Environment Topic Guide

I want to make the White House a model for other Federal agencies, for State and Local governments, for business, and for families in their homes. Before I ask you to do the best you can in your house, I ought to make sure I’m doing the best I can in my house.

President Clinton, Remarks on Earth Day April 21, 1993

To mark Earth Day in 1993, President Clinton delivered remarks in which he announced that he would be signing two executive orders: E.O. 12845 requires the Federal Government to purchase energy efficient computers and E.O. 12844 instructs the government to increase the number of alternative fueled vehicles.

President Clinton wanted the government to lead by example when it came to adopting sustainable practices. It was important to demonstrate that no one was too big to share the responsibility of protecting our planet. President Clinton announced an energy audit of the White House and, in 1994, the White House unveiled a new program called “Greening of the White House.” The White House soon became a model of energy efficiency and waste reduction.

Changes around the executive mansion included replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent lights, installing double-pane windows, replacing the roof, and installing a new HVAC system. In July 1998, the White House began sending fibers from shredded documents to a composting facility where they were mixed with yard trimmings to make LEAFGRO, a compost used on White House grounds. Pesticide use was reduced by 80 percent and native plants and perennials were planted in place of nonnative species and seasonal flowers. In 1994, sprinkler heads were adjusted and replaced and watering was switched to early morning. This more efficient watering system saved 15,000 gallons each year.

Bioenergy is a means to achieve all of these objectives -- to heat our homes, to fuel our vehicles, to power our factories while producing virtually no greenhouse gas pollution.

President Clinton, Remarks on Developing and Promoting Biobased Products and Bioenergy, August 12, 1999

At the start of his first term, President Clinton expressed his desire to move away from coal and oil and to use cleaner and cheaper alternatives and he enacted several measures to reach these goals.

To develop and promote bio-based products and bioenergy, President Clinton signed Executive Order 13134 on August 12, 1999. While presenting this EO, President Clinton stated that he would like to triple the nation’s use of bioenergy and bioproducts by 2010 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 100 million tons a year – the equivalent of taking more than 70 million cars off the road.

The Clinton administration’s energy tax policy focused on reducing petroleum demand through incentives for energy efficiency, alternative fuels, and alternative-fueled vehicles. President Clinton’s budget proposals included increases in investment in bio-based technologies, promising both environmental protection and more jobs and income for farmers. President Clinton also proposed extending a tax credit for electricity produced from biomass and expanding the types of biomass eligible for the credit.

During the eight years of the Clinton administration, in support of the idea that environmentally-friendly policy can support a strong economy, 130,000 new jobs were created in environmental industries such as recycling, renewable energy, waste management and environmental clean-ups. Also, exports based on environmental technology and industry more than doubled, increasing from $9.4 million in 1993 to $20 million in 1999.

Americans do have a right to know what’s in their drinking water and where it comes from before they turn on their taps. Under the new law, water authorities will be required to tell them.

President Clinton, Video Remarks on Signing the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996, August 6, 1996

One of the most significant actions toward providing clean water during the Clinton administration was the passing and signing of the 1996 amendments to the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act.

These amendments strengthened the original law, which had focused mainly on water treatment, by including measures to protect water sources. The new law contained a “Right to Know” provision that demanded that water systems share consumer confidence reports annually with their customers, informing customers of discovered contaminants, sources of the water, and how it was treated. This provision alone reduced violations by almost 40%.

In 1993, 79 percent of Americans lived in areas with tap water that met all federal standards. By 2000, that figure rose to 90 percent.

In the fall of 1997, the Clinton administration turned to cleaning and protecting our waterways. Vice President Gore and President Clinton called on federal departments and agencies to develop an action plan to clean up America's waterways and signed Executive Order 13061, the American Heritage River Protection Program, to clean and revitalize communities and their riverfronts.

But 10 million children under 12 still live within 4 miles of a toxic waste dump. A third of us breathe air that endangers our health. And in too many communities the water is not safe to drink. We still have much to do.

President Clinton, Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union, January 23, 1996

In his 1996 State of the Union address, President Clinton challenged his administration and Congress to ensure that our air would be safe and clean for the next generation.

Great strides were also made in reducing the environmental impact of vehicles. In 1996, the EPA realized its 25 year goal to remove lead from gasoline, but the largest change came with the implementation of tough new standards for auto tailpipe emissions.

In 1999, the administration announced that light-duty trucks, SUVs and minivans would have to meet the same low levels of emissions as other passenger cars. This new standard created the potential to remove the emissions equivalent of 164 million cars from the air by 2030.

In 1993 President Clinton participated in a short video skit shown during a discussion between President Clinton and children at the White House. The skit portrays how a bill becomes a law, but the subject of the bill concerns Air Quality. Jaleel White, who plays the character 'Steven Quincy Urkel' from the program 'Family Matters,' deals with the intricacies of introducing the 'Urkel Air Bill' into Congress. Many political figures during the time, including President Clinton, Robert Dole, Cleo Fields, and Tom Foley, also participated in the skit.

As he mentioned in his State of the Union Speech of 1996, President Clinton challenged Congress to support environmental protections and enforcement of existing laws. Clinton went so far as to veto H.R. 2099, a bill with 17 major riders— unrelated pieces of legislation that are attached to a bill— that would have prohibited the EPA from spending funds from fiscal year 1996 on a number of regulatory and enforcement activities. And the Clinton administration did significantly increase enforcement of environmental laws. The number of charges filed for environmental offenses rose significantly during the Clinton Administration, and dropped again after.

