Assessing the ruins.

There is quiet discussion of a rare wall of rock art hidden in the canyons of Utah. It is 3,000 years old, or maybe 8,000. It shows painted figures like dreams and ghosts, like nothing found anywhere else. It will take days to reach by foot--there is no other way--in canyons too numerous to count. The men exchange maps and commitments and return to their desks, midway up a Denver skyscraper which houses the Region 8 headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Ties are straightened, papers shuffled and, while the machine rolls forward, a few isolated minds concentrate on the distant artwork of a vanished Archaic culture.

DON PATTON FALLS. IT IS MESSY ON a descending ledge several hundred feet up. Dust kicks backwards with rocks bouncing off, shattering 10 seconds down. His arms are in open air, then his torso and backpack, hanging above the canyon. Two people dive on his legs before he slips over.

He is suspended for a few seconds in the air. He does not struggle. He is waiting, staring with amazement into the sparse juniper and broken boulders which lie below. Sandstone, smooth and flawless, will mesmerize. It will draw you down. Red, pure sandstone. Pulling himself back to the ledge, he has blood on his lips and teeth. He smiles wryly. He works at the EPA, so he is used to being battered.

The EPA has no actual interest in this place. No Superfund cleanup sites. No political jockeying. These people have come to replace their daily flurry of arcane, bureaucratic language with the descending trill of the canyon wren. Fax machines, mainframe computers and unfathomable layers of papers in triplicate form of every government-ordained color and size have all been ground into a fine red sand the consistency of flour. Already it is inside their boots, coloring their socks. The agency they have momentarily abandoned was created to codify the country's environmental agenda, The EPA designs pollution standards, recycling grants and waste disposal priorities, tying it together with enforceable environmental regulations. This all emanates from a flood of paper and electricity, memos and satellite conferences, which they have entered these canyons to lose.

These office canyons can be as confusing as their natural counterpart. I once became lost searching for Don Patton in this paper and steel wilderness. The walls were just high enough to cut the view, too high to climb without creating a scene amidst the paper-shuffling. Six-foot cubicles were set into an Orwellian labyrinth where bodies appeared from one hole and ducked quickly into another. Clean air poured from ducts, tied into a humming infrastructure, Dizzying lines intersected, touching well-spaced copy machines and closed wooden doors. Don Patton was behind one of the doors. His office overlooked the massive vents which evacuate stale oxygen from the EPA's building.

He was once a hatchet man under Ronald Reagan, and was sent into these intricate hallways to weed out environmentalists. If anybody at the EPA failed to follow industry policy, they were to be reported to then-Administrator Anne Gorsuch and her cronies and yanked from their positions, given assignments which snuffed their work. It was like the secret police coming in the night. Don Patton, however, lied. He turned the tables--if an environmentalist showed up, he reported back that there was no green in sight. It was the only way to survive during the Reagan-Bush era, he says. Either lie or join industry.

Patton is a 50-year old government veteran, fighting the paper wars after 30 years of federal paychecks. He has a lean, grey-bearded face and a lanky structure well-built for wedging up tight creases in cliff walls. He recycles, contributes to various environmental organizations and, as dictated by his profession, is in charge of making sure industry gets enough money to promote its environmental agenda, even if that is little more than propaganda. He works as the Chief of the Policy Office in Strategic Integration, an admittedly obscure and meaningless title, but one that puts him in charge of new initiatives tackled by the EPA's regional office. He works in grants, doling money out to conservation projects, often sponsored by industries.

He belongs in the canyons, though, and he always sleeps high with the perched cliff dwellings and spirits. As they hike they discover pot shards beneath the cliffs.

At the inception of the EPA in 1970, Don Patton was in a select group, creating an agency which would become an environmental watchdog for a huge, uncontrollable nation. Coming out of the incestuous, provincial enclosure of Washington, D.C., this agency would eventually die in his hands. "What the EPA didn't realize was that they were supposed to be advocates for the environment," he says. "They would hash things out within the agency, bantering back and forth on whether they were an environmental organization or not, what they were supposed to protect, what was going too far, what was not enough. And by the time there was any kind of legislation to put through, we had to deal with Office of Management and Budget or Commerce. We already had a watered-down position. Then we got watered down even more in the final process." He started, like many of those who formed the EPA, as an environmentalist.

