    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [April 21, 1995]
    [Pages 562-567]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the 25th Observance of Earth Day in Havre de Grace, Maryland
    April 21, 1995

        Thank you so much. First let me say to all of you how glad we are to
    be here. I know a lot of you have been here since very early this
    morning, and you've had a little rain coming out of the sky. You might
    have gotten a little more of the environment than you bargained for
    today. [Laughter] But I'm glad to see you

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    all here bright-eyed, clear-eyed, and committed to preserving America's
    natural environment.
        I want to thank Governor Glendening and Senators Mikulski and
    Sarbanes, Congressman Gilchrest, and the other State officials who are
    here, your mayor, and so many others for everything that they have done.
    I'd like to say a special word of appreciation to the man who was
    responsible for this wonderful walkway we came down, Bob Lee, and all
    the rest of you who worked on that. It's a great thing. I also want to
    thank the AmeriCorps volunteers who have done so much, who have done so
    much to help to keep the Chesapeake clean. And finally let me say a
    special word of thanks to Mary Rosso--didn't she do a good job up here--
    just like she was--[applause]--not only for the speech that she gave but
    for the work that she did that brought her to this place today.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I want to do one other thing before I get into
    the remarks that I came to make today. You know that this is the 25th
    anniversary of Earth Day. Twenty-five years ago, Earth Day was an
    American celebration: Americans of both political parties; Americans of
    all races and ethnic backgrounds, Americans from all regions of the
    country; Americans who were rich, poor, and middle class; Americans just
    got together to reaffirm their commitment to preserving our natural
    environment; Americans who lived in the city and were worried about city
    environmental problems; and Americans who lived in places like this--
    people like me--who were interested in going to places like the Duck
    Decoy Museum, knew that if they wanted the ducks to fly in Arkansas and
    Maryland in duck season, we'd better clean the environment up. It was an
    American experience. We joined together to save the natural beauty and
    all the resources that God has given us and to pass it on to our
    children and grandchildren.
        For a quarter of a century now, Americans have stood as one to say
    no to dirty air, toxic food, poison water, and yes to leaving a land to
    our children as unspoiled as their hopes. This Earth Day may be the most
    important Earth Day since the beginning because there is such a great
    debate going on now that threatens to break apart the bipartisan
    alliance to save this country.
        And before I get into that, I want to ask a man to come up here who
    was mentioned by Vice President Gore, who started this whole Earth Day,
    and who sponsored a lot of the most important environmental legislation
    of our time, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. I'd like to ask him to
    come here. After--give him a hand. [Applause]
        After Gaylord Nelson left the United States Senate, he went on to a
    distinguished career as head of the Wilderness Society and devoted the
    rest of his working life directly to our environment. And today on this
    25th anniversary of Earth Day, I decided the best way I could celebrate
    this and try again to call forth this American spirit of dedication to
    our environment is to award to Gaylord Nelson our Nation's highest
    civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
        I can't help noting that in 1789 the Continental Congress almost
    made Havre de Grace our Nation's capital. Now that I'm here, I see why
    it was a contender. And on the bad days in Washington, if it's all the
    same to you, I may just come back here and set up shop.
        Ladies and gentlemen, if you ever doubt what we can do together to
    preserve our heritage, all you have to do is look at this bay. The
    beauty you see is God-given, but it was defended and rescued by human
    beings. Not long ago the Chesapeake was a mess. Garbage floated on it;
    shellfish were unsafe to eat. Now, I know there's still a lot more to
    do, but you know the bay is coming back because people overcame all that
    divided them to save their common heritage. People from Maryland,
    Virginia, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia all joined together--
    with a Federal effort as well--citizens of all kinds, from both
    political parties, watermen, farmers, business people, environmental
    groups. They couldn't have done it without the bipartisan lines of
    defense sparked by the first Earth Day: the Environmental Protection
    Agency, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water
    Act, all forged by Democrats and Republicans, by Presidents and
    Congresses working together.
        Twenty-five years ago and more, we once had a river catch on fire.
