any of the other core environmental policy statutes of the 1970s requires a very different view of the problems and of potential solutions. Times have changed and the problems the nation faces today are quite different than they were in the 1960s and 1970s. They are more complex, with multiple causes that are difficult to address successfully.

One need only look at nonpoint water pollution to see the difference today. The Clean Water Act was successful in part because it addressed specific point sources of pollution, such as industrial and municipal discharge pipes. As noted, today we know that most of the remaining water quality problems are due to nonpoint sources. These are far less amenable to the conventional regulatory or command-and-control approach that has long dominated federal environmental policy. extensions | Summer 2016

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered the removal of the Ostego Township Dam along the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.

The project is associated with a federal Superfund cleanup of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, that were once used in paper mills that lined the river. (AP photo)

Water pollution is merely one example of a broader pattern in which agricultural practices, energy use, transportation, and many other modern activities generate environmental impacts that cannot be easily controlled in the conventional manner. Moreover, it is precisely the top-down regulatory approach that generates much of the ideological and partisan polarization today when many critics deeply oppose expansion of governmental authority. There might well be more agreement on what to do if other policy options were given serious consideration.

What are those policy alternatives? As discussed earlier, they include the use of incentives, such as taxes and user fees, which rely on the operation of a freemarket system. An example is the much-discussed tax on carbonbased sources of energy. That type of program could be used independently or with a cap-andtrade system that permits generators of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide to buy and sell permits. The 22

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logic with such approaches is that by choosing the right tax, we provide a material incentive to change individual and corporate behavior without regulation.

Another of the policy options is information disclosure, which we find in the federal Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). We see disclosure in many other areas of public policy, from food and vehicle safety to education, where information on product contents, quality, or performance is provided directly to the public. Congress created the TRI program in 1986 precisely to establish a non-regulatory program for control of toxic emissions to the air, water and land.

Scholars also point to other policy alternatives, such as the establishment of public-private partnerships or the use of flexible regulation and performance-based regulation. All provide regulators at the federal and state level more leeway to work with industry in a cooperative manner by looking at how best to achieve environmental quality goals rather than sticking

with a conventional and adversarial regulatory framework.

While formal evaluations of such policy alternatives are limited, there is much reason to be optimistic, and environmental agencies at the federal and state levels continue to experiment with these approaches. Further research on the conditions that promote effective environmental protection and the conditions that inhibit it can guide further development of these kinds of actions.

Beyond the consideration of policy alternatives such as marketbased incentives, information disclosure, flexible regulation, and public-private partnerships, environmental policy scholars argue that we need a more comprehensive and integrated approach to environmental problems. The initial legislation of the 1960s and 1970s adopted a piecemeal and limited view of the problems, leaving us with one set of policies for air quality, another for water quality, and yet others for toxic chemicals and hazardous wastes. We also have separate policies and different agencies dealing with agriculture, energy, transportation, and economic development. Much of U.S. public policy is similarly segmented and isolated.

Today we are more likely to recognize the interconnections between, say, agriculture and water quality, or energy use and climate change. Yet we are still stuck with policies and institutional structures that do not lend themselves well to action that cuts across such problem areas. Most environmental policy scholars today believe that revision of the policies of the 1970s, including the Clean Water Act, must be grounded in a more contemporary assessment of the remaining tasks. That includes putting these laws within a larger context of sustainability goals and complementing the original reliance on federally driven command-and-

control regulation with a diversity of policy tools, including those described here.

There are many definitions, but fundamentally, the concept refers to the idea that human well-being depends on the operation of natural systems that provide us with the necessities of life, such as breathable air, clean water, and food. The continuation or sustainability of human life and well-being means that we need to balance long-term societal needs against the capacity of natural systems to support them.

Hence we should be protective of natural systems that we need to sustain us.

goals for reform of the Clean Water Act ought to be defined in terms of this larger sustainability agenda.