PATTON IS STILL IN THE LEAD ON THE trail, even after his fall. Five men are behind him, leaping from edge to edge, and picking their way to the bottom. In this set of canyons the thin, thousand-foot-high walls are interlocked like fingers, separating each drainage. Once they reach the bottom, everything beyond the walls is out of sight. The sky is a short streak of blue like a dry brush stroke, overwhelmed by the red stone. Patton is sitting on his pack in the thin drainage cluttered by broken boulders, wiping sweat away. Blood is still on his lips. "We got a lot of new people to come to the EPA. They were the bushy-tailed environmentalists to come out of Earth Day a year before the EPA was created. Essentially it was Nixon's attempt to divert attention from Vietnam. He figured it would drain some of the anti-administration feelings. It was a very cynical tactic to create the EPA, but it did attract a lot of people to something they could grasp."

Patton was in the movement. He started an inter-government group called Smokey's Outing Club which ventured, sometimes, into militant environmental activism. "There were a few illegal activities, if you can call them that," he says. "Like pulling survey markers or spiking trees. Well, not me, of course. We would go out and, well, do things. Nothing bad by todays standards."

DENNIS MARKER, WHO QUIT THE EPA 14 years ago, knew better than to hold out any hope. He is politically provoked if government, big business, or American maneuvers in Nicaragua edge into the conversation. He is smooth, a media specialist. He calculates, but does not mince his words, as if they might show up in print some day.

From the pit of the canyons he is reflecting on the intensity of his past. His active distrust of the U.S. government, and his defense of each underdog cause he encounters is ample material for contemplation. "I'm recharging my batteries," he says, "so I can come out swinging again." He is dancing just above the ground, out of reach of gravity most of the time. He is a climber, very good on the rocks: tall, lithe, laughing half the time. He is a dangerous activist, so his laugh always sounds political; his words are saturated with a burning-heart-fury that leaks out even if he's talking about dehydrated mashed potatoes at camp. He is a death wish to many political races. The commercials he has produced for campaigns are brutal, hilarious, menacing. He carries with him a hit list of people he will see removed from office.

Marker held an office within the EPA as a consultant during the 70s. From there he could see the agency failing with every step. "It was a useful organization for the first seven years, then three years of leveling off, but after 10 years, it was over," he explains. According to his theory, no institution lasts more than 10 years before drowning in its own network of lies, used only to perpetuate its own existence. He did not last long with the EPA.

While working for the head of the EPA, Marker edited the press release which declared the leaking Three Mile Island nuclear facility to be no public threat. President Carter was on one phone and Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburg was on the second phone. "Nobody knew anything about the technicalities of a hydrogen bubble, least of all the EPA," he said. "They were looking to us for answers. We were the ones who would know and we knew nothing."

Later, in a television interview, Marker was asked what the next step for the EPA should be. "At night when everybody is out of the building we should take backhoes and dig 12-story pits on the east and west sides. Then we let the building collapse into the holes and bury it, real quick. Pretend it never happened." His career with the agency ended abruptly.

He moved to Central America and battled U.S. military involvement. It was the only way for him to deal with government lies. At his house in Santa Fe, New Mexico, we once stood on his deck watching a formation of military helicopters pass toward the Jemez Mountains. "In Salvador when people see helicopters they run," he said. "They know what happens when the helicopters come." He was talking about U.S. helicopters and U.S. guns.

Marker emerged from the government as its enemy, appearing on the front page of newspapers like the The Washington Post in opposition to Ronald Reagan. He became a media voice, showing up in The New York Times, People magazine, NBC News, National Public Radio and The MacNeil-Lehrer Report with proof that our government was behind immense massacres.

Two days into the canyon, Marker has climbed a set of stairs to a knob of high, white sandstone. The steps were cut into the stone maybe 900 years ago for the Anasazi people to access the canyon floor from the rim.

Marker is telling Patton the EPA needs to shut down. It is the only way to protect the environment, like rebooting a computer after it has become too tangled in its own system. "Things will go bad, then we'll open again and get some good legislation like we did back in the 70s and late 60s."

