New Environment Head Faces a Daunting Task
Former Activist Must Mold Effective Agency Out of Scattered City Programs

By D'Vera Cohn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 4, 2006

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."

Environmentalists say they fear that D.C. Council members, many of whom are absorbed in campaigns for reelection or other offices, won't have time to monitor the agency, but Schwartz promised that she would.

Schwartz said that the mayor's proposed $26 million budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 is "adequate for now" and that council members "will be open to adding additional resources" as needs become clear.

But Sierra Club board member Jim Dougherty and other environmentalists say they are concerned the department may not get enough money.

"I am more scared than anything else," Dougherty said in an interview. "If they are not going to give it enough dough to get it off on the right foot, it is a waste of energy."

Summing up his broader view of the mayor's environmental record, Dougherty said, "The final analysis has to be that the achievements didn't match the hopes."

During his eight years in office, the mayor has expanded bike trails, made pedestrian safety a bigger issue and set in motion an ambitious plan to revitalize the Anacostia waterfront. But Dougherty said that the mayor has not done enough to promote recycling and that his tree-planting program, though extensive, has not made up for a deficit going back to the 1980s. Dougherty and other environmentalists also fault the mayor for not requiring tougher environmental reviews before development projects begin.

Neil Seldman, a recycling activist, gives the Williams administration more credit than Dougherty does. He says the city has gone from having one of the worst programs in the country to one of the best. Seldman cited the purchase of new trash trucks, the shutdown of decrepit trash transfer stations, the start-up of a composting program and the institution of an everything-in-one-bin residential recycling program. But he agrees with Dougherty that the city has been slow to enforce commercial recycling requirements.

As for Berry, "she gobbles up information, gets things very quickly. From what I've known of her, I think she's a very competent person, and I think she will do well," said Seldman, who is president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

Chris Weiss, D.C. program director for Friends of the Earth, gives the mayor and council credit for trying to block shipment of hazardous waste through the city, an issue now tied up in court. A major test for the department, he said, will be how much it can do to push for the cleanup of the Anacostia River.

The river is polluted these days mainly by runoff from aging sewage pipes, as well as the leftovers of daily life: oil, grease, trash, pet waste and the like. Making improvements could require changes to seemingly unrelated programs, such as street sweeping, environmentalists say.

Taking a break from the Anacostia River cleanup to talk about her new job, Berry said her top priority is to get her department organized. By October, the start of the department's first fiscal year, she hopes all her employees will be in one building instead of scattered, as they are now. Another goal, she said, is to step up enforcement of environmental laws -- a move environmentalists say is crucial.

"It's a huge task," she said of her new role. "I call it a heavy lift."

But she quickly noted that D.C. Council member Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7) had told her how fortunate she was to be the first director of a new venture.

"It's really a huge opportunity," she said.