Is Congress capable of taking on this job? Much depends on whether the current partisan polarization continues, which in turn depends on the American public’s perception of environmental problems and people’s willingness to push their concerns to center stage and force Congress to address them. The heightened conflict today over environmental policy does not bode well for any major changes in environmental policy.

Yet over the past several decades, Congress has reconsidered many

CONGRESS HAS PROVEN ITSELF TO BE HIGHLY CAPABLE OF DESIGNING COMPLEX AND DEMANDING PUBLIC POLICIES, AND IT REMAINS A HIGHLY PROFICIENT INSTITUTION FOR POLICYMAKING. There is also an ethical imperative in such a view that involves intergenerational equity. In the words of the Brundtland Commission of the 1980s, sustainable development is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” So while we try to meet our needs for economic prosperity, for example, we should not take actions that could compromise the economy, the environment, and public health for future generations.

What does this viewpoint mean for public policy? As suggested just above, it means that we ought to pursue comprehensive and integrated approaches to the design and implementation of public policies rather than the more limited and segmented policies we have relied on for the past 50 years. Thus, the

dated public policies, and has proved to be willing to change directions, sometimes absent bipartisan cooperation (the Affordable Care Act) and sometimes with agreement between the parties (welfare reform in the 1990s, education policy and national security policy in the 2000s). Political scientists who study policy change of this kind often say congressional action requires an unusual combination of widespread recognition of the problem, available and acceptable solutions, and sufficient political incentives. In light of the success of sustainable community efforts across the nation and the increasing support of the business community, It may well be possible that members of Congress will conclude that a sustainabilitybased shift in environmental policy makes sense. The public and key interest groups could embrace this

approach, leading to change that would better serve the nation and the world over time.

If there are reasons to be optimistic about the prospect of major policy change, it surely lies in the dominant role that Congress has played in formulating and adopting environmental policy over the past five decades. Congress has proven itself to be highly capable of designing complex and demanding public policies, and it remains a highly proficient institution for policymaking. The question is whether and when Congress will recognize the imperative of taking action once again.

Notes 1.

These arguments can be found in Daniel J. Fiorino, The New Environmental Regulation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006); Daniel A. Mazmanian and Michael E. Kraft, eds., Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009); and Robert F. Durant, Daniel J. Fiorino, and Rosemary O’Leary, eds., Environmental Governance Reconsidered: Challenges, Choices, and Opportunities, 2nd ed.

2.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017). See, for example, Michael E. Kraft, “Environmental Policy in Congress,” in Environmental Policy: New Directions for the Twenty-First Century, ed.

Norman J. Vig and Michael E. Kraft (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press/Sage, 2016).

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For the Record

CONGRESS AND WATER POLICY: A DIGITAL HUMANITIES COURSE Lindsay E. Marshall

I

Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center Congressional Archives

and showcase projects built around public projects advocates, local n the Capra classic film Mr. Smith materials from the collections. The communities, and rising political stars.

Goes to Washington, Jimmy course introduced a wide variety Paul Charles Milazzo (contributor Stewart’s Jefferson Smith wages of research strategies and tools for to this issue) affirms this in Unlikely a valiant filibuster for his bill to analysis and culminated in a digital Environmentalists: Congress and Clean set aside land for his troop of Boy exhibit of their findings.

Water, 1945-1972. The backstory to Rangers, fainting dramatically in his In partnership with the archives our march toward the Clean Water desperate effort to use his power as staff, students dived into the Act is not a rising environmental a legislator to fight for the good of collections. Starting with text analysis consciousness or an increase in his community. That idealistic tale of critical legislative of one passionate voice documents, students speaking for the community familiarized themselves in the face of self-serving with both the structure politicking is practically a of formal political fairy tale compared with our communications and current contentious election methods of analysis season, where any spending, to find the “story even on camps for Boy behind the story.”

