Michael Lissack the character of the situation with which they are dealing, it is also the case that the activities which they would like to see stopped or curtailed may well be socially justified. It is all a question of weighing up the gains that would accrue from eliminating these harmful effects against the gains that accrue from allowing them to continue. Of course, it is likely that an extension of governmental economic activity will often lead to this protection against action for nuisance being pushed further than is desirable. For one thing, the government is likely to look with a benevolent eye on enterprises which it is itself promoting. For another, it is possible to describe the committing of a nuisance by public enterprise in a much more pleasant way than when the same thing is done by private enterprise. For example, the concept of risk assessment ranking environmental dan- gers in order of importance and devoting resources to the biggest threats appears unimpeachable as common sense. It was endorsed by 80% of the public in a 1993 Harvard University poll. Yet, the Environmental Protection Agency’s spending bears no resemblance to any rational risk assessment. Consider this example: Between 1980 and 1992, the agency spent roughly $8 billion under the Superfund program to clean up fewer than 70 toxic-waste sites. Many of these cleanups are undertaken only because EPA consistently assumes that future site uses will include children, who will live there for 70 years, ingesting slightly less than one teaspoon of local dirt every day, and rely exclusively on contaminated local groundwater for bathing and drinking. Examples like this urgently cry out for the EPA to more rationally allocate its resources. That cry has been heard by rank-and-file members of Congress, who have introduced bill after bill to force the EPA to show that its spending meets genuine threats. The EPA and environmentalists hate the idea. Their case was set out recently on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer in a story which claimed that risk-assessment is so time consuming that the agency would have to devote all of its resources to producing studies. “it would immobilize EPA”, worried Cornelius Kerwin, an American University professor and EPA consultant. Gosh, how awful. Too bad the EPA has never shown similar concern about “immobilizing” thousands of local govern- ments, companies and individuals with its ruinous fines and regulations.
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