    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [August 8, 1995]
    [Pages 1215-1218]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Environmental Protection in Baltimore, Maryland
    August 8, 1995

        Thank you very much. As you can tell, the Vice President really has
    no strong convictions about this issue. [Laughter] That's the darnedest
    stump speech I've heard in a long time. I thought for a minute he was a
    write-in candidate for mayor here. [Laughter] It was a great speech, and
    thank you for what you said.
        Thank you, Doris McGuigan, and thank you to all of your allies here
    for reminding us what's really behind all these issues. One of the
    biggest problems we have in Washington, even though it's very close to
    Baltimore--one of the biggest problems we have is having people there
    remember that the decisions they make there affect how you live here and
    then making sure that people who live here understand the impact of the
    decisions that are made there. You have helped us, every one of you--
    Doris, for what

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    you've done and all of you, for coming out here today--you have helped
    us to reestablish that critical link between the American people and
    their Government, so you can decide what you're for and what you're
    against and how it's going to affect your children and your future.
    Thank you, Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, for coming.
    Thank you, Congressman Gilchrest, for your outstanding support of the
    environment. And I want to thank all of my friends who are State
    officials and city officials. And Senator Miller, thank you for coming.
    And I want to say a special word of appreciation, too, to the first
    person who spoke, our EPA Administrator, Carol Browner, who has done a
    magnificent job in her work.
        I want to deliver a pretty simple message today. Every office I have
    ever held of the public trust, from being attorney general of my State
    to being Governor to being President, required me to swear an oath to
    protect the people I was elected to serve, to give people the security
    they need to live up to the most of their God-given potential. Central
    to that security is the right to know that the air we breathe and the
    food we eat and the water we drink will be safe and the right to know if
    there's any risk to those things.
        This basic security really is in jeopardy today. There are people
    who want to strip away decades of public health protection. I intend to
    fight them every step of the way. As I said, the battle over
    environmental protection is being fought in Washington, but here in
    communities like this one all across America, big and small, you see
    what is really at stake. Most hard-working families have enough on their
    minds without having to worry about an environmental hazard in their
    neighborhood.
        Most people have enough trouble just trying to educate their kids
    and pay their bills and keep body and soul together and deal with all
    the changes in the global economy and how they bear down on community
    after community and business after business and job after job. Most
    people have enough to deal with without having to worry about their
    food, their air, and their water. But at least they have a right to know
    what is in it and whether something else is about to be put in it.
    That's what this Community Right-to-Know Act was all about. You heard
    the Vice President say it was passed almost a decade ago now, signed by
    President Reagan, strengthened by President Bush, strongly supported by
    this administration.
        This is an issue that's very personal with me. I've dealt with the
    whole issue of right-to-know around chemicals for nearly 20 years now,
    since I was a young attorney general and a train loaded with chemicals
    in car after car blew up in a small southern town in the southern part
    of my State where a relative of mine was the sheriff. And it was just a
    God's miracle that we didn't have hundreds and hundreds of people killed
    in this little town. And the first thing that occurred to everybody is:
    Who knew what about what was on the train? Who knew what about how
    safely it was being carried? Who knew what about what kind of precaution
    should have been taken when the train pulled into the station?
        That was almost 20 years ago, and I have seen this issue catch on
    now like wildfire as people in American communities all across our
    country have demanded the right to have some basic control over their
    own lives and their futures. The right-to-know law now requires
    manufacturers to tell the public how much they pollute. And if you want
    to know what's coming out of the smokestacks across the water, for
    example, all you have to do now is call your local library or the EPA
    and the information is there for you.
        The Community Right-to-Know Act does not tell companies what they
    can and can't produce. It doesn't require massive bureaucracy. It
    doesn't affect every company, just those in certain industries. It's
    carefully focused on a list of 650 specific dangerous toxins. About 300
    of those have been added since this administration came into office, I
    might add. And over 100 of them are known to cause cancer. This law
    works, as you have heard.