Rangers, is just the work Using correspondence of greedy special interests. from the collections of The political “silly season” Speaker Carl Albert, seems to have arrived Sen. Robert S. Kerr, early this year, caught and Sen. Fred Harris, between the hyperbole of students completed a 2016’s campaign rhetoric geocoding workshop. on the one side and the Tracing water projects oversimplified explanation Students visit the City of Norman’s Water Reclamation Facility funded by Congress of policymaking that from 1958 to 1968, inhabits textbooks on the they analyzed geographic locations, other. Under these circumstances, pork barrel spending, though both types of federal grants, granting students can find it difficult to those threads are crucial pieces of agencies, and they compared the understand how policy is made and the narrative. Like all lawmaking, the requested amounts with the amounts why it takes the shape it does. Last process was messy, and important awarded. Using that information and fall, the Carl Albert Center facilitated questions, such as local versus online tools available through Google, an upper division political science federal control, remain in some ways the archives staff created visual data course, Congress: [Water] Policy, unresolved. Using Milazzo’s text as the students used to analyze trends in Politics and the Constitution, to help a guide, Dr. Cindy Simon Rosenthal federal water projects that led to the students explore the complexity of led students through a history of Clean Water Act battle. the policymaking process. The federal water policy in a course Students also used online tools specifically designed to complicate course was a component of the to analyze correspondence within the traditional narrative of the Clean Center’s ongoing digital humanities Speaker Albert’s collection to assess Water Act and place the students initiative. support and opposition expressed to in the role of investigators with From California’s drought to the speaker’s office while the Clean primary source documents from the Oklahoma’s flash flooding, water Water Act was under consideration.

Carl Albert Center Congressional policy is an area of public policy that This detailed work allowed students Archives. As part of CAC Explore, the is often misunderstood. Federal water to think comprehensively about how Center’s effort to deepen students’ policy reflects the competing interests constituent feedback shaped the knowledge of the digital humanities of conservationists, businesses, 24

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final bill’s structure. Combined with the information they gleaned from the Milazzo book about the personal ambitions of the congressional actors involved in the legislation, they were able to articulate a nuanced narrative of the policymaking process, the Clean Water Act and its legacy. In addition, the class had an opportunity to tour the City of Norman’s Water Reclamation Facility and listen to Utility Superintendent Steve Hardeman explain how the Clean Water Act governs the actions of the facility today. The experience gave students a sense of the law’s practical realities.

Armed with these tools of analysis, and understanding the complexity of water policy, the students tackled the final phase of their work: the digital exhibit. The class split into

two groups, one examining the 1992 Supreme Court Case Arkansas v.

Oklahoma and the other investigating the 1970 Supreme Court Case Choctaw Nation v. Oklahoma and its subsequent litigation. With the Carl Albert Center Congressional Archives at their full disposal, the students built online exhibits that explained the background of each case. The exhibits covered the Court’s decisions and rationale, and they provided context from archival documents to explain each case’s impact on federal water policy as it relates to Oklahoma. You can visit the exhibits at water.cacexplore.org, where you can see timelines, litigation histories, geocoding, textual analysis and commentary on both cases.

These projects offer a way to push past the political rhetoric that

so often clouds the policymaking process and challenge us to think beyond the systems that govern that process. By drawing together letters from local constituents, media coverage, business petitions, conservation group newsletters, lawmakers’ interoffice memos and other documents, the Congress and the Constitution students were able to present a sophisticated explanation of how the democratic system works to navigate competing interests in the management of a crucial resource.

In a presidential election year when campaign rhetoric clouds our ability to find common ground from which to govern, the work done by these students can help keep our feet on the ground.

CONGRESSMAN JIM JONES AND THE REAGAN REVOLUTION

S

Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center Congressional Archives

Jones, who also served hortly after on the House Ways and taking office in Means Committee, was 1981, President the lead player for the Ronald Reagan Democrats in resisting proposed an inaugural the so-called “Reagan budget containing tax Revolution” amid a cuts, increased defense Congress heavily weighted spending and domestic toward the GOP. program cuts.

