Anne Gorsuch Burford

Anne Gorsuch Burford in the United States

Burford, Anne Gorsuch (1942 ) in Environmental Law

Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1980. She resigned under fire in 1983 after refusing to turn over papers to Congress (under the Reagan administration’s orders) and was cited for contempt of Congress.

The Reagan administration was openly hostile to environmental regulation. Reagan’s agenda from the beginning was to cut regulation and help private business, and his appointees were spokespersons for that philosophy. Like James Watt [see James Watt], who worked to privatize federal lands, and her husband Robert Burford, who opened federal lands to low fee public grazing, Burford’s agenda also favored private industry. A number of industry representatives were brought into the EPA under Burford’s direction.

Mrs. Burford stated her mission plainly: reducing the “overburden” of environmental regulations. She did not encourage enforcement efforts. Rita Lavelle, chief of the Superfund program under Burford, allowed the program to become so inefficient that Congress conducted an inquiry into the hazardous waste program. Eventually, Lavelle resigned and went to prison for six months for perjury.

Besides James Watt, Reagan’s widely disliked Secretary of Interior, Lavelle and Burford received the most uncomplimentary attention from the press. They were not alone in their gutting of environmental enforcement, but they took much of the heat. See also Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act; Ruckelshaus, William D.
Based on “Environment and the Law. A Dictionary”.


Posted

in

, ,

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *