A Mr. Clean For the EPA?

The first shall be the latest

The applause was thunderous, the hand-lettered signs jubilant. HOW DO YOU SPELL RELIEF? read one. RUCKELSHAUS. William Doyle Ruckelshaus, 50, the Environmental Protection Agency's first administrator a decade ago, came home last week to a rousing hero's welcome. "The trust of the public is sacred and must never be broken," he told a crowd of more than 1,000 employees at the agency's Washington headquarters. "It's time we stopped chewing on each other and started pulling together."

One day after President Reagan tapped him to succeed ousted EPA Administrator Anne Burford, Ruckelshaus was already hard at work trying to raise the agency's reputation, and employee morale, from the ashes. "Ruck," as his friends call him, is a tall, witty lawyer with broad government experience and a reputation for integrity and administrative astuteness. He is expected to step up enforcement against corporate polluters, clean up toxic-waste dumps, beef up the agency's management and budget, and repair its shattered relationship with Congress. Ruckelshaus was the nearly unanimous choice of top White House officials. Said one Reagan aide: "He more than anybody can pour cold water on the flames."

At first some aides fretted that Ruckelshaus, who has never been a member of Reagan's inner circle of supporters, would not be acceptable to the right wing of the party. They were afraid that he might not prove a team player, recalling that, as Deputy Attorney General under President Nixon, he resigned rather than fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in the famed Saturday Night Massacre of October 1973. Two weeks ago, Presidential Adviser Craig Fuller telephoned Interior Department Head James Watt to get a conservative reading. Watt was enthusiastic about Ruckelshaus and said that in private conversations he had found him sympathetic to the Administration's environmental policy and minimalist approach to regulation. Later that day Watt telephoned Ruckelshaus to administer what an aide termed a "philosophical litmus test." Said the aide: "He passed."

In a meeting last Monday with Reagan in the Oval Office, Ruckelshaus made it clear that he wanted more flexibility and stature than Burford had, including a free hand in personnel matters, policy review and direct access to the President. Reagan readily agreed. Announcing the appointment, the President said he thought the Administration had a good environmental record but conceded, "I believe we can do better." The White House also moved to provide Ruckelshaus with a clean slate, asking for the resignations of five EPA officials, including four of Burford's top-ranking assistants, caught in the crossfire of allegations and suspicions on Capitol Hill: Acting Administrator John Hernandez Jr., General Counsel Robert Perry, Assistant Administrator John Todhunter and Chief of Staff John Daniel.

Despite all this action, some environmentalists found the Watt endorsement and Ruckelshaus' ties to industry disturbing. Since 1976 he has been a senior vice president of Weyerhaeuser Co., the huge Tacoma, Wash., forest-products firm that was named one of the nation's "Filthy Five" companies by Environmental Action, an environmental lobbying group. But others praised the nomination, giving Ruckelshaus high marks for his stewardship of the fledgling EPA from 1970 to 1973, when he fought consistently with the major automakers over air-pollution controls, banned a number of controversial herbicides and forced steelmakers and electric utilities to install expensive pollution-control equipment. "He set very high standards," said Louise Dunlap of the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Policy Center.

After cheering up EPA employees last week, Ruckelshaus made courtesy calls on Capitol Hill, even as six congressional panels continued their probes into wrongdoing at the agency. Although he is expected to win Senate confirmation easily, congressional critics remain poised to pounce at the first sign of Administration retreat from environmental protection. "Whatever stars they bring in," said Georgia Democrat Elliott Levitas, chairman of a House subcommittee investigating the EPA, "it won't matter if they're working the same sad script." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.