01-26-2002

LOBBYING: Small Package, Big Punch

Earlier this month, the Environmental Working Group, a not-for-profit
research organization based in Washington, received an unusual letter from
a Nebraska farmer. Like many other farmers around the country, the man
knew that EWG's Web site featured a database listing the name and dollar
amounts for every American farmer and agricultural company that has
received a federal farm-subsidy payment since 1996.


The man himself was listed on EWG's site: "I am a large farmer and a
big farm welfare recipient," he wrote. But unlike most others on the
list, this farmer was overjoyed to see the information made public.
"We have spawned a whole class of welfare hogs who are really good
[at] farming the taxpayers," the farmer thundered in his
letter.


Along with the letter, he enclosed a check for $200. Yet the surprised
folks at EWG were not sure how to handle the unsolicited donation. Unlike
most environmental groups-which employ large staffs to solicit members and
to keep them sated with newsletters and legislative reports-EWG boasts no
membership list, and it has no apparatus for dealing with the
public.


With only 19 employees at its cramped Dupont Circle headquarters and two
more in an office in Oakland, Calif., EWG might well be called a lean,
mean muckraking machine. At first glance, its research mission seems
almost innocuous-"to turn raw data" from state and federal
agencies and other sources "into usable information." But EWG
has carried out that mission with sometimes policy-rattling
results.


Founded in 1993, the group has produced widely publicized reports on the
dangers of pesticides, mercury in fish, arsenic-treated wood, unsafe tap
water-even a potentially hazardous chemical in nail polish. But of all the
things the group has done, it was the farm-subsidies database that vaulted
EWG into the big leagues and, according to many observers, profoundly
shaped the congressional debate over pending farm legislation. The
database has attracted 400,000 online visitors since it was first posted
last summer.


"A lot of people thought these [subsidy] payments were secret, but
they are not," says former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, now a
partner at the law firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. The public
spotlight is "healthy," Glickman adds, but "there's no
question that [EWG] has created consternation. They have put a lot of the
farm groups on the defensive."


Among advocacy groups, no one does quite what EWG does. Funded exclusively
by foundations to the tune of just $2 million a year, EWG is credited with
making a mighty big splash. "Demonstrably, they are one of the most
effective groups, dollar for dollar, in Washington," says Pete Myers,
a former director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation, which gave EWG
$640,000 over the past two years.


Sierra Club Legislative Director Debbie Sease calls EWG "a very, very
valuable ally. Their stuff on the farm bill is really outstanding. Given
that clout, that is an amazing payback for what they have
spent."


EWG was founded by Ken Cook and continues to be run by him. Cook, 50, is a
soil scientist who was raised in St. Louis and who has worked variously as
a Congressional Research Service analyst, a Washington bike messenger, a
freelance writer, an aide on Mike Dukakis's 1988 presidential campaign,
and a communications director for the World Wildlife Fund. He is married
to League of Conservation Voters President Deb Callahan.


Even before the Web grew in size and importance, Cook decided that his
group should focus on collecting, and then reorganizing, government data.
"We look for statistics that are carefully maintained by bureaucrats,
but that no one ever sees," he explains. For instance, EWG Senior
Vice President Richard Wiles spearheaded a study of pesticide dangers; his
team cross-referenced chemical toxicity data with children's nutritional
studies in ways that officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, the
Food and Drug Administration, and the Agriculture Department had never
done.


Because federal agencies are often reluctant to cough up data, EWG
typically makes multiple Freedom of Information Act requests before it
gets a handle on the information that is available. And when the
information arrives, it usually comes in a blizzard. In 1995, EWG ran its
computers for three weeks straight, 24 hours a day, to complete one
sorting. "But what took 21 days then now takes an hour or two,"
Cook says, and memory "has dropped from $69 a megabyte to about 50
cents."


The other half of EWG's success equation has been turning flackery into a
science-or, as Cook puts it, "not just being in the fray, but
creating the fray."  EWG details one-quarter of its staff to
full-time media work, led by Vice President for Public Affairs Mike Casey.
Most of the other staffers think constantly about media placement, too.
Before an idea can become a full-blown research project, EWG gauges the
potential media impact in various markets. It junks project ideas deemed
unlikely to receive good play.


"EWG has a better sense for what is a story than anybody I've seen in
the business," says Doug Kendall, executive director of the Community
Rights Counsel, an environmental-advocacy law firm that has cooperated
with EWG on getting media attention for its projects.


