STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES M. JEFFORDS, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE

STATE OF VERMONT

Good morning. The purpose of today's hearing is to examine the functioning of the EPA's Office of the Ombudsman. While this may be a little known office within the EPA, historically it has played an important role looking into the Agency's handling of hazardous waste sites under the Suerfund program.

It is clear to me that the Agency needs an independent, credible, and impartial Ombudsman that will respond to the needs of communities coping with complicated and sometimes life-threatening environmental problems. I for one do not want another GAO study in 9 months that again finds that the Ombudsman does not have sufficient independence.

Last April, the EPA transferred the Ombudsman to the Office of the Inspector General. In reviewing the testimony of today's witnesses, it is clear that this action has generated considerable concern. I hope that the Inspector General will detail the operating plans for the Ombudsman's office and will let the Committee know when the office will be publicly posted and fully staffed.

As most of you know, the authorizing statute governing the activities of the Ombudsman expired some time ago. Senator Crapo has introduced a bill with Senators Specter and Allard and others that would require the Ombudsman to report directly to the Administrator of the EPA. I hope all of the witnesses will give us their comments on this piece of legislation.

As a reminder, I would request that the witnesses keep their oral remarks to 5 minutes so that we have time for questions and answers after each panel. Each of the witness' written testimony will be placed in the record, and the record will be left open for followup questions and additional testimony.

Senator JEFFORDS. Senator Clinton.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

Senator CLINTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I especially thank you for holding today's hearing on this very important topic. I am grateful that we are going to focus on it because it has been a subject of great concern to me and to my colleague, Congressman Nadler, who I am delighted is here to testify on behalf of the tens of thousands of residents of Lower Manhattan. Congressman Nadler has been a staunch and unrelenting advocate on behalf of our constituents at and around Ground Zero who experienced the unthinkable on September 11 and who to this day continue to be faced with issues and concerns regarding the quality of the air they breathe and the health and safety of the environment that they and their families live in.

In the case of the World Trade Center, like so many other sites around the country, people are faced with very complicated environmental questions. They are trying to understand technical and scientific issues that really only experts can explain to us and get to the bottom of. What we all want is simply to understand what is going on; to learn what we need to do to protect our health and to protect our environment.

It should not be complicated, and I do not think it should be that difficult. It should be the Federal Government's job not only to carry out the laws, but also to help the public understand what is going on, and to provide us with the information we need to make the right decisions about the health and safety of our children and ourselves. It seems more often than not that communities are left confused, even empty-handed, without the information and without the actions that they need and deserve from their government.

Senator Lieberman and I, with the great support of Chairman Jeffords, went to New York to hold a hearing on air quality at

Ground Zero back in February, to try to clear the air, so to speakto get some real information that we then could act on and legislate about. Again, Congressman Nadler, who has been a leader on these issues, was there to lend his expertise and support.

Now, I know that we have a number of people from New York City who have traveled here today. I wish we could hear from every single one of you on this important issue, but the record will receive written testimony and it will remain open until July 7. I know that a number of you visited some of my colleagues' offices and I really applaud you for doing that—to get the word out. We just recently had a public opinion survey in Manhattan, Mr. Chairman, where a majority of residents were more concerned about the air quality issues than they were about another terrorist attack.

People just know there is-and it may not be that there are answers we are not being told, although we think that there were answers we were not told in a timely way, but that we have to do further research to get to the bottom of some of these issues. We need to have an independent voice like an ombudsman to be able to give us that guarantee that somebody is asking the hard questions inside the Agency.

I just want to end with reading one of the many e-mails that I have received from my constituents in Lower Manhattan with regards to this question about the EPA ombudsman. This woman lives in a building right next to the World Trade Center. Here is what she wrote, "Dear Senator, I have been diagnosed with new asthma and spent several months gasping for air. I have been unable to return to my home because it is still full of World Trade Center dust, although it has been cleaned by conventional methods many times. Dozens of my neighbors are also ill. The EPA ombudsman hearing here were the first time the truth was told about what has happened to us. Please do everything in your power to reinstate Robert Martin.”

