November of 1989, Texas voters permitted the Economically Distressed Areas Program to fund its operations by issuing $100 million in bonds for construction, acquisition, or improvements to water supplies, and/or wastewater collection/treatment works, including all necessary engineering work but not maintenance or ongoing expenses. In 1991, Texas amplified that bond issue fund by $150 million, creating a total pool of $250 million for water works in the Texas colonias.

Another resource that should be mentioned here is the $15 million EPA put into a Colonia Plumbing Loan Program back in 1990; the first applicants for these internal plumbing and house hook-up loans are now awaiting the ruling of the Texas Water Development Board, which will also manage whatever colonias millions Congress appropriates in the fall. (New Mexico's colonias effort is dwarfed by that of Texas; from 1972 to 1990, the state's Environment Department gave out only $12 million in grants and loans for drinking water and wastewater work in the New Mexico colonias.)

Discouragingly, some experts have estimated that extending sewage treatment to all Texas colonias residents would cost at least $500 million, while further improvements in the drinking water supply would cost $250 million. In other words, total resolution of the problem, in its present scale, is still beyond our grasp. Part of the rationale for tackling it gradually is that local institutions do not yet exist in most of the 918

colonias housing 215,000 Hispanic farm workers in sixteen Texas and New Mexico border counties. Until local governments form or local water utilities show more initiative to handle sewage treatment, it will be difficult to "micro-manage" large construction projects.

Significantly, Lull, Texas-the first colonia to receive construction money from the state's Economically Distressed Areas Program

account was recently annexed by an adjacent city, Edinburg, Texas. In August 1991, the Texas Water Development Board and the Edinburg City Council approved the use of a $565,000 loan and an $885,000 grant to finance water improvements and construction of a wastewater system for the Lull colonia. Lull is a Hispanic community in Hidalgo County with nearly 1,300 inhabitants-all U.S. citizens in good standing and a history dating back to the 1920s. In Lull, as throughout the U.S. colonias, few current citizens now have access to sewage treatment, except in the form of archaic, overcrowded, overworked septic tanks, while roughly 80 percent have some kind of amateur fresh-water hookup, for cooking and bathing, but not necessarily for drinking and not necessarily within the home itself. The dwelling can range in quality from a handsome stucco house with several bedrooms to a broken-down hovel built from cinder blocks, tin sheets, scrap lumber, plastic, and cardboard. Most residents use outhouse privies that flood every time rains inundate the undrained, muddy streets and

fields of the colonias, where children and animals are frequently seen playing the same day.

Some colonias residents-all of whom own cars or trucks, and many of whom own their own land and dwellings-drive as much as 30 miles to buy bottles of fresh drinking water. The poorest of the poor, however, drink directly from outdoor taps or from the wells feeding those taps, and the ground water that comes from these sources is contaminated with fecal coliform as a result of the repeated sewage floods. Outbreaks of dysentery and hepatitis A are commonplace in the colonias, even though in the rest of the United States these severe water-borne afflictions are considered Third World diseases.

Some 16 other colonia-related water and wastewater projects are now in the Texas Water Development Board pipeline, which will grow wider and wealthier in the fall. Six applicants with completed facility plans have, like Lull, recently been awarded cash. These projects include Socorro in El Paso County ($1.6 million); Cameron Park in Cameron County ($6.4 million); Granjeno and Madero in Hidalgo County ($2.89 million); areas outside Eagle Pass in Maverick County ($11 million); Westway in El Paso County ($100,000); Sebastian and Lasara in Willacy County ($3 million). The Hacienda Gardens colonia in Cameron County has a completed facility plan that is now being evaluated, while five other counties are now preparing their engineering facility plans. O

ON THE MOVEL

Administrator William Reilly has announced the creation of an Environmental Appeals Board which will replace the current Judicial Officer function in hearing appeals. The new Board, a three-judge panel of senior Agency attorneys, will make final Agency decisions in appeal cases contesting the adjudicatory decisions of Administrative Law Judges and Regional Administrators. The Administrator has delegated to the Board the authority to decide appeals under all the major environmental statutes, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Toxic Substances Control Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). At the request of the Administrator, the Board will also handle special assignments where extra assurance of the objectivity of the decision-making process is essential.

To date, two judges, Ronald L. McCallum and Edward E. Reich, have been appointed to the

Environmental Appeals Board; the third member has not been announced.

Until recently McCallum served as the Chief Judicial Officer in the Office of the Administrator. McCallum was promoted to the position of Chief Judicial Officer in 1984 after having served as the sole Judicial Officer since 1978.

McCallum came to EPA in 1974 as an attorney-advisor in what was then the Pesticides, Toxic Substances, and Solid Waste Management Division of the Office of General Counsel. In 1977, he was named Senior Trial Attorney at the conclusion of an extended pesticide cancellation hearing.

Prior to coming to EPA, McCallum was an associate attorney for over four years in a major law firm in Indianapolis, Indiana,

McCallum

specializing in corporate real estate and tax matters.

McCallum is a graduate of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, where he received his A.B., M.B.A., and J.D. degrees. While attending law school, he served on the Law Journal as a Junior Writer.

Edward E. Reich's most recent position was Legal Advisor to the Administrator. Previously, he was the Acting Assistant Administrator and Deputy Assistant

Administrator in the Office of Enforcement where he was responsible for management and oversight of enforcement litigation under the various statutes administered by the Agency.