Throughout my Administration, we have been refining Government, striving to make it work better and cost less. One of the best places to apply this principle in the environmental arena is the Superfund program. For far too long, far too many Superfund dollars have been spent on lawyers and not nearly enough have been spent on clean-up. I've directed my Administration to reform this program by cutting legal costs, increasing community involvement, and cleaning up toxic dumps more quickly. The reformed Superfund program will be faster, fairer, and more efficient—and it will put more land back into productive community use.

President Clinton, Message to the Congress on Environmental Policy, April 6, 1995

The Clinton administration accelerated the cleanup of the nation's worst toxic waste sites, freeing communities from environmental threats and economic blight. The President also launched initiatives to accelerate the cleanup of brownfields and remove barriers to their redevelopment. Using over $2 billion in private sector investment, the brownfields redevelopment initiative generated thousands of jobs.

In February, 1994, Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, which was a landmark statement on “environmental justice” (EJ). Superfund and brownfield sites are predominantly in poor neighborhoods, and this executive order required that all federal agencies "make achieving environmental justice part of its mission by identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations." The issuance of this order required agencies to consider environmental justice when making decisions about policies and practices.

There is a reason that we were able to declare the Grand [Staircase]-Escalante national monument in southern Utah yesterday, 1.7 million acres, to save Yellowstone from a gold mine, to reach a historic agreement here in Washington State just 2 days ago to protect the old-growth forests of Washington and Oregon, to reach an agreement to restore the salmon in the Columbia River. This does not happen by accident. This happened because we replaced the old Washington politics of who can we blame and hot air with "What are we going to do about it?" Let's don't talk, let's roll up our sleeves, join hands, and actually do something to help the American people make the most of their own lives and to move forward, and that is what we proposed to do.

President Clinton, Remarks on Beginning a Bus Tour in Tacoma, Washington, September 19, 1996

During the eight years of his administration, President Clinton created nineteen national monuments, including Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, Grand Canyon-Parashant in Arizona, Agua Fria in Arizona, Giant Sequoia in California, and the California Coastal monument. He also expanded three others.

Beginning in 1993 with the Forest Conference, President Clinton and Vice President Gore moved toward protecting old-growth forests, and the U.S. Forest Service shifted priorities away from a focus on timber production to resource protection, placing 60 million acres of Federal forests off limits to road building. On August 13, 1993, President Clinton signed the Colorado Wilderness Act (H.R. 631), which designated 612,000 acres as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System and prohibited mechanized or motorized traffic in these areas.

In 1996, President Clinton signed an agreement that defended already-protected lands. A mining company was planning a gold mine adjacent to the border of Yellowstone National Park, which created the possibility of contamination of the park. The Clinton administration worked to come to an agreement with the mining company and stop the mine from being built.

In 2000, President Clinton strengthened the protections on the Everglades by signing the Water Resources Development Act. This act authorized the Comprehensive State Everglades Restoration Plan, and took significant steps to restore areas of the Everglades to their natural state.

In 1997, with critical leadership from Vice President Gore, representatives of more than 160 nations agreed on the basic architecture of an international strategy to combat global warming. This agreement, called the Kyoto Protocol, set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized countries, while also creating those market-based mechanisms introduced by the United States.

The US signed the document in 1998, but Congress failed to ratify the agreement, which meant the US never officially signed on to the pact. Despite its shortcomings, the Kyoto Protocol did lay the groundwork for the Paris Agreement, which many find to be more inclusive and potentially more effective.

2012-0769-F Segment 1 Council on Environmental Quality - Kathleen "Katie" McGinty. This collection contains the records of Kathleen “Katie” McGinty. McGinty worked in the Clinton Administration from 1993 to 1998. From the start of the administration through the end of 1994 McGinty served as Deputy Assistant to the President for Environmental Policy and Director of the Office on Environmental Policy. In January of 1995 she was named as chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, through which she served as senior advisor to the President regarding domestic and global environmental, energy, and natural resources matters. She remained there until November of 1998.

2012-0769-F Segment 2 Council on Environmental Quality - Kathleen "Katie" McGinty. This collection consists of records from the files of Kathleen "Katie" McGinty, Director of the White House Office on Environmental Policy, from 1993 thru 1994. It contains correspondence, memoranda, reports, briefing materials, schedules, press guidance, emails, and notes mostly regarding global warming, climate change, logging and deforestation issues.

Little Rock, Arkansas, provides onsite opportunities to research both Governor Clinton’s and President Clinton’s environmental policies.

Researchers can access gubernatorial records related to the environment at the Bill Clinton State Government Project of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. The Butler Center is a department of the Central Arkansas Library System.

Bill Clinton State Government Project Natural and Cultural Resources Collections

• Kenneth L. Smith Collection (CP.02.09.01)
• Kay Kelley Collection (CP.02.09.02)
• Jeanne Jackson Collection (CP.02.09.03)
• Cathryn Buford Collection (CP.02.09.05)
• Paul Levy Collection (CP.02.09.06)
• Julie McDonald Cabe Collection (CP.02.09.07)
• Audiovisual collection on Governor Clinton and the environment (CP.04.03.01)