"Oh no, a bureaucracy is never going to put itself out of business," Patton retorts. "Its sole purpose is self-preservation. The alternative is essentially to get someone real stupid and ineffective in there. Unlike the Gorsuch years when we were doing nothing; then it was all planned out. And with Bush it was expertly calculated to have us doing busy work and no enforcement. We need someone stupid enough to piss off the public to get anything done." Marker sticks with his backhoe theory: the EPA must die.

AT NIGHT WITH A FLASHLIGHT between his teeth, topographic maps spread across his lap and cans of beer strewn at his feet, Patton mumbles senselessly. He is explaining the route to the pictograph panel, getting caught in the contour intervals. "My God, all of these lines."

Bill Gillespie, Patton's boss, is drinking a non-alcoholic beer. Everyone has brought beer, which seems insane with this much footwork, but they defend their right. Beer, they say, is one of their few connections to the civilized world from here.

Gillespie runs the Office of Strategic Integration, which he hopes will turn the EPA into a bad-guy database, uncovering industrial environmental criminals. The group's job is to identify inspection targets, blow the whistle and lead the way for enforcement to follow. They recently nabbed a Conoco refinery as if it were an undercover sting operation. The number of corporations they haven't caught yet is staggering. He says it's an allocation problem. "You could scrape away 50 percent of the government jobs and America would be just fine," Gillespie says. "Most people in government actually think they're serving a meaningful purpose, and that's what's scary. Instead of doing whatever it is we need to do, government is usually doing nothing but increasing its staffing and budget."

Gillespie joined early, with Patton in Washington. He swapped a Defense Department position for an enforcement job with the EPA. "When we hit a juncture and started working in grants and subsidies we made a big mistake. We should be strictly an enforcement branch. If you're doing something illegal we should have the jurisdiction to go in and slap the cuffs on you and take you to court, not help you out with a grant. The EPA has 100 people working nationwide in criminal investigations and 18,000 doing other stuff. I'm sure most of them can't figure out what they're doing. Can you imagine if we had 18,000 working in enforcement?"

Patton, his underling, is the grant assistance man. He shakes his head. For him industry needs to learn, to be spoon-fed. Crime and punishment are not the only answers; changing the way industry works is. Patton tries to push the grants; Gillespie pushes enforcement, tries to keep his foot on top of the grants; Patton files his papers and claims that grants are in the lead over enforcement, and somewhere in the paper shredder their effectiveness feeds together like confetti.

A heavy darkness rolls into the canyon and hoodoo sculptures are visible against the sky. There are no lights to disturb the flicker of stars, which appear like points of light through a tattered length of purple cloth. They count satellites.

The pottery is about the size of a palm. It is clearly painted, but the meaning of its lines is uncertain. The remainder of the pot has worn away along with its maker. It is probably just less than a thousand years old. There are many pieces, and at each obscure site they are decorated with black paint on white or red fired clay in entirely different styles. It's as if various cultures had spilled them over time. Don tucks this one under a rock as if it were a reflex. I ask him if he has any ethical dilemmas, if he wants to pocket the sherd instead.

"I just haven't found one big enough yet," he laughs. "I'm looking for the hostage." The hostage is the complete pot. He plans to hold it hostage and collect ransom from the local government land management agency. He will take a picture of it, leave it hidden in the desert and laugh at the government. He just doesn't know what the price will be.

Everyone continues into the canyon; the one in front is a Finance Management Analyst who thinks that the EPA can survive, who in fact thinks it's the best damn thing to come along since the New Deal. The analyst, Jack Bowles, has been with the agency for four years. He is in his late 20s. He sees an environmental revolution sweeping the country with the EPA at the center.

"The EPA's going through a Renaissance now," he says.

"Ah, bullshit," Marker responds.

"No, really. This is a second wave of environmental enlightenment." Bowles smiles, fighting off the wave from Marker. "The EPA is a good organization. It's the most effective environmental organization in the world." He pauses. "Although there's nothing to compare it to."

He knows why it could fail, though. Gillespie says to him, "I equate government progress with moving a pea down a railroad track using a locomotive." Bowles agrees wholeheartedly. The problem for Bowles is scale: "Big cities, big armies, big wars, and big EPA; we need to bring things down to a human scale. I have fought for those goals. My job right now is just to manage this big beast better."