    Lead was released into the air without a second thought. Our national
    bird was on the verge of extinction. Today we don't routinely dump
    sewage in our water anymore. We know better. Our children aren't dying
    from lead poisoning, and the bald eagle soars again all across America.
        But what we're doing is more than about natural beauty. It also
    affects our health as well. A recent study by the Harvard School of
    Public

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    Health found that air pollution raised the risk of premature death by 15
    or more percent.
        Now, in this atmosphere of debate over environmental issues today,
    we all know that the particular solutions that were adopted 25 years ago
    aren't necessarily the right detailed program for today or for the next
    25 years. But the old habit of putting American progress against nature
    is as outdated as the old belief that heavy top-down Government can
    solve all of our problems.
        So as we say, well, should we reform the way we do things, let's not
    forget there is a right way and a wrong way to reform our approach to
    preserving our environment and protecting the public health. It would be
    crazy to throw the gains we have made in health and safety away, or to
    forget the lessons of the last 25 years. But that is just exactly what
    some of the proposed legislation in the United States Congress would do,
    and you must be clear about it.
        Can this new Congress with these proposed bills prove that our air
    will be clean under the laws that have been proposed? Can they prove our
    water will be free of deadly bacteria? Can they prove our meat will be
    untainted? Bills passed in the House effectively hold up all regulations
    for 2 years. Should we wait that long for fresher air, purer water,
    safer food?
        Instead of success stories like the Chesapeake, what if we face what
    happened in Milwaukee? In April of 1993, the citizens of Milwaukee drank
    the city's water not knowing it had been contaminated by a deadly
    bacteria. A hundred people died. Hundreds more fell ill--thousands more
    fell ill. The last casualty of that incident occurred just a few days
    ago when a child died from an infection, just a few days ago.
        For more than a week, the people of Milwaukee were terrified to
    brush their teeth, make coffee, use ice cubes, even wash their clothes
    in the city's water supply. If you want to know how bad it was, you can
    ask Robert and Astrid Morris, who are here, or Susan Mudd, who along
    with her husband, Mayor John Norquist of Milwaukee, dealt with the
    terrible problems that faced all people of that city and reached into
    their own family. They were all in Milwaukee. Their loved ones suffered.
    They are here today. I'd like them to be recognized. They're over there.
    Raise your hands, and let's give them a hand. [Applause]
        That's just one example of our continuing challenge on the health
    front. Two years ago, more than 400 people got horribly sick from eating
    hamburgers that contained the deadly E. coli bacteria. Children died.
    How could it happen? Well, at the time, inspectors from the Department
    of Agriculture merely looked, touched, and smelled meat and poultry to
    determine whether it was contaminated. Under the leadership of our then-
    Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Espy, we moved aggressively to step up
    inspections, and we proposed new regulations to use high-tech devices to
    really check the meat for its purity so that we'll be able to stop
    diseases that can infect our food.
        But listen to this: The House of Representatives passed legislation
    that would handcuff our ability to address these two problems and many
    others as well. The House bill would hold up for a year regulations to
    protect people from the E. coli bacteria or from the microbial in the
    Milwaukee water. In fact, there were specific, separate votes on both
    those things where our people said, ``Well, at least let's protect
    Milwaukee and that problem.'' ``Well, at least let's deal with the E.
    coli problem. Surely we don't need to wait this long to put in these
    standards.'' And they said, ``No, we don't need to do this.''
        Now, folks, in the politically attractive name of deregulation--who
    can be against that?--they have proposed a moratorium on all efforts to
    protect public health and safety, even these efforts, when we know there
    is a danger and we know what to do about it. This would stop good
    regulations, bad regulations, all regulations. They would block the
    safeguards that we have proposed to see that Milwaukee never happens
    again. They would block our efforts to make sure we don't expose anymore
    children anywhere by accident to the tainted meat with E. coli bacteria.
    We must not let this happen. And I will not let it happen.
        Let me give you another example of what's going on. Should
    Government examine the cost and benefits of what it does before it
    moves? Of course. Don't you do that in your own life? Of course, you do.
