Environmental Progress - Autumn 1996

Director Mary Gade Ends Term as President of ECOS

Director of Illinois EPA was a co-founder of the Environmental Council of the States

Illinois EPA Director Mary A. Gade recently completed a one-year term as president of the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS), a national organization of top state environmental officials she co-founded.

ECOS has grown to include 49 states and territories with a full-time professional staff in Washingon, D.C. since Gade officially filed the organization's incorporation papers in 1994.

The organization has become a clearinghouse for the exchange of innovative approaches to environmental protection by the states. It is also an increasingly influential representative of state interests in dealing with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A recognition of that fact was the appearance of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner at each of ECOS' annual meetings, including the most recent one in Seattle.

Director Gade was the third president of ECOS, serving during a period when "there was a fundamental change in the relationship between the (U.S.) EPA and the state agencies," said Robert Roberts, the ECOS executive director.

As vice president of ECOS in May 1995, Gade participated in the historic signing of the National Environmental Performance Partnership System agreement between the U.S. EPA and the states, along with then ECOS President Tom Looby of Colorado; and Browner and the U.S. EPA Deputy Administrator Fred Hansen.

The agreement is the basis of a more flexible relationship between each state and the federal agency and states continuing to take more responsibility for programs formerly adminstered by the U.S. EPA.

Illinois was one of the first states to negotiate a Performance Partnership Agreement with U.S. EPA under the new system.

"ECOS embodies the rising environmental leadership of states and the long overdue transfer of power in the state/federal partnership," Gade stated.

Roberts credited Gade's ECOS leadership with "moving ahead in ending a one-size-fits-all system from (U.S.) EPA."

He also noted Director Gade continues to serve as the original chair of the Ozone Transport Assessment Group (OTAG), which covers the 37 states east of the Rocky Mountains. OTAG was originally created by ECOS and began its work in May 1995 after many state environmental officials concluded the smog problem could not be solved on within individual state borders or metropolitan areas.

OTAG is conducting a comprehensive study of how the pollutants that cause ground-level ozone or smog are transported across regions. It is expected to make recommendations to the U.S. EPA and the individual states in the spring on this lingering major health problem.

OTAG has already established several firsts in its comprehensive look at the ozone transport phenomena. They include compiling a national data base of actual air quality monitoring data and using state-of-the-art computer modeling to evaluate various potential strategies.

The group has also used an open, consensus process, inviting potentially affected interest groups, including electric utilities, the auto manufacturers and the oil industry to particpate, along with environmentalists and others. OTAG has grown to more than 600 active participants.