At dawn they reach the panel they have been hunting. Light is angling across snakes and figures on the wall. Seven-foot-tall images stand in lines, surrounded by colors and shapes. They are Archaic pictographs, part of a smattering of incomparable artwork from a group of nomadic hunters and gatherers. Their ages are unknown. Maybe 8,000 years old at a distant guess.

Patton gravitates to a figure's wide eyes. It is smaller than the others and holds in one hand what appears to be a feather. These men forget the EPA and the great vents pumping oxygen in and out of the 34-story building. They place their hands in the air as if they are duplicating the artwork for themselves--or praying.

Within several days they find another canyon to take them out. They camp at the edge, above the braids of box canyons.

Someone offers to make the several-mile-run in the dark, which is coming fast, to find the trucks and return with hot beers. With stares fixed on the landscape, no one replies. They are far enough away so that they no longer hear the slow, grinding collapse of the Environmental Protection Agency. They absorb the silence.

RELATED ARTICLE: Ten Simple Ways to lower your cancer risk

1. Don't smoke. If you do, quit. If you don't just never start--we call them "cancer-sticks" for a reason.

2. Eat organic food. Systematic pesticides lurk deep in the tissues of fruits and veggies, so washing them doesn't help. More organic-only markets blossom across the country every day. Even better, grow your own food. You know exactly what you have--and haven't--put on your tomatoes.

3. Stop chewing the fat. The conservative American Cancer Society recommends a low-fat diet. The best way to go: Reduce your meat intake, and avoid fast food joints. Some studies also suggest that red meat itself, aside from the fat, is carcinogenic, and grilling meats on a barbeque creates a powerful carcinogen, heterocyclic amines. Anyway you slice it, pulling back beef is key.

4. Eat more cancer killers. Since foods seem natural enemies of a variety of cancers, so load your diet with broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, onions, garlic, and, yes, the dreaded tofu. Don't forget high-fiber grains, which some claim are potent detoxifiers, and add foods rich in Vitamin A, C, and E, anti-oxidants that are being furiously studied for their ability to slow cancer's spread. And drink Chinese green tea: new evidence has emerged that this stuff is potently able to topple tumors.

5. Box those briefs. Memo to Bill Clinton: Switch your undergarments! Some doctors don't think the rapid rise in testicular cancer or the drop in sperm counts are due to toxic chemicals at all. Rather, they claim that briefs hold the family jewels too close to your body, raising test testicular temperatures and frying the sperm.

6. No Buds for you. Though you've been enjoying your evening's glass of red wine since watching that 60 Minutes report on the health benefits of the fermented grape, remember, "All things in moderation." Several cancers, especially of the liver, are linked to alcohol.

7. Pale is chic. Any sunburn increases your risk of contracting skin cancer.

8. Get thee to a spa. Stay in shape. Exercise. Take long walks. Ride a bike. Swim. Play squash with a friend. Anything.

9. Chill out. Lowering stress of all kinds can be as helpful as changing your diet. Stress alters your body's chemistry, and a genetic predisposition to certain cancers just might get activated in a stress-ridden body.

10. Laugh a lot. Cancer isn't funny, but there's evidence, made famously by Norman Cousin's book, Anatomy of an Illness as Percieved by the Patient, that laughter releases cancer-killing chemicals into your bloomstream.

PS. Change jobs. This step isn't so simple, but few jobs are worth dying for. If your work exposes you to excess stress or carcinogenic compounds, consider changing scenery. It just might be the smartest move you ever make.

RELATED ARTICLE: TEN THINGS YOU CAN DO To Help Prevent Environmental Cancer As if Your LIFE Depends on It

1. Join together with other concerned neighbors to stop the release of carcinogens in your area. Look for these dangers: arsenic released by metal smelting, coal burning and glass manufacturing: dioxins from paper and pulp bleaching and pesticide manufacturing; tetrachloroethylene (also known as "Perc") as used by dry cleaners; and hexachlorobenzene produced when making pesticides. for more information and support for your efforts, contact: Greenpeace USA Toxics Campaign, 1436 U Street NW, Washington, DC 20009/[phone].

2. Talk with local utilities about the chemical contaminants and carcinogens may be present in your water. These include arsenic (used in chlorinating water) and the pesticide alachlor. Organize neighbors if the individual approach doesn't get results. Contact: Mothers and Others for a Livable Planet, 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011/[phone].