    And I would support a reasonable bipartisan bill that says we ought to
    pay more careful attention to the cost and benefits of what we do. But
    under the so-called ``risk legislation'' pending in the Congress, every
    agency of our Government would have to go through an expensive and time-
    consuming process every time they want to move a muscle.

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        One line in this bill--I want to say this again--one line in this
    proposed legislation overrides every health and safety standards on the
    books. It says rather than our children's health, money will always be
    the bottom line.
        This bill would let lawyers and special interests tie up the
    Government forever in lawsuits and petitions. The people proposing this
    bill, after railing for years and years and years about how we have too
    many lawsuits and too much bureaucracy, have constructed a bill designed
    to give relief to every lawyer in the country that wants to get into a
    mindless legal challenge and designed to construct gridlock and to make
    sure it gets into the court and lasts forever as long as it's about an
    environmental regulation. It would literally give polluters control over
    the regulations that affect them. It would lead to more bureaucracy,
    more lawsuits, but a whole lot less protection of the public health. And
    it should be defeated.
        There is another bill in the House--it passed the House--called the
    so-called takings bill. And it has a very politically attractive
    purpose, to prevent the Government from taking property away from
    citizens without paying them for it. Well, that's already provided for
    in the Constitution. But it sure sounds good, doesn't it? You wouldn't
    like it if the Government showed up tomorrow on your front step and took
    your home away. And you'd expect even if it were an emergency and had to
    be done, to be paid for it. That's not what this is about. You're
    protected from that already. This is about making taxpayers pay
    polluters not to pollute. This is about making the Government pay out
    billions of dollars every time it acts to protect the public. It would
    bust the budget and benefit wealthy landowners at the expense of
    ordinary Americans.
        This so-called takings bill has been on the ballot in 20 States. And
    every place it's been on the ballot, including some very conservative
    Republican States, the voters have voted against it. Well, the voters
    don't get to vote on the takings legislation, so the President will vote
    for them, and the President will vote no.
        Ladies and gentlemen, you might wonder who thought up these bills.
    Well, the lobbyists for the big companies thought up these bills. And
    they were actually invited to sit down at the table and draft the bills
    and then explain them to the Congressmen who were supposed to be writing
    them.
        Now, you know, lobbyists have always had an important role in the
    legislative process, and they always will. And all of us could be
    lobbyists at one time or another if something were going on in Congress
    or in the State legislature we didn't like or that we did like. But in
    my lifetime, nothing like this has ever happened. I mean, they're having
    meetings in which the lobbyists are writing the bills and explaining
    them to the Congressmen, who are then supposed to go explain why they're
    for them.
        The lobbyists were given a room off the House floor to write
    speeches for the Congressmen explaining why they were supporting the
    bills that the lobbyists had written for them. When some Senators held a
    briefing on one of these bills recently, they invited the lobbyists to
    explain what they were for, since they had written it and the Senators
    hadn't quite got it down yet. [Laughter]
        Now, I don't think that any party has a lock on purity, and I think
    that all politics is about compromise. But there has never in my
    lifetime been an example like this. And I don't think whether you're a
    Republican or a Democrat or a liberal or a conservative, I don't think
    you believe that that's the way your Federal Government ought to work
    when it comes to matters affecting the health and welfare of your
    children and the environmental future of the United States and, indeed,
    our entire planet. I don't believe you believe that.
        On this Earth Day, let me pledge we will not allow lobbyists to
    rewrite our environmental laws in ways that benefit polluters and hurt
    our families, our children, and our future. Reform? Yes. Modernize? You
    bet. But roll back health and safety? No. Let DDT into our food again?
    Not on your life. Create more tainted water or toxic waste, the kind
    Mary Rosso and Angela Pool from Gary, Indiana, who is also with us here
    today, the kind of things they are fighting? Never. No. Say no, folks.
    Say no. Just say no to what they are doing.
        I will support the right kind of change. I have spent 2 years
    working with the Vice President to do things people said couldn't be
    done. We have tried to improve the environment and advance the economy.