        You have had particular success here because you've had such a good
    grassroots community effort with your 74 percent reduction. But you need
    to know that nationwide, every place in the country since the Community
    Right-to-Know Act has been on the books reported reductions in toxic
    emissions, or about 43 percent for the whole country. Now, that is a law
    worth passing--no new bureaucracy, just power to the people through
    basic knowledge.
        This has kept millions of pounds of chemicals out of our lives. It's
    helped people to stay healthy and live longer. And as you have already
    heard, it's also helped to spur innovation to help

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    businesses work smarter and cleaner and become more profitable, not less
    profitable.
        Our environmental progress, from the community right-to-know law to
    the Clean Air Act to so many others, has been the source of bipartisan
    pride, as has been mentioned. Therefore, it has been something of a
    surprise to many of us--and I think some in the Republican Party as well
    as most of us in the Democratic Party--to see what is happening in the
    Congress now, to see this dramatic departure from the bipartisan efforts
    of the last 25 years.
        The House voted to gut environmental and public health protections
    last week under the pressure of lobbyists for those who have a vested
    financial interest in seeing that happen. The budget bill they passed
    would cut environmental enforcement by 50 percent. It would virtually
    bring to a halt the Federal enforcement of the Clean Water Act and toxic
    waste cleanups--a terrible mistake, a terrible mistake.
        In a brazen display of the power of these special interest groups,
    the House added 18 separate loopholes, giveaways, and stop-in-your-
    tracks orders, stripping away very specific public safeguards to benefit
    very specific interest groups. One provision allows oil refineries to
    spew benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, without stringent safeguards.
    Another would allow factories to dump 15 million pounds of toxic
    chemicals into our Nation's rivers, lakes, and streams next year alone--
    one year. Another permits cement kilns and other incinerators to burn
    cancer-causing chemicals without effective control. The House majority
    also voted to gut community right-to-know, literally rolling back
    protections that are already on the books.
        And if you ask them why they did this, they say, ``Oh, well, we
    regret it, but there are all these crazy Federal regulators that are
    bringing to a halt the American economy.'' The problem is, there is no
    evidence that environmental protection has hurt our economy at all--
    none. And furthermore, this administration and this EPA Administrator
    have done more than anybody in 25 years to try to streamline regulation,
    reduce the burden of excessive regulation, get rid of dumb rules that
    don't make sense. Carol Browner has committed to reduce by 25 percent
    the amount of time businesses have to spend filling out forms, but not
    to destroy the standards, the rules, the regulation, and the community
    empowerment that are keeping our environment clean. And I am telling
    you, we can fix bureaucratic problems, but we cannot fix, we cannot fix,
    the environmental damage that would be done if they tore up the progress
    of the last 25 years.
        If the environmental laws have been so terrible for this country,
    you tell me how our economy has produced 7 million jobs in the last 2\1/
    2\ years, 1\1/2\ million new businesses, 2\1/2\ million new homeowners.
    Why is the stock market at 4,700 if the environment is so bad? We've got
    some problems. We have stagnant middle class incomes. We've got to get
    more money for people who are out there doing America's work. But the
    economy is doing well, and the people who own these businesses are doing
    well. And our country is moving forward in every single measure except
    raising middle class incomes. That is the problem. But the environment
    is not causing that, and there is no evidence for this. This is a big
    mistake. It is a terrible mistake. And I will not let our country make
    it. There is no evidence to support it.
        I think all of you know, and I have already said, that the minute
    these antienvironmental measures hit my desk they will be dead. But I
    intend to do more than that. I want to use the authority of my office to
    ensure the right of parents to know what chemicals their children are
    being exposed to. I want more communities to be able to proudly
    introduce people like Doris and say we've reduced our chemical emissions
    by 74 percent. That's what I want. I want to see more people doing their
    own work for their own people and their own future. So just before I
    left for Baltimore, I signed an Executive order which says any
    manufacturer who wants to do business with the Federal Government must
    tell its neighbors what dangerous chemicals it puts into the air, the
    earth, and the water. No disclosure; no contract. [Applause] Thank you.