3. Use the Freedom of Information Commission (FOI) to determine if nearby industrial facilities are releasing carcinogens. Read about the FOI in your local library or write: Freedom of Information Clearing House, 2000 P Street NW, Washington, DC 20036; or the Freedom of Information Center, School of Journalism, P.O. Box 858, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65201.

4. Meet with local government officials. Politicians are very likely to listen to citizen delegations representing key voting blocs! Talk with offices like parks and recreation, education, planning and zoning, public works about establishing an action plan to get known carcinogens, pesticides and herbicides out of town. Contact: Enviromental Defense Fund, 275 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 100/10(212)505-2100.

5. Talk with your supermarket manager about stocking natural foods and cleaning products that use fewer chemicals. Also, ask that grocers post listings of the chemicals used on their produce and packaged products, and write state representatives about sponsoring food labeling legislation Contact: National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides, 530 7th Street SE, Washington, DC 20003/[phone].

6. Write local, state and federal representatives about their support for low-emission vehicle standards. The emissions from cars include sulfur oxides, carbon monoxide, and (in diesel fuel) polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons--all carcinogenic. If your state has already passed laws mandating electric and/or low-emission vehicles (they're going into effect in California and 12 northeastern states in 1998), ask that they be strengthened. Contact: Electric Auto Association, 2710 St. Giles Lane, Mountain View, CA 94020/[phone].

7. Support sustained agriculture. Use your power as consumer to support organic farmers who grow their crops without carcinogenic pesticides and herbicides. Check your state's organic produce standards (if it has them) and ask about compliance with newly enacted federal laws requiring proper growing conditions, storage and transportation of organic foods. Contact: Organic Foods Production Association of North America, P.O. Box 1078, Greenfield, MA 01301/[phone].

8. Lobby local restaurants to cook with fresh ingredients. Ask managers and waiters about how items on their menus are prepared. Try to convince them there's a market for healthy food--a recent Gallup poll show that one-fifth of restaurant diners are specially looking for a health-conscious menu. Contact: Center for Science in the Public Interest, 1875 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20009-5728/[phone].

9. Press for tougher federal standards on carcinogens in the air, food and water. Call, write or--best of all--visit Congresspeople, Senators and U.S. government officials to make views known. Some important addresses: Environmental Protection Agency, 401 M Street SW, Washington, DC 20460; Vice-President Al Gore, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500; Honorable___, House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515; Senator___, United States Senate, Washington, DC 20510.

10. Educate yourself. Entrenched environmentally-damaging industries are well-stocked with facts and statistical information, and environmentalists need to be, too. Take advantage of the enormous enviromental resources of public libraries to learn more about how industries work and how pollution happens. Without leaving your home, you can use the prodigious powers of the Internet, the free source of on-line environmental data bases, bulletin boards and even material from magazines like E (find us through Econet and Electronic Newsstand; see The Green Net in our January/February 1995 issue for more details). All you need is a computer and a low-cost modem.

RELATED ARTICLE: EPA in the Crosshairs

The right hs never had any affection for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and while it's not actively trying to blast it out of existence, big guns are being brought to bear to weaken its defenses and cut off its funding. EPA research and rugulation are expected to consume a larger-than-ever part of the agency's budget next year--up $400 million to $3.4 billion --and it's precisely that regulatory effort that the Gingrich Congress and syphathetic conservative groups (claiming that environmental restrictions will cost taxpayers $150 billion in 1995) are tyring to cut.

On March 16, President Bill Clinton announced 25 "High Priority Actions" to "reinvent environmental protection to make it work better and cost less"--most by reducing paperwork. "We won't go back to the burning rivers of 1969 or the smoke and smog of 1970--we will stand up to those who would roll back the clock and eliminate public health and environmental standards," Clinton declared.

It's unlikely the right will be satisfied with Clinton's announcement. Despite national polls showing 53 percent of the American people wanting more environmental regulation, not less (and 83 percent calling themselves environmentalists), conservatives are determined to cut the EPA budget, and cut it deeply.

Fred L. Smith, Jr., a former EPA waste management official who now heads the anti-environmental, Washington-baed Competitive Enterprise Institute, says, "You could swing an ax for days and still not hit live wood at the EPA." Smith, who also calls the environmental movement "intellectually bankrupt," says the EPA "should not be allowed to dictate what every community has to do in authoritatian, lockstep fashion." He's cut out almost all of EPA's regulatory functions.

