Former Gov. Dixy Lee Ray lashed out at environmentalists, lamented the loss of the pesticide DDT and said "sewage is good for you."
"Some of my comments are going to be outrageous," Ray, long a critic of environmentalists, told a crowd of West Coast port officials this week.The officials, many struggling under increasingly tough controls on port development and pollution, loved what Ray had to say. They interrupted her with applause and gave her a standing ovation. Many carried copies of her new book, "Trashing the Planet."
Ray, a zoologist by training and former chairwoman of the Atomic Energy Commission, was Washington's governor from 1977 to 1981. She is a Democrat.
In her speech to the Pacific Coast Association of Port Authorities, she generally expanded on her book. It argues that the environmental movement is driven more by emotion and politics than by science or common sense.
"We are becoming a nation of busybodies and scolds and tattletales and snoops," Ray said.
"We have to be good stewards, but we don't have to go into a police state" to protect the environment, she said. "In my opinion, that is one of the most dangerous things about the political environmentalists and their agenda today.
"Now we've given policing powers to every two-bit obstructor of every regulatory agency, whether he has had any training or not," Ray said.
She said the environmental movement's record cannot stand up to scrutiny. She accused environmentalists of misleading the public on everything from DDT to global warming.
"Do you remember DDT? People were sprayed with DDT throughout World War II," she said. "For the first time soldiers did not die from typhus because DDT killed the cooties" that carry the disease.
Although the federally banned pesticide has been blamed for maladies ranging from cancer to brain disorders, Ray said, the only proven impact has been on birds. She said the effect, thinner egg shells, occurs in nature and is not a serious problem.
"Because of alarmists, we lost probably the best pesticide we ever had," she said.
"I think the time has come to ask the simple question: How clean is clean? And indeed, is real clean becoming sterile?"
Ray cited an attempt by Los Angeles officials to eliminate all traces of human sewage in the city's harbor. They wiped out a "fine fishery" of anchovy, perch, herring and other species, she said.
What happened, she said, was that the sewage treatment system robbed the fish of their main food supply.
"Without something to eat, without organic material in the water, the fish cannot survive," she said.
"You can draw any conclusion that you wish, including that sewage is good for you." she said to appreciative chuckles from the crowd.
Ray also argued that environmentalists and politicians have misled the public about global warming and loss of the ozone layer.
"Acid rain," she said, "really wasn't much of a problem" despite what environmentalists might say. She said Congress chose to ignore the facts when it passed Clean Air Act amendments last year to clamp down on acid rain.
"Nature is tough," Ray said. Care must be taken not to "overwhelm" it, but "nature has enormous recuperative powers" and neither needs nor benefits from the level of environmental protection now in place, she said.