New Environment Head Faces a Daunting Task

The swampy spot on the Anacostia River shoreline was thick with plastic bottles, fast-food wrappings and other trash. Elizabeth Berry, head of the city's new Department of the Environment, stood knee-deep in the muck, flinging garbage into a metal boat that would haul it away later.

Despite the floating rubbish nearby, the view across the river was of a quiet, tree-lined shore. The silence was broken only by chatter of the dozen city government employees who volunteered for the Earth Day-related cleanup last month. Berry looked almost peaceful as she worked: "It's a different world out here," she said.

These days, Berry is focused on a heady but grinding task: She is building the new environmental department from scratch, with all the grand promises and bureaucratic details that implies. The department, created last year to pull scattered environmental programs under one roof, officially came into being Feb. 1. Berry, who had been environmental adviser to Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), is its acting director.

Environmentalists were overjoyed last year when the D.C. Council and mayor agreed to create the department, spurred by the city government's slow, uncoordinated response to high lead levels found in the tap water at thousands of D.C. homes in 2002. The public was not told of the lead problem until 2004.

Many praise Berry, a former activist with the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, who was appointed in February. But environmental activists are worried the department will not get the money and resources it needs to do its job right. And as Williams heads toward the end of his final term this year, those activists say they hoped for more from the mayor who speaks their language and likes to go hiking, birding and canoeing.

The department oversees policy, enforcement and regulation of the city's air, water, land and wildlife, most of which has been done by the Health Department. It will handle policy related to trees and recycling, although the Transportation Department will continue to operate its tree-planting program and the Department of Public Works will continue to run the recycling program. The agency also will oversee environmental impact statements that are required when new development projects are proposed.

D.C. Council member Carol Schwartz (R-At Large), who chairs the Committee on Public Works and the Environment, said she was disappointed that the agency does not include the long-established recycling and tree-planting programs, which were excluded for reasons of cost and efficiency.

But within a couple of years, the department is to absorb a massive program run by the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority to curb runoff from storm water. Over the long term, D.C. officials would like the city to have more regulatory power over its drinking water, air quality and other resources, as states do, instead of being overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"You've got a daunting task here," Schwartz told Berry at a hearing last month on the department's first proposed budget. "To have it fall in the hands of an acting director who has not had many years of administrative experience is overwhelming."

As an adviser to Williams for five years, Berry worked with him on environmental policies and legislation. She established the District's environmental task force, which oversees issues that cut across various city agencies. As an activist, she opposed allowing a tall cellular tower in Rock Creek Park. The Ward 3 resident is a native Washingtonian and former journalist who graduated from the National Cathedral School, the University of Pennsylvania and George Washington University Law School. Her father is Max Berry, who was co-chairman of the Williams mayoral campaign and is co-chairman and finance chairman of D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp's (D) campaign for mayor.

In an interview, Schwartz said that establishing a new department from scattered pieces is such difficult work that it requires a permanent director "who has had broad experience in establishing and/or managing similar components of a government." She said she is concerned that officials in the mayor's office don't think they can attract someone of that caliber because the mayor's term is about to end.

"We need someone who can get this baby to walk," she said. "But Elizabeth Berry on an interim basis is fine. She is a strong advocate, and I'm very fond of her."