In March of 1995, President Clinton and Vice President Gore announced 25 actions that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would take to reinvent environmental regulation.¹ These actions recognized 25 years of success achieved by our current system of environmental protection, yet acknowledged that EPA needed to better align that system with the changing world we regulate. Reinvention serves four timely and important purposes at EPA:

1. The need to better address environmental problems that continue to persist despite our vigorous laws and regulations. These tend to be problems that cross statutory, media, state, regional, and international boundaries.

2. To take advantage of technological advances and to make sure our regulations are not hindering their use or effectiveness.

3. To recognize the growing sophistication and expertise among EPA's stakeholders and to leverage their information, experience, perspectives, and resources. This is especially true concerning our co-regulators, the states.

4. To underscore and cultivate a philosophical shift from pollution control to pollution prevention, and to highlight new awareness of environmental justice concerns.²