Rita: When the Reagan administration tapped an unlikely candidate to take care of toxic waste
During the early days of the first Reagan administration, the divide between the political appointees at the Environmental Protection Agency and the career bureaucrats was stark.
The bureaucrats thought their political counterparts lacked the qualifications and know-how to protect the environment. And many of the political appointees thought the career staff — the scientists, attorneys, and other employees who worked for EPA administration after administration — were overly idealistic and out-of-touch.
So tensions were already high when former President Ronald Reagan nominated Rita Lavelle to head the EPA’s office of toxic waste. Lavelle was a communications professional who had worked with defense contractors and started her career working for Reagan when he was the governor of California. She was skeptical of the brand new Superfund law that was now part of her job. Many of her new colleagues at the EPA disdained her, and she knew it.
Ultimately, Lavelle found so much trouble in Washington that she left, never to return.
This episode of Captured tells the story of how Lavelle came to Washington and what her arrival meant for an already poisonous atmosphere at the agency.
Full episode transcript
Rita Lavelle: This is Rita. Can I help you?
Scott Tong: You’ve probably never heard of Rita Lavelle. I had not. But in the early years of the Reagan administration, Rita Lavelle found herself in the eye of a Washington storm. Over toxic chemicals in our neighborhoods. Over Poison in our water. And regulators getting cozy with polluters. This ended up being the first big scandal of the Reagan administration. And — spoiler alert — Rita Lavelle would end up paying for it. Since then, in the last 40 years, she has hardly talked about this. But thanks to my colleague Grace Tatter, Rita Lavelle talked to us. And it turns out she has a lot to say including about Superfund. That’s a law to clean up hazardous waste and make corporate polluters pay. Rita was in charge of implementing that law.
Lavelle: You asked me my position on this Superfund legislation. I resented them casting nefarious, evildoers as being these businesses that had polluted.
Tong: In fact, Rita Lavelle talked to us for seven hours. Not just about Superfund. She started at the beginning.
Lavelle: I grew up in Pasadena, California, and I’m the oldest of eight children. We were very strong Catholic family. I was always interested in politics.
Tong: A certain flavor of politics.
Lavelle: I supported Reagan. I
