The following "In My Opinion" column ran in the Portland Oregonian newspaper on Thursday, September 9, 1999. The author spoke that day at a luncheon sponsored by Cascade Policy Instititute. It is reprinted here with permission of the author.

Making it easier for companies to be 'green'

Oregon's taking the right step in allowing more flexible pollution permit process; all sides benefit

By Lynn Scarlett

By October, three Oregon companies may begin to enjoy the benefits of more flexible environmental permits as a reward for exceeding, not just meeting, environmental-pollution standards.

These participants in the Department of Environmental Quality's "green permit" program hope to enhance their environmental performance while reducing costs or avoiding time-consuming permitting procedures.

With this innovation, Oregon joins a growing list of states looking for ways to provide a greater level of environmental protection with less bureaucratic interference.

In the past, governments have relied on one-size-fits-all equipment mandates, requiring that companies get permits for each pollution source. Getting a permit became the measure of success.

This old environmental protection model generated some improvements in air and water quality.

Nationwide, levels of one pollutant, sulfur dioxide, declined 27 percent in the 1980s. Cities like Los Angeles were able to report the cleanest air in decades this summer. By the mid-1990s, all sewage generated in the United States was treated before discharge.

But the "get a permit, pay a fee" approach, with its requirements that companies clean up smokestack or water discharges using prescribed technologies, deflected attention away from pollution prevention and environmental innovation.

Oregon's "green permits" program, if it performs as well as similar innovations in other states, will inspire companies to go "beyond compliance" to find ways to prevent pollution, recycle industrial wastes and conserve resources, as well as reducing compliance costs along the way.

Nearly 70 percent of companies participating in New Jersey's flexible, facilities-wide permitting program achieved costs savings, averaging $6.3 million per year. Under the facility-wide permit process, 10 thick binders' worth of paperwork were reduced to a 1½-inch packet. And that state estimates facilities use 24 million fewer pounds of hazardous materials per year than before the permit reforms.

In Massachusetts, a pilot flexible-permitting program prompted two-thirds of all participating companies to improve their environmental management systems. One example: Dry cleaners enrolled in the program achieved a 43 percent reduction in emissions of the carcinogen perchloroethylene.

Flexible permits are just one innovation of this "new environmentalism."

Under its Clean Break Amnesty program, Illinois helps small businesses achieve better environmental performance instead of slapping them with punitive fines. Pennsylvania regulators use a combination of incentives and flexibility in their program to clean up hazardous-waste sites.

And Oregon's 85 cooperative watershed-management councils, which bring together landowners voluntarily to improve water quality and watershed habitat, join similar associations around the nation that recognize the location-specific nature of many watershed problems and the complexity of habitat-restoration challenges.

All these examples of new environmentalism share certain features. Their focus is on problem-solving, environmental performance and private-sector innovations. The old environmentalism, by contrast, focused on punishment, regulatory process and top-down prescriptions.

While the old model achieved some results, it also spawned conflict and high costs. Oregon's "green permits" program is one step toward a new environmentalism.