Langdon Marsh, who resigned last week as head of the state
Department of Environmental Quality, may have been the nicest
bureaucrat in Oregon. Everyone from his harshest critic
to his greatest champion gives Marsh a big warm fuzzy.
"Whenever anyone asks me about Langdon Marsh," says Oregon
Environmental Council lobbyist Hilary Abraham, "I always
say he's a very nice man. But I'm not sure that's what I
should be saying about the head of the most important environmental
agency in the state."
In other words, Leo Durocher was right. In the game of
political hardball, nice guys often
finish last.
The DEQ regulates polluters of the state's air, land and
water. The agency has always struggled to keep up with its
charge (see "Don't Expect Quality," WW, May 23, 1991),
but during Marsh's five-year tenure, Oregon's environmental
reputation has become as soiled as that of a Catholic schoolgirl
caught under the bleachers.
There have been the obvious problems: that pesky Superfund
site, the endangered salmon, the no-longer New Carissa.
More than that, however, Oregon has lost its bragging rights
as the greenest state in the country. Its vaunted Bottle
Bill was passed when Nixon was president. The acclaimed
"cleaned-up" Willamette River is now home to two-headed
fish. The Northwest Environmental Defense Center is threatening
Blue Heron Paper Co. with a lawsuit, claiming the DEQ has
failed to enforce water-quality laws against the plant.
This is just the latest in a string of citizen suits that
claim the DEQ is failing at its job as green police force.
All this isn't entirely Marsh's fault. His agency's purse
strings have been controlled by a state legislature in which
pesticide, agriculture, timber and industry lobbyists have
the ear of the Republican majority. To their mind, a weak
DEQ is a good DEQ.
Jim Whitty, who was the lobbyist for Associated Oregon
Industries when Langdon was hired in 1995, says it would
have taken a magician to advance an environmental agenda
through the 1999 session. Still, he echoes the nagging feeling
of many that someone with more pizazz could have stood up
to the anti-government crowd.
Instead, Marsh watched as the Legislature passed a slew
of bills that would have hastened Oregon's decline toward
New Jersey-hood. The proposed cuts were so Draconian that
federal environmental regulators threatened to take over
if they went through.
"I can't say he had a big loss, but the governor had to
bail him out," Whitty says. "He had to veto some bills and
demand that budget cuts be restored."
It takes more than a budget to run a good agency, though,
and it's not just Republican lawmakers who've had their
way with the DEQ boss.
In the past few years, state environmental regulators have
clashed with the Port of Portland and its expansion-minded
director, Mike Thorne.
Whereas Thorne is direct, politically savvy and willing
to raise a ruckus, Marsh is calm, academic and genteel.
"When Langdon and Mike Thorne are in the room together,
you can't even tell Langdon is there," says one source.
It's not clear what prompted Marsh's sudden resignation,
but environmentalists see it as an opportunity.
Money, time and task forces have been thrown at the environmental
problems in Oregon, but there is no singular vision to lead
the state out of its mess.
Nor is it evident what Gov. John Kitzhaber wants in a successor.
The director of DEQ is hired by the Environmental Quality
Commission, working in close concert with the governor.
The question is, will the governor hire another bland, consensus-fettered
technocrat, or will he get himself an environmental cowboy
who's willing to fight for his budget and face off against
industry?
"Whomever they bring in will have to be someone who wants
a challenge," says commission member Tony Van Vliet, a former
GOP lawmaker from Corvallis.
And whoever it is, he or she will either have to be brought
up through the ranks or be a quick learner. Marsh is leaving
Oct. 1, which means that the newbie will have only two months
to prepare for the 2001 legislative session. A good leader
can charm the lawmakers. A bad one will get left, as Marsh
did, begging for every penny and floundering at the water's
edge as the river gets dirtier and the fish get fewer.
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