    He has proved with his reinventing Government initiative that you could
    reduce bureaucracy, shrink the size of the Federal Government, and
    improve the performance of the Federal Government so that people get
    more for their tax dollars. I support a bill in

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    the Senate that is bipartisan that would give Congress 45 days to
    consider new regulations before they take effect. That is not an
    unreasonable amount of time. Government bureaucracies do make mistakes.
    Everybody can come up with some horror story they've had in their life.
    Do something reasonable like this. But to paralyze the ability of the
    Government of the United States to protect children from more Milwaukees
    and more E. coli hamburgers? No, no, no. Let's adopt a reasonable
    bipartisan bill.
        Let me tell you something else we did that I hope you will support.
    Until recently, we discovered that many small businesses were literally
    afraid to come to the Environmental Protection Agency for help in
    cleaning up a problem because they thought they would be fined. They
    thought they'd go through a bureaucratic nightmare, and so they didn't
    come. And so under the leadership of Carol Browner, the EPA has changed
    its policy. Now, if a small business comes to the EPA in good faith for
    advice on an environmental problem, they will be given 180 days, 6
    months, to fight it with--to solve it without being fined. That way they
    can spend the money repairing their businesses and repairing the Earth,
    not fighting with regulators.
        The Vice President also said that the EPA was going to cut its
    paperwork burdens on Americans by 25 percent. Twenty million hours a
    year will be given by the Government back to the private citizens of the
    United States to do what they want. That's more important to a lot of
    people than money. We are giving 20 million hours from the Government
    back to the people of the United States to do what they want. I am all
    for making Government less burdensome. It shouldn't take a forest full
    of paper to protect the environment. No telling how many trees we're
    going to keep up by cutting the paperwork burden of the EPA. But to cut
    the mission of the EPA to protect the environment and the future? No.
    Let's change in the right way, not the wrong way.
        My fellow Americans, in the next 10 years as we move toward the 21st
    century, indeed, in the lives of all the children here present
    throughout their lives, I predict to you we will become more concerned
    with environmental issues, not less concerned. We will have to deal with
    the shortage of clean water, with global climate change, with the unfair
    environmental burdens that are placed on poor communities in America,
    with the political problems of uncontrollable immigration that are
    sparked all around the world in part because of environmental
    degradation.
        Do you remember how just a few months ago the waters were full of
    Haitian boat people trying to get to the United States because of
    political oppression? One reason is nobody can make a living down there
    because they have ripped every tree off every spot of ground in the
    whole country. It is an environmental crisis as well as an economic
    crisis. So as we restore democracy, we know democracy will not prevail,
    we know that the Haitian people will not be able to live in Haiti and
    raise their children there and make money there and not seek to come to
    the United States or somewhere else unless we can rebuild the
    environment.
        My fellow Americans, we must be more concerned with these issues,
    not less concerned with these issues. We cannot disarm our ability to
    deal with them. Our natural security must be seen as part of our
    national security.
        Take a last look at this beautiful bay behind me. I'll never forget
    the first time I saw the Chesapeake, about 30 years ago now--a little
    more, actually. Will your children's children see what we see now and
    what I saw then? Will there be water clean enough to swim in? Will there
    be a strong economy that is sustained by a sound environment? Believe
    me, if we degrade our American environment, we will depress our economy
    and lower our incomes and shrink our opportunities, not increase them.
        It is our landscape, our culture, and our values together that make
    us Americans. Stewardship of our land is a major part of the stewardship
    of the American dream since the dream grew out of this very soil. Robert
    Frost wrote, ``The land was ours before we were the land.'' This
    continent is our home, and we must preserve it for our children, their
    children, and all generations beyond.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:46 a.m. in the Park at Concord
    Lighthouse. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Parris Glendening of
    Maryland; Mayor Gunther Hirsh of Havre de Grace; Charles Lee (Bob Lee)
    Geddes, management assistant, Harford County Department of Parks and
    Recreation; and Mary Rosso, founder, Maryland Waste Coalition.

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