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We have watched for a year as the Administration took or proposed scores of actions that veered radically away from the broad bipartisan consensus in support of environmental protection that has existed for many years. We thought it time to examine the entire record. We began with apprehension. We end appalled.

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Pollution will increase because the rules designed to control it and the agencies that enforce the rules are being systematically weakened. The Administration's attention has focused upon easing the burdens for polluters instead of protecting the public and the land.

The Administration has moved swiftly. It has changed clean air rules to allow many coalburning plants to dump more sulfur dioxide into the air, where it re-forms as acid rain. It has withdrawn rules to control industries that dump toxic chemical wastes into landfills or flush them into city wastewater plants where they corrode equipment. From strip mines to waste dumps the Administration has cut back enforcement of the laws. Its agencies make fewer inspections and take many fewer illegal polluters to court.

When it could not get Congress to change the environmental laws, the Administration used budget cuts to cripple the agencies that carry them out. Eight major statutes passed in the last 12 years assign to EPA a job that will double in size in the next few years. The Administration wants to slash EPA's budget by 40 percent. The job will not get done and the cost in terms of sickness, death and material destruction will be very great.

A century ago, the federal government was giving away public lands and their resources practically free of charge. Since then, the American people have come to see their public lands as a priceless resource to be used for the long-term benefit of all. A succession of laws over many decades has directed that these lands be used for wilderness, wildlife habitat, recreation, watershed protection and scenic beauty, as well as for minerals production, timber cutting, and livestock grazing. The law requires management of public forestland and grasslands to protect the long-term interests of the public and assure that private use does not destroy the land's long-term productivity.

The Reagan Administration has made a mockery of the multiple-use/sustained-yield concept that governs the public lands. It has put huge amounts of the nation's coal, oil and timber up for sale at bargain basement prices, without considering the long-term consequences, or showing the need for this massive transfer of public resources to private hands. Far more coal and timber are on the block than industry can use. They will be used for private speculation instead of public benefit.

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