Another woman who lives just five blocks away says, "I speak for many who are very worried about downtown's condition. The ombudsman was our hope that something would be done to correct all of our problems. We are so worried down here. As taxpaying citizens, we feel abandoned and need more advocates. It is a nightmare and we are overwhelmed with the amount of work us regular people have to do to try and overcome what we know is a bad situation. Please help."

These people need an advocate who is an expert, who is inside the Agency, who does have access to information that is often sometimes difficult even for those of us in the Senate to obtain in a timely manner. So I hope that we are going to resolve some of the disputes that have occurred around this important position. We are conducting this hearing to determine a way to ensure that the role of an independent ombudsman is maintained at EPA. That to me is the most important issue-not someone who has to toe the party line, not someone who has to repeat publicly what he or she is told to repeat, but someone who can be a thorn in the side and can take a contrary position. This is not new to this Administration. This has happened in other Administrations where the ombudsman had some things to say that were not always welcome to hear. We have to have that kind of public airing, especially when

it comes to our air in Lower Manhattan in the wake of the terrible disaster of September 11.

So I am also pleased that our colleague, Senator Allard, is here as well, and I look forward to the testimony.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you very much.

I welcome both Senator Allard and Representative Nadler. This is an incredibly important hearing and I deeply appreciate your interest and your willingness to be here.

Senator Allard.

STATEMENT OF HON. WAYNE ALLARD, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF COLORADO

Senator ALLARD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Clinton. I am pleased to be able to testify before you today, and I want to thank you for holding this hearing and giving me an opportunity to testify on Senate bill 606.

As you know, this legislation reauthorizes the Office of the Ombudsman of the Environmental Protection Agency. I speak to you from personal experience, having worked with a neighborhood in Denver who came to our office. We worked with them to try and get the bureaucracy within the Environmental Protection Agency to respond to the concerns of the citizens in that neighborhood. Frankly, as an office, we were not able to get through the echelon that had established itself in the regional office of the Environmental Protection Agency, so we had to turn to the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman was the one who helped us break down those barriers because their purpose was to serve as an independent voice for citizens impacted by decisions happening within the Environmental Protection Agency.

I am going to keep my remarks brief, but I do want to share with the committee my reasoning on and interest in this issue. I introduced similar legislation in the 105th Congress because of the ongoing battle between the citizens of a Denver neighborhood and the EPA concerning the Shattuck Superfund site. The Ombudsman's office was instrumental in bringing the truth of what was happening in this case to light. The legislation was introduced by Senator Crapo at the beginning of the current Congress because the issue of authorization and independence in the office of the EPA Ombudsman is still an important one.

I would like to share with you quickly the stories surrounding the Shattuck site in the Overland Park neighborhood in southwest Denver and what the EPA did there. These events have had a lasting impact not only on the residents of the Overland Park neighborhood, but on each of us who look to the EPA to be the guardian of our Nation's environmental health and safety. In 1997, after several years of EPA stonewalling, the residents of Overland Park in Denver brought their concerns about a Superfund site in their neighborhood and their frustrations with EPA to my attention. I learned that the neighborhood had run into a wall of bureaucracy that was unresponsive to the very public it is charged with protecting. As a result of learning this information, I requested the Ombudsman's intervention. In early 1999, the Ombudsman's office began an investigation and quickly determined that the claims made by the residents were not only meritorious, but that EPA offi

cials had engaged in an effort to keep documents hidden from the public, thereby placing their health in further danger.

Without the Ombudsman's investigation on Shattuck, the residents of Overland Park would never have learned the truth. The Ombudsman's investigation brought integrity back into the process. Without the Ombudsman's work, a trusted Federal agency would have been able to successfully hide the truth from the very people it is charged to protect. The Shattuck issue is a decade-long exam-ple of why citizens' trust in their government has waned.