    And I am directing our agencies to take the next steps to act quickly
    and openly to continue to strengthen community right-to-know, if
    appropriate, to extend it to more industries and thousands more
    communities, to require companies to disclose more complete information.
        Let me say this: There is an orderly process for this now. It is an
    orderly, open, fair process where we say what we're thinking about doing
    through the EPA. Then all the interests affected--people like you all
    across America and the industries, too, and the businesses--they get to
    come in and say what they feel. And if there

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    are mistakes or if the Government is going too far, if everybody admits
    something doesn't need to be done, it can all be changed. That is the
    orderly way this should be done. And that is precisely what Congress--at
    least some in Congress--are trying to stop us from doing, this orderly,
    neighborly, open, honest process in which we arrive at these kind of
    standards.
        I want to continue to strengthen the right-to-know through that kind
    of open and fair process. But I want you to know something else. If
    Congress passes a law to block this kind of process in future right-to-
    know issues, then I will issue another Executive order to finish that
    job as well.
        The message here is clear. Congress can go right on with its plan to
    undermine America's antipollution laws, but it will go nowhere fast.
    Community right-to-know is here to stay. I want more neighborhoods like
    this one all across America. And I want America to see you tonight on
    the evening news and hear about you tomorrow in the newspapers and on
    the radio stations so people know what they can do if they work together
    with the law.
        Let me just say there is more here than a single law at stake.
    Democracies always have depended upon the free flow of information to
    ordinary citizens. Our democracy in this age, which has been heralded
    the information age, is being regaled constantly with the dreams of all
    the television channels we're going to be able to get, all the different
    radio stations, all the different magazines we can read. We are going to
    be awash in information. Wouldn't it be tragic if, in the information
    age, the single most significant thing to come out of this Congress was
    blocking information that you need to know about the most basic health
    and safety requirements of your families, your children, and your
    community? That's not my idea of the 21st century information society. I
    want you to know more, not less. And I think you do, too.
        And if you need any evidence of that, just look what happened when
    the former Soviet Union and the whole Communist empire in Eastern Europe
    broke up. We saw some of the awfullest environmental problems anywhere
    in the world because there was development there without democracy,
    because today's economics took the place of the health and safety of
    their people and, in the end, helped to undermine their economy. If we
    needed any other evidence, that alone ought to be enough.
        So I just want to close by asking you when you walk away from here
    to think about what your ordinary day is like. Think about the
    information that keeps you and your family safe and healthy. Think about
    what your child might see that might change his or her behavior: a stop
    sign, a label that tells you what's in the food you buy for your family,
    the warning on a pack of cigarettes. This and other things are simple
    things that we take for granted because their cost is minimal. But their
    value is priceless. The silent threat posed by pollution is as real and
    dangerous as the threat of a speeding car to a walking child. We've
    known for a long time that what we can't see can hurt us.
        Our health and safety laws, they're our line of defense against
    these dangers. We're not about to abandon them, not about to abandon
    them, because of people like you. You know, there's a couple of lines in
    the Bible that say, if your child asks for bread, would you give him a
    stone; if he asked for fish, would you give him a serpent; if he asked
    for an egg would you give him a scorpion? Today we must ask, if our
    child asked about the future, will we give him or her dirty air, poison
    water; would we keep them from knowing what chemicals are being released
    into their neighborhoods and keep their parents from protecting them? We
    all know what the answer is. It's no.
        It seems simple here in this wonderful neighborhood. Why don't you
    help us make it simple in Washington, DC?
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:10 p.m. at Fort Armistead Park. In his
    remarks, he referred to Doris McGuigan, environmental activist in the
    Brooklyn-Curtis Bay community of Baltimore, and Thomas V. (Mike) Miller,
    Jr., president of the Maryland Senate. The Executive order on Federal
    acquisition and community right-to-know and the related memorandum are
    listed in Appendix D at the end of this volume.