CEI's "Environmental Briefing Book for Congressional Candidates," handed out before the big Republican victories in 1994, claims that EPA's sole proper function "is to provide accurate data about the risks we encounter in day-to-day living, not protect us from those risks." It goes on to take pot-shots at the Clean Air Act, CAFE fuel economy standards, the Endangered Species Act, and many other programs.

At the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, which has worked closely with Ginrich, the pundits are talking about reforming, not eliminating, the EPA. "The funding should be constrained from the current level," says Heritage environmental analyst John Shanahan. "And we'd really like to see the Office of Environmental Justice go out the window. That's a concept whose time should never have come, and it's out of step with today's political climate."

Some environmental groups see Congress' bad mood as an opportunity, not a cause for alarm. Friends of the Earth, The Sierra Club and The National Wildlife Federation joined with the conservative National taxpayers Union in January, calling for $33 billion in budget savings--by eliminating federal program they consider bad for the environment. Among their proposed cuts: $500 million to build roads through national forests.

RELATED ARTICLE: THE E EPA INDEX

Number of pesticides on the U.S. market: 25,000 Number that have not been reregistered since 1972, when legislation to control pesticides was passed: 19,000 Number of major pesticides used on U.S. lawns: 34 Number which have completed a registration process to ensure safety: 0 Number of pounds of active chemical ingredients applied to lawns, gardens, parks and gold course last year: 67 million Number of pesticides identified by the EPA in 1972 as contaminants in groundwater that are still in use: 13 Total number of pesticides in groundwater to date: 46 Number of cases of non-compliance with pesticide regulations in 1990: 633 Number of fines assessed for these cases: 42 Number of "emergency" exemptions granted by EPA to pesticide manufacturers since 1978: over 4,000 Percentage of total exemption requests routinely granted: 80 Number of nationwide federal industrial facilities, such as military bases: 27,000 Number of facilities that generate hazardous waste: 15,000 Number of tons they generate per year: 240 million Pounds of toxic emissions released each year by these facilities into air, soil and water: 5.7 billion pounds NUmber of these facilities inspected in 1991: 820 Number of staff who monitor these facilities: 8 Number of Americans living in areas that have not attained standards of 1970's Clean Air Act: 100 million Percentage increase since 1970 of U.S. cities that are below EPA air quality standards: 40 Percentage of EPA resource spent on pollutants of relatively low risk: 80 Percentage spent on pollutants of greatest risk to humans and ecological systems: 20 Percentage of EPA funding spent on "low risk" categories of inactive toxic waste sites and point source discharges to surface waters in 1993: 54 Percentage spent on "high risk" air pollutants: 5 Percentage spent on "high risk" pesticides: 2 Percentage spent on "high risk" worker exposure to chemicals, indoor air pollution other than radon, radon, destruction of wetlands and natural habitats, global climate change and depletion of the ozone layer: less than 1 Estimated amount EPA media and public works programs spend improperly each year, according congressional oversight studies and EPA's Office of the Inspector General $100 million EPA budget for 1995: $7.2 billion Number of EPA employees: 17,000 1980 trust fund established to clean up toxic waste sites for the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), otherwise known as

the Superfund: $1.6 billion

1986 trust fund: $8.5 billion

1995 trust fund: $13.7 billion Number of hazardous waste sites on the Superfund National Priorities List 1,275 Number of sites cleaned up as of 1995: 279 Average cost to clean up a site: $31.75 million ost to clean up all existing sites: $40 billion Percentage of clean-up, regulatory and administrative work contracted out by EPA: 33 Percentage more than corporate clients EPA routinely pays contractors for site studies and clean-up: up to 500 Percentage of clean-up work funded by polluters themselves: 75 Average time to clean up a site: 10 years Percentage of Americans who live within four miles of National Priorities List sites: 29 Average percent time longer it takes for the EPA to put hazardous sites in minority areas on National Priorities List than white areas: 20

Sources: Annual Review of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by Marc Smolonsky, David Dickson and Elise Caplan for the Center for Resource Economics; "Revolving Door at the EPA," by Jim Sibbison in The Nation; EPA press contacts.