This bill will preserve an important mechanism within the EPA that the public can trust to protect their health and safety. The Shattuck story was a frustrating and often disheartening experience for all involved. It is an example of what can happen when a government entity goes unchecked. For the residents of Denver, the Office of Ombudsman offered the opportunity to get to the truth and made the health and safety of the public the top priority. Let me make it clear that the main priority of my continued support of this bill is to keep the Office of the EPA Ombudsman open for business and capable of conducting that business.

In the future, others may find themselves in a situation similar to the one that residents of Denver experienced. I want to know that we will have every assurance that the public safety will be protected, that its voice will be heard, that its questions will be answered and its concerns addressed. This office should not have its investigative ability restricted and its independence should not be compromised. The EPA's actions and decisions in future cases like Shattuck should not go unchecked and citizens in other States should have a public avenue to address concerns and get answers from the Environmental Protection Agency.

I know that I am not alone in my concerns, and unfortunately that the Shattuck site is not unique. Many of my fellow Senators and Representatives have experienced similar concerns with sites. in their States. That is why this legislation remains so very important. I appreciate the efforts that have been made by the current Administration in an attempt to solve some of the problems that the Office of the Ombudsman experienced. I know that Administrator Whitman shares my desire to see this issue to a conclusion that will be beneficial to all, and I appreciate her willingness to work with my office.

Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing and your willingness to look further into the matter.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you for your excellent statement. You are right, and we appreciate the work you have put into it. Representative Nadler.

on.

Senator ALLARD. Mr. Chairman, I am sorry, but I have to move

Senator JEFFORDS. Oh, you are going to leave us.

Senator ALLARD. Very good, thank you.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you, Wayne-very helpful.
Now, Mr. Nadler.

STATEMENT OF HON. JERROLD NADLER, U.S.
REPRESENTATIVE FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

Mr. NADLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank you and the rest of the committee for holding this hearing today and for inviting me to testify regarding the EPA Hazardous Waste Ombudsman, in particular the role of the Ombudsman in investigating the response of the EPA to the September 11 terrorist attack in New York.

My colleague from New York, Senator Clinton, has been an outspoken advocate, and knows all too well the problems citizens in New York have been encountering over the last 9 months. Thank you, Senator Clinton, for arranging the field hearing in New York back in February, and thank you, Chairman Jeffords, for the committee's continued oversight of the EPA by examining this issue today.

Those of us who have had to deal with the EPA have had an interesting experience. We experienced on the one hand an agency that seems to ignore the community's concerns, and on the other, an Ombudsman willing to listen and investigate complaints about agency neglect. Ultimately in the vast majority of the EPA Ombudsman cases, the transparent Ombudsman process has helped the Administrator or regional officials to take proper action to resolve the disputes, resulting in greater protection from radioactive and other hazardous waste threats. Both Democrats and Republicans alike have utilized the EPA ombudsman to help restore trust in government where it had previously been shaken.

Immediately following September 11, I formed the Ground Zero Elected Officials Task Force, of which Senator Clinton is a member, to coordinate the efforts of all the government representatives from the area. The main goal of the Task Force is to assess the needs of the community in Lower Manhattan and to ensure that those needs are addressed by the appropriate government agencies. One area that clearly was not addressed was the presence of hazardous waste in people's homes, schools and businesses. In the days following the attack, the Task Force heard countless complaints from citizens who suffered from adverse health effects and lacked the necessary resources to test and clean their apartments and buildings properly.

When EPA was presented with such information, the Agency either maintained that everything was safe initially on the basis of zero test data, or claimed that the city of New York was in charge of indoor environments and that the EPA only had authority only outdoor environments and had no authority for regulating indoor environments. This distinction between indoor and outdoor environments has no basis in statute.

The Agency maintained its position even after being presented with independent test results conducted by long-time EPA contractors at the request of the Ground Zero Task Force which showed elevated levels of hazardous materials inside downtown apartments. Citizens were left to fend for themselves. They often ended up in court proceedings against their landlords and building owners, and expended vast resources on the cleanup downtown that was not conducted adequately or systematically, but rather on an ad hoc basis.