Before his appointment as Deputy Assistant Administrator, Reich was Associate Enforcement Counsel for Waste, with responsibility for civil enforcement litigation under RCRA and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. He has been actively involved in the enforcement of environmental laws since 1968. He received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1968 and is a member of the bars of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Bradley F. Smith has been named Director of the Office of Environmental Education. While assuming his new duties, he will continue coordinating activities for the National Environmental

Reich

Education and Training Foundation until a president is hired.

Prior to EPA, from 1983 until 1991, he served as Executive Director for the Jennison Nature Center and Tobico Marsh National Refuge of Michigan's Department of Natural Resources. He was also a professor in both the Political Science and Biology

Departments at Delta College in Michigan from 1975 until 1991.

Smith was a program administrator for the Department of Environmental Protection, City of Grand Rapids, Michigan, from 1972 until 1975.

His extensive related professional experience includes participation on several advisory boards, such as member of the International Advisory Board of the 1992 Environmental Education/United Nations Conference in Toronto, Canada, and a past member of EPA's National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology Transfer from 1989 until 1991. He also chaired the Agency's National Pollution Prevention Education Advisory Board in 1990 and currently is a continuing advisor of the United Nations Environment Programme.

Smith has authored and co-authored several textbooks, including the recently published 4th. edition of Environmental Science: The Study of Interrelationships, a work used by many colleges and

Economics and Technology Division under the Office of Toxic Substances from 1986 though 1988. Prior to her current position, she was Director of the Radon Division, Office of Radiation Programs, from 1988 to 1991. Oge earned her M.S. degree from Lowell University in 1975 and her B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Lowell Technological Institute in 1972.

Laurie D. Goodman, the new Associate Administrator for the Office of Regional Operations and State/Local Relations, comes to EPA after more than four years with the U.S. Senate. There, she served as Deputy to the Chief of Staff in the Office of

Senator Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyoming). As Legislative Assistant, she was involved in areas of energy, environment, science, commerce, transportation, public lands, and public works.

During 1986, Goodman developed and managed right-of-way acquisition for the municipal water delivery pipeline as a consultant for the Board of Public Utilities in Cheyenne, Wyoming. She coordinated and negotiated extensively with rural landowners, corporations, and county, state, and federal agencies, finalizing the project without a single condemnation.

From 1984 to 1986, she owned and managed her own firm which researched mineral and surface

Homoki

ownership on private and publicly held lands and negotiated oil and gas leases in the Rocky Mountian states. She also monitored state and federal regulation compliance during lease acquisition and performed surface inspections on proposed drilling sites.

In 1984, she was consultant to the A & W Production Company, where she participated in force-pooling hearings at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. She also designed and organized the company lease records system and devised a draft payment system that coordinated bank records, land department data, and budget figures.

Goodman received her B.S. degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1983. She has had additional studies at the American University in Washington, D.C., and the University of Haifa in Haifa, Israel.

Robert Van Heuvelen is the new Acting Director of the Office of Civil Enforcement. For the past two years, he served as Deputy Chief of the Environmental Enforcement Section, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which litigated nearly 1,000 environmental enforcement cases referred by the federal government in 88 of the 94 U.S. federal district courts.

Van Heuvelen, who joined the DOJ in 1980, served as a trial lawyer until 1985 and as Assistant Chief of the

Environmental Enforcement

Section from 1985 to 1989. He was Acting Chief of the Environmental Enforcement Section from October 1990 to April 1991. While at the DOJ, Van Heuvelen served as lead counsel in environmental enforcement litigation under all major federal environmental statutes.

Prior to his service at the Department, Van Heuvelen was Assistant Counsel to the U. S. Senate Subcommittee on Environmental Protection from 1977 until 1980. He was Legislative Assistant to Senator Quentin Burdick (D-North Dakota) from 1975 until 1977.

He graduated cum laude. from Macalester College with a B.S. in political science in 1972. He earned a J.D. from George Washington University in 1979 and an M.A. in public policy from the University of Minnesota in 1974. He is a native of Bismarck, North Dakota.

Zeda (Zee) Anne Homoki is the new Special Assistant to the Administrator and White House Personnel Liaison for EPA. She is responsible for coordinating special projects, implementing policy and procedure, and distributing and following up on all White House information to the 60 noncareer appointees now at EPA.

Prior to coming to EPA she served as the Associate Director for Intergovernmental Affairs and Deputy White House Liaison for personnel at the Interstate Commerce

Commission (ICC).

Before joining the ICC staff, she was the Special Assistant to the Director of Congressional Affairs and State Liaison at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

In 1989 she was detailed to the White House Liaison Office in the Office of the Secretary, Department of Interior. She served as Legislative Assistant for Representative Bill Archer (R-Texas) from 1986 until

1988.

Homoki taught first grade at the Department of Defense Dependent Schools in Germany from 1979 until 1981, where she received the "Sustained Superior Performance Award." She has also done extensive volunteer work.

A native Texan, she received her B.S. degree from the University of Houston. She has lived in Europe and Asia and now resides in Burke, Virginia, with her husband, Steve. Their daughter Elizabeth is a sophomore at Sweet Briar College.