Somehow, EPA needed to find the middle ground between those two. We needed to set goals for ourselves that were concrete enough to be realized, but not so narrow that you couldn't maintain momentum and make progress. It doesn't go away. It's not like putting out a fire or even building a highway. You have to keep at it all the time, otherwise it starts to slide back.
New issues crop up all the time, therefore, measuring progress is difficult.
Also, because of the constant pressure of struggling not to fall behind, the agency and its people may lose heart. It's an ongoing dilemma which EPA is still fighting. So it seemed to me we needed to set goals. We needed to organize. We had 15 agencies or pieces of agencies all under our umbrella.