While the Democratic Oklahoma budget, reconciliation Congressman James and tax proposals were R. Jones and other ultimately defeated in Democratic Party leaders Former Oklahoma Congressman James R. Jones (center-left) preference to the Reagan viewed the Reagan stands with University of Oklahoma students who studied the program, Jones was proposal and economic role Jones played in the historic budget battles waged in the vindicated in his contention program as a significant early years of President Ronald Reagan’s administration. that the Reagan program turn away from fiscal was fiscally irresponsible. responsibility and toward The class engaged in background readings and research enormous federal deficits. As chairman of the House Budget in Congressman Jones’s papers. They also were able to meet Committee, Jones led a dramatic fight, setting a tone that with Ambassador Jones (Jones served as Ambassador to persisted through the Reagan presidency.

Mexico during the Clinton administration) during his visit to University of Oklahoma students took a close look at the OU in March, 2016. historic congressional battle in PSC 3493 “Congress: Politics, The class prepared a web page presenting its research and the Constitution,” which was offered in the spring which is available via the Carl Albert Center web site at: semester of 2016. Students studied Jones’s efforts to pass a http://thebudget.cacexplore.org/ Democratic budget in opposition to Reagan’s program. extensions | Summer 2016

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THE CARL ALBERT GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM ~ A Commitment to the Study of Representative Government ~ Each Carl Albert Fellow pursues a rigorous and individualized program of study while working closely with faculty. The fellowship is a four-year program leading to the acquisition of the doctoral degree in cooperation with the Department of Political Science at The University of Oklahoma.

Carl Albert Fellows focus their program of study on fundamental issues in representative government. The central focus is in the field of American government and includes institutions, processes and public policy. In addition, Fellows pursue two additional fields of study selected from among comparative politics, international relations, methods, political theory, public administration or public policy.

The fellowship program values both instructional development and research productivity. Carl Albert Fellows are expected to develop original research leading to professional conference presentation and publication. The Center’s resources enable Fellows to pursue field research where appropriate to the dissertation research design.

Carl Albert Center Associate Director Mike Crespin (top left) and Director and Curator Cindy Simon Rosenthal (top right) stand with Carl Albert doctoral fellows (left to right) Victoria Rickard, Jessica Hayden and Matthew Geras

The fellowship package includes four years of financial support in teaching or research appointments, full tuition and fees, funded research and conference travel, summer support, participation and course work at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research and dissertation research funds.

Carl Albert Fellows are introduced to nationally known political leaders and scholars through special guest lectures and seminars. Visitors have included former Ambassador James R. Jones, former U.S. Senator George McGovern, and former Congressmen Dick Armey and Mickey Edwards as well as distinguished scholars James E. Campbell, Morris Fiorina, Jennifer Hochschild, Tom Patterson, Jack Rakove, and Steven S. Smith.

Carl Albert Fellows access a rich and diverse selection of other resources at The University of Oklahoma: • Carl Albert Center Archives http://www.ou.edu/special/albertctr/archives • Public Opinion Learning Laboratory (P.O.L.L.) http://www.ou.edu/oupoll • Political Commercial Archives http://www.ou.edu/pccenter • Center for Applied Social Research http://casr.ou.edu

CARL ALBERT GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP Application Deadline: February 1 of each year.

Apply Online http://www.ou.edu/carlalbertcenter/student/grad-fellow.html.

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For the Record

NEWS FROM THE CENTER

The Carl Albert Center opened the Mike Synar collection with a panel discussion on the congressman’s Supreme Court case Bowsher v. Synar. Many of Synar’s former staffers attended the spring 2016 event.

Archives The Congressional Archives celebrated the opening of the Mike Synar Collection with an insightful panel on the Congressman’s Supreme Court case Bowsher v.

