Are You Tough Enough?

While insisting that she is not bitter about her negative treatment by the press, and that her two-year stint as President Reagan's first director of the Environmental Protection Administration was ""fun,'' Burford blasts her critics in this lively inside account. A conservative Republican legislator in Colorado when asked to join Reagan's transition team in 1980, Burford portrays herself as an EPA head who favored enforcement of environmental laws and sought to make a bloated, backlogged agency ``efficient and effective.'' During 22 controversial months in office, however, she found herself hampered constantly by what she considers unfair news media, environmental ``extremists'' and Machiavellian maneuvering by White House staffers. Burford covers at length the Rita Lavelle controversy and the complex events (centering on her refusal to give documents to Congress) leading to her own forced resignation. She concludes by charging that Reagan, a longtime political hero, ``doesn't care about the environment.'' Photos not seen by PW. December 16