Marcia Burns Knew How to Party

George Washington’s birthday is tomorrow. By all accounts he enjoyed a good party. Believe it or not, 200 years ago the place to party in Washington DC was the north courtyard of EPA’s Ariel Rios building. Of course, it wasn’t a courtyard then. It was the home of John P. Van Ness. On any given night you might have found Thomas Jefferson or Aaron Burr strutting the Van Ness red carpet.

A big draw was Mrs. Van Ness, née Marcia Burns. She was rich and powerful, but she didn’t let it go to her head. Indeed, she was admired for being modest, despite her fortune. Sculptor Haratio Greenbough poetically wrote of her:

Mid rank and wealth and worldly pride
From every snare she turned aside

She primarily used her influence to quietly bring people together. Historian James Barton Longacre observed, “As a hostess, indeed, perhaps none was ever more agreeable and popular. But she felt herself called upon to act a higher and nobler part in society . . . she widened the sphere of her affections, and became the general friend, the mediator, the counselor, of all within her reach.”

Like Marcia Burns, EPA has considerable clout, but we often quietly use our resources to help bring others together. Tuesday I touched on the vital work EPA performs in responding to disasters. For instance, we provided critical help in getting drinking water and sewer services back up and operating after Hurricane Katrina.

While EPA can do a lot to help waterworks and water treatment plants after a disaster, we know we can’t do it all. That’s why not long after Hurricane Katrina, along with the American Water Works Association, EPA started to use our influence to promote a voluntary system of mutual aid between water utilities. With a bit of grant money, a bit of technical assistance, and more than a bit of jawboning we encouraged states and utilities to come together and agree to help each other in times of need.

Today, almost half the states are a part of this system (see map) and more are joining all the time. That means in the future when a water utility in one part of the country gets hit by a disaster, they know water utilities in unaffected areas will help them assess the damage and get going as soon as possible. As a result victims will get drinking water faster and we’ll stop raw sewage polluting our water more quickly.

The Van Ness home has not been as fortunate. All that is left of it is a small marker. But the spirit of Marcia Burns still walks the halls of EPA. Yes, we regulate, award grants, enforce laws, and perform research but some of our best work happens when we simply create the right conditions for other folks who can do far more than we could ever do alone.

Comments

[Shawn]

Mr. Peacock, this is a great example of how the EPA can sometimes work to bring states together to address a problem. But this example also raises the question: if the EPA can do this in small ways, why is the EPA standing in the way of states that want to cooperate to fight global warming!?

How sad that in some cases, especially in relation to emergency preparedness, the EPA is doing a few small things to bring states together, while on the issue of CO2 emissions--which through global warming will cause many more disasters and emergencies in the future--the EPA is actively working to keep states from cooperating?!

So Mr. Peacock, instead of being flabbergasted the next time you run into President Bush, I hope you will instead be so bold as to ask him to consider his responsibility to the future of humanity and the rest of the earth's creatures, and demand that he allow the EPA to do its proper work instead of subverting its ability to do so!

[Richard Sumpter]

As I read your commentary on Marcia Burns I was reminded of a quote from Margaret Wheatley: "A leader is anyone who wants to help." I first encountered Wheatley's ideas about 12 years ago in "Leadership and the New Science." Recently she has written "Finding our Way: Leadership in an Uncertain Time." Her vision of leadership is truly inspiring - not at all like Peters, Covey, et al whose leadership concepts are (in my view)at base simply methods of psychological manipulation to get others to do what YOU want. I strongly recommend that we try to get her for EPA's "Transformational Leadership" series.

[Kevin Morley]

AWWA and USEPA have been very successful in educating the water sector on the merits of establishing intrastate mutual aid and assistance networks using the WARN model. For more information on WARN and supporting materials see www.NationalWARN.org.

[Marcus]

Shawn, for two examples of similar facilitating approaches EPA is taking to address climate change see our Climate Leaders (domestic) and Methane to Markets (international) programs. You can get to them at the following links, respectively:
http://www.epa.gov/stateply/
http://www.epa.gov/methanetomarkets/index.htm

And don't forget what we can do as individuals: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/ind_calculator.html

Richard, thanks for mentioning Wheatley. I haven't read her latest book but I think her more humanist approach to managing is a better match for most EPA offices than more traditional theories.

[Scott Sufficool]

Dear Deputy Administrator Peacock,

I would like to commend you for taking on such a personal effort in creating your blog for the citizenship to review. I know this can be a time consuming effort along with the every day challenges you face in your position. Your effort allows us to see through some of the bureacratic walls that sometimes prevent us from understanding the Agency.

I would also like to commend you on your commitment and work in acheiving recognition in implementing the President's Management Agenda through effective Agency Management. Having personally met with you on issues ultimately related to this effort, it is rewarding to know that all the growing pains felt within the Agency and by it's stakeholders and partners has paid off in the end. The challenge now becomes an issue of maintenance.

I look forward to future postings.

Sincerely,
Scott (former NTC Policy Advisor)

[Marcus]

Scott, those are very kind words. Thanks. As you know the progress we've made is due to the commitment of a lot of people -- I just get to 'channel' them. How fun is that?

Of course there is a ton more we can do to improve our operations while making sure we don't backslide. Off the top of my head, and in no particular order: setting realistic but ambitious targets, dealing better with 'poor performers', further reducing measurement burden, rationalizing the many program/agency award systems, applying Web 2.0 technologies to our processes, tightening the relationship with tribes and states, bolstering the credibility of our personnel appraisal systems, better connecting inputs, outputs and outcomes (e.g., through logic models), more top-down budget formulation, exploiting 'place based' performance measures more often (e.g., Charles River), etc.