EWG earns journalists' interest by offering fact-rich databases that can
be fine-tuned to the needs of any news organization. Erin Kelly, a
Washington correspondent for Gannett News Service, says that the
consumer-oriented appeal of the studies has enabled the group to receive
excellent coverage within her company's chain of 100-odd
newspapers.


In the past few years, EWG has quietly approached select reporters with
major scoops. Impressed by Washington Post reporter Mike Grunwald's long
series on problems within the Army Corps of Engineers, Casey and fellow
media staffer Laura Chapin went to Grunwald with the idea of writing about
massive pollution in Anniston, Ala., believed to have been caused by
chemical giant Monsanto Co. Aided by documents sifted by EWG, Grunwald
wrote a major story that landed on the front page earlier this
month.


Similarly, Casey and Chapin apprised John J. Fialka of The Wall Street
Journal of some controversial actions taken by Donald Schregardus, an
environmental appointee in Ohio who was the Bush Administration's pick to
be chief enforcement officer at the Environmental Protection Agency. After
reading Fialka's reports, key members of Congress moved to block
Schregardus's nomination. Eventually, Schregardus withdrew. Chapin says
that EWG chose Fialka because of the reporter's no-nonsense
approach.


Andy Fisher, press secretary for the Republican minority on the Senate
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, marvels at EWG's sense of
timing. A previous version of EWG's farm-subsidy list appeared in 1995,
just as Congress was discussing that year's farm bill. (The study in
question was the "City Slickers" report, which listed ZIP codes
in places such as New York's Upper East Side and Beverly Hills that were
home to absentee farmers who received subsidy checks.)


Then, as this year's farm bill was heating up, EWG "timed the release
of their subsidy list for the August lull," Fisher says. "They
were very savvy to do it that way."


As aggressively as EWG staffers have promoted their news stories, they've
made relatively little effort to toot their own horn. "I don't even
have a brochure about EWG to help us raise money," Wiles
acknowledges, "much less a tote bag to hand out. I've heard from lots
of quarters that that's not my high point as a manager. But it's because
I've always found something more interesting to write about."


In part, this antipathy toward building EWG's brand stems from the
conviction that becoming a membership organization would be too costly.
It's much easier, Cook and Wiles say, to solicit money from the W. Alton
Jones Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the
Beldon Fund, the Turner Foundation, and the Richard & Rhoda Goldman
Fund, among others. Such fundraising is something Cook can handle by
himself. (EWG doesn't have development staffers.) Although the recent
demise of the Jones Foundation-unrelated to anything in EWG's control-will
be an economic blow, a final transitional grant should be enough to avoid
layoffs, Cook says. He doesn't rule out further growth-possibly into such
parallel subject areas as health care-but adds, "Right now, we're
feeling like we're at a good, manageable size."


Sticking close to its core competencies of public health and environmental
protection means that EWG leaves broad swaths of policy to other groups.
Cook and his staff also take pride in staying away from
government-sponsored "stakeholder" discussions. And while EWG is
happy to receive kind words from conservatives-such as the recent kudos
for its farm-subsidy work from Senate Minority Whip Don Nickles, R-Okla.,
and from the Heritage Foundation-Cook says that EWG doesn't court
left-right coalitions. "People here don't spend a lot of time going
to meetings," he says.


Moreover, because it argues passionately about the issues it
studies-especially farm subsidies and toxic substances-EWG doesn't always
win friends or soothe enemies. "Because we're small," says
Casey, "we tend to be a little more blunt." In addition to
targeting Schregardus, EWG has picked fights recently with conservative
Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., and maverick television journalist John
Stossel.


At EWG, "they gore an awful lot of oxes, so they're not enormously
popular on the Hill," says Jim Jordan, executive director of the
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "How you feel about them
really depends on whether it's your ox that is being gored." Several
farm groups contacted for this story declined to comment or did not return
phone calls.


The decision to post the farm-subsidy database even put some of EWG's
friends on the hot seat. Media mogul Ted Turner, whose foundation is a key
sponsor of EWG, attracted media attention for the subsidy payments he
received, although the foundation hasn't taken any action. "I got a
few interesting calls, including some where the volume went pretty
loud," Cook says. "But most of my friends who were on the list
are still talking to me."


Louis Jacobson

National Journal