Ronald Reagan in 1981 Gorsuch based her administration of the EPA on the
New Federalism approach of downsizing federal agencies by delegating their functions and services to the individual states. She believed that the EPA was over-regulating business and that the agency was too large and not cost-effective. During her 22 months as agency head, she cut the budget of the EPA by 22%, reduced the number of cases filed against polluters, relaxed Clean Air Act regulations, and facilitated the spraying of restricted-use pesticides. She cut the total number of agency employees, and
hired staff from the industries they were supposed to be regulating. Environmentalists contended that her policies were designed to placate polluters, and accused her of trying to dismantle the agency.
Thriftway Company Thriftway Company, a small oil refinery in
Farmington, New Mexico, asked Gorsuch for a meeting to discuss the regulations limiting lead content of gasoline, the program under Section 211 of the Clean Air Act designed to reduce the amount of lead in gasoline in annual phases, and to receive relief from the standard.
Superfund In 1982, Congress charged that the EPA had mishandled the $1.6 billion toxic waste
Superfund by taking certain inappropriate and potentially illegal actions including withholding disbursements in order to affect a California political campaign. When Congress demanded records from Gorsuch, she refused and as a result became the first
agency director in U.S. history to be cited for
contempt of Congress.
Hugh Kaufman, an EPA employee, leaked documents to Congress. Gorsuch denied any wrong-doing. The stand-off ended in late February 1983, when Richard Hauser, the White House deputy counsel, confirmed one or more Reagan Administration officials had in fact reported to the White House that they had heard Gorsuch say at an August 4, 1982, luncheon that she was holding back more than $6 million in Federal funds to clean up the
Stringfellow Acid Pits toxic waste site near Los Angeles to avoid helping the Senate campaign of former Gov.
Jerry Brown of California, a Democrat. The White House then abandoned its court claim that the documents related to this incident could not be subpoenaed by Congress because they were covered by
executive privilege and the EPA turned the documents over to Congress. Gorsuch resigned her post effective March 3, 1983, citing pressures caused by the media and the congressional investigation.
EPA legacy Looking back at her tenure several years later, Gorsuch expressed pride in the downsizing done under her watch and frustration at the program backlogs and lack of staff management skills that she encountered while at the helm of the agency. She said there was a conflict between what she was required to do under a "set of commands from Congress," and what her own priorities were, although she felt that by the end of her administration, she had developed a way of resolving those conflicts. In her retrospective, Gorsuch admitted that she and her staff "were so bogged down in the fight with Congress over the doctrine of executive privilege, that the agency itself seemed hardly to be functioning," but claimed that despite appearances the agency still functioned. Her 22-month tenure was considered "one of the most controversial of the early Reagan administration." ==Subsequent career==