University of Virginia Library

Willrich Backs Environmental Laboratory

University Law Professor Mason
Willrich testified yesterday before a U.S.
Senate subcommittee, favoring the
establishment of a National
Environmental Laboratory.

The laboratory, proposed by Senators
Edmund Muskie and Howard Baker, is
designed to conduct environmental
research in order to learn how to protect
man from his inventions.

The official description of the lab is a
"structure that will provide integrated
knowledge and understanding of the
ecological, social and technological problems
associated with air pollution, water pollution,
solid waste pollution, general pollution and
degradation of the environment and related
problems."

Mr. Willrich stated in his Washington
testimony that "our technologies are too
powerful and our material aspirations are too
large for us to blunder ahead, basing our
environmental policies and actions on what we
know now."

The professor's testimony dealt with the
character of multidisciplinary research needed
to reach the bill's objectives, the institutional
structure of the laboratory itself and the scope
of its work.

The scope of the bill, however, is subject of
opposition. In its present form, the bill
prohibits the laboratory and its
"representatives" from making "specific
recommendations as to the policy or choices
between alternative courses of action."

Such a provision, declares Mr. Willrich,
seems to condemn the laboratory to producing
"a series of reports without conclusions."

"A prohibition on drawing appropriate
conclusions from a policy study would not
shield researchers...from criticism. Instead, it
would make it easier for those who would like
to discredit a particular study."

He added that "Critics would simply be free
to set up their (the researchers') conclusions as
straw men to shoot at."

Mr. Willrich agrees that the laboratory
should not vigorously advocate conclusions, but
he urges that the ban on specific
recommendations in policy studies be lifted.