Synar. The panel marked the 30th anniversary of the court case and included Ronald M. Peters Jr., OU Regents’ Professor of Political Science; Alan B. Morrison, who argued Bowsher v. Synar before the Supreme Court and who now serves as the Lerner Family Associate Dean for Public Interest and Public Service Law at George Washington University Law School; Vincent LoVoi, former Synar staff member, venture capitalist and co-founder of The Oklahoma Policy Institute; and Glen Krutz, OU vice provost for Academic Initiatives and professor of political science.

Many former staffers and Synar’s sister, Edwyna Synar, attended the panel and reception that followed.

The Synar Collection opening activities were attended by (from left), Vincent LoVoi, former Synar staff member; Ronald M. Peter Jr, OU regents’ professor of political science; Cindy Simon Rosenthal, Carl Albert Center director and curator; Edwyna Synar, Mike Synar’s sister; Mike Crespin, Carl Albert Center associate director; and Alan B. Morrison, distinguished attorney and associate dean of the George Washington University Law School.

The archives staff enjoyed meeting the former congressional staffers and hearing their stories about Synar. The collection is open and available online.

In March, Assistant Curator and Archivist Nathan Gerth visited several members of the Oklahoma Congressional delegation with Associate Director Mike Crespin in Washington D.C. They discussed the importance of preserving congressional collections and described the services the center’s archives offer.

Congressman James R. Jones was a guest speaker in the center sponsored course, Congress: Policy, Politics and the Constitution, which was focused on the battle over the Reagan budget. Archives’ staff also assisted undergraduate students with research for the course and gave in-class workshops on different archival skills.

Archivists Gerth and Rachel Henson attended the annual

meeting of the Association of the Centers for the Study of Congress (ACSC) in Boston, Mass. on May 11-13. Henson served on the program committee for the meeting. Gerth and Henson also attended the annual meeting of the Society of Southwest Archivists in Oklahoma City on May 18-21. Gerth served on the host committee for that meeting as well.

The center’s exhibit on water policy, WATER: Congressional Representation to Protect a Precious Resource, continued traveling the state. It showcases many interesting documents from the archive. In April, the exhibit spent a month at OU as part of #OUEarthMonth and was profiled as part of this event on USA Today. See where the exhibit is now and where it’s headed to next at http://ou.edu/ carlalbertcenterH2O.

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Photos courtesy of Carl Albert Congressional Archives

Katherine McRae | Director of Administration

Women’s Leadership Initiative In January, the center partnered with the Oklahoma Women’s Coalition to host the seventh “Pipeline to Politics” for attendees to increase their involvement in politics and public service.

Women from around the state heard from 10 speakers on topics such as lessons learned in politics and public services, fundraising, working with the media and why we need women in politics and public service.

The 2016 N.E.W. (National Education for Women’s) Leadership program converged on the Norman campus May 20-24, for the 15th year. The program’s mission is to educate, inspire and empower women to become leaders in public service and elective office. The intensive, five-day program brought together 40 undergraduate women from 20 higher education institutions to learn from Oklahoma’s top women leaders in government, business, the nonprofit sector and politics.

In 2016, the program marked a milestone with its 500th graduate.

The 2016 Faculty-in-Residence were Amanda Johnson, director of child care for the Choctaw 28

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Nation of Oklahoma; Beverly Rodgers, attorney and mayor of Holdenville, Oklahoma; and foster care advocate Kimberly Winston. Students heard from more than 50 presenters about various topics and completed a campaign simulation and action project focused on childhood immunization policy. The program closed with the second-annual EmPower Lunch fundraiser.

The EmPower Lunch was held at the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame.

Claudia San Pedro, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Sonic Corporation, served as the keynote speaker. San Pedro’s years of public and private service leadership experience includes an appointment by Gov. Brad Henry in 2005 as the first woman and first Hispanic director of state finance for Oklahoma.

Graduate Assistant Alexandra Bohannon provided staff support to the Assistant Director for N.E.W. Leadership Lorna Vazquez and Director Cindy Simon Rosenthal.

legislative process in another state.

University of Kansas Professor Burdett Loomis and the Dole Institute of Politics hosted the visit.

The group was able to meet with Kansas Speaker of the House Ray Merrick as well as other legislators, lobbyists and reporters. As part of the exchange, the center will host students from KU for a visit to the Oklahoma state capitol in 2017. Funding for the trip was provided by the OU College of Arts and Sciences and the OU Political Science Department.

Civic Engagement Fellows Carl Albert Civic Engagement Fellows Blessing Ikpa and Jessica Roberts partnered with the Political Science Club, Young Democrats, College Republicans and the Honors College for a Super Tuesday primary watch party.

They also hosted two “Politics and Pizza” events.

Community In spring, the center hosted two lively and well-attended community Coffee Klatches. On March 21, the center hosted a visit from former Ambassador Jim Jones. Jones also met with students, gave an interview to KGOU and recorded an oral history interview. The center also hosted the 2015 Carl Albert Dissertation Award winner Michael Barber

Capitol Scholars In March, Associate Director Mike Crespin traveled with his Capitol Scholars to the Kansas state capitol to experience the

Former Ambassador Jim Jones and Cindy Simon Rosenthal, Carl Albert Center director and curator stand with Matthew Geras, one of the Carl Albert Center’s doctoral fellows.

Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center Congressional Archives

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin and 40 undergraduate women took part in the 2016 National Education for Women’s Leadership program on the University of Oklahoma campus in January.

Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center Congressional Archives

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on April 14-15. Barber, associate professor of political science at Brigham Young University, met with students and faculty and discussed sources of party polarization with the Coffee Klatch attendees. The dissertation award is funded by the center and given by the Legislative Studies Section of the American Political Science Association.

Presentations In January, Carl Albert Graduate Fellow Jessica Hayden presented “Building an Electoral Record: The Increase in Procedural Traceability in Congress,” with Mike Crespin, Anthony J. Madonna and Ivy Shen at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association. They also presented the paper at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in April.

On April 2, Carl Albert Graduate Fellow Matthew Geras presented “Candidate Emergence & Competition in U.S. Congressional Elections,” at the annual meeting of the Florida Political Science Association.

Awards In February, Carl Albert Center Director and Curator Cindy Simon Rosenthal was honored with the Kate Barnard Award by the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women. The award honors outstanding women in public service in Oklahoma.

Nominees are from the ranks of elected or appointed salaried public officials in Oklahoma. Rosenthal has served as mayor of Norman, Oklahoma since 2007 and will end her service June 30, 2016. She served as a city council member for three years prior to being elected mayor.

Several undergraduate and graduate students affiliated with the Carl Albert Center won scholarships

from the OU Department of Political Science. Matthew Geras (Carl Albert Graduate Fellow) received a John Halvor Leek Memorial Scholarship. Jessica Hayden (Carl Albert Graduate Fellow) won the V. Stanley Vardys Graduate Research Award for her paper “Gender Stereotypes in Attack Ads in U.S. Congressional Campaigns, 1996-2008.” Leah Clemenson (Community Scholar) received a Cortez A.M. Ewing Public Service Fellowship and will intern with the Human Rights Campaign. Daniel Pae (former Capitol Scholar and Undergraduate Research Fellow) received a Cortez A.M. Ewing Public Service Fellowship and will intern in Okla. Rep. Tom Cole’s office in Washington, D.C. in summer 2016.

Pae also received an Edmond and Joyce Peters Scholarship. Emerson Hoagland (Undergraduate Research Fellow) and Jessica Roberts (Civic Engagement Fellow) were inducted into Pi Sigma Alpha, the political science honor society.

Alumni Former Carl Albert Graduate Fellow Tyler Hughes (Ph.D. 2015) received a $15,000 grant from California State University, Sacramento to study the history and legislative impacts of the caucus. Hughes was awarded the grant along with political science professors Lawrence Becker and Jason Morin.

Akash Patel, former Carl Albert Capitol Scholar and Undergraduate Research Fellow, is among 30 recipients of the 2016 Paul and

Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, the premiere graduate fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants.

Akash Patel The 30 recipients, called “Fellows,” were selected for their potential to make significant contributions to U.S. society, culture or their academic field.

They were selected from a pool of 1,443 applicants. With a two percent acceptance rate, it was the most competitive year in the Fellowship’s history.

Patel was born in London to Indian parents and raised in Oklahoma. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from OU and founded Aspiring Americans to assist students who are undocumented immigrants. Patel will study law at the University of Michigan and credits his experience at the Carl Albert Center as an important factor in his successes.

Visiting Scholar The archives hosted visiting scholar Charles Finocchiaro, University of South Carolina, who used several collections to explore the emergence of a “modern style of congressional service, particularly in terms of constituent service and personal vote seeking activities.”

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER! Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center Women’s Leadership Initiative OU Votes facebook.com/CarlAlbertCenter

@CarlAlbertCtr

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The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center 630 Parrington Oval, Room 101 Norman, Oklahoma 73019-4031 (405) 325-6372 http://www.ou.edu/carlalbertcenter

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PAID University of Oklahoma

Visiting Scholars Program The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center at the University of Oklahoma seeks applicants for its Visiting Scholars Program, which provides financial assistance to researchers working at the Center’s archives. Awards of $500-$1000 are normally granted as reimbursement for travel and lodging.

The Center’s holdings include the papers of many former members of Congress, such as Speaker Carl Albert, Robert S. Kerr, and Fred Harris of Oklahoma, Helen Gahagan Douglas and Jeffery Cohelan of California, and Neil Gallagher of New Jersey. Besides the history of Congress, congressional leadership, national and Oklahoma politics, and election campaigns, the collections also document government policy affecting agriculture, Native Americans, energy, foreign affairs, the environment, and the economy.

Topics that can be studied include the Great Depression, flood control, soil conservation and tribal affairs.

At least one collection provides insight on women in American politics. Most materials date from the 1920s to the 1990s, although there is one nineteenth-century collection. The Center’s collections are described on the World Wide Web at http://www.ou.edu/carlalbertcenter and in the publication titled A Guide to the Carl Albert Center Congressional Archives (Norman, Okla.: The Carl Albert Center, 1995) by Judy Day, et al., available at many U. S. academic libraries. Additional information can be obtained from the Center.

The Visiting Scholars Program is open to any applicant. Emphasis is given to those pursuing postdoctoral research in history, political science and other fields. Graduate students involved in research for publication, thesis, or dissertation are encouraged to apply. Professional writers and researchers are also invited to apply.

The Center evaluates each research proposal based upon its merits, and funding for a variety of topics is expected.

No standardized form is needed for application. Instead, a series of documents should be sent to the Center, including: (1) a description of the research proposal in fewer than 1000 words; (2) a personal vita; (3) an explanation of how the Center’s resources will assist the researcher; (4) a budget proposal; and (5) a letter of reference from an established scholar in the discipline attesting to the significance of the research.

Applications are accepted at any time.

For more information, please contact: Archivist, Carl Albert Center, 630 Parrington Oval, Room 101, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019. Telephone: (405) 325-6372. FAX: (405) 325-6419. E-mail: cacarchives@ou.edu

The University of Oklahoma is an Equal Opportunity Institution. www.ou.edu

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extensions | Summer 2016

Extensions is a copyrighted publication of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center. It is distributed free of charge twice a year. All Rights Reserved.

Extensions and the Carl Albert Center symbol are trademarks of the Carl Albert Center. Copyright Carl Albert Center, The University of Oklahoma, 1985.

Statements contained herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Carl Albert Center or the regents of The University of Oklahoma.