February 26, 1983

The Veterans Administration is threatened by a situation that could overwhelm its ability to provide medical care for the country's 28.5 million former military personnel. In the next few years, most of the 11.5 million veterans of World War II will turn 65 years old. At that age they automatically become eligible for free medical care at V.A. hospitals, no questions asked. Now that the collision between this longstanding demographic trend and the Congressional mandate for expensive care of aged veterans is imminent, the Federal Government has no ready answers for the problems that will arise. For younger veterans, care is usually provided only if their ailments are service-connected or they declare that they are in financial need. But in the case of veterans over 65, a millionaire former officer who never saw a day of combat and who now suffers from an infected hangnail is every bit as entitled to treatment as a former machine-gunner who now makes a living as a truck driver and needs open-heart surgery.

Congress took the first step today toward passing emergency job legislation. The House Appropriations Committee approved a $4.6 billion package aimed at creating jobs and providing humanitarian aid for unemployed workers. The bill, approved by voice vote, is a supplementary appropriation for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. It is scheduled for debate on the House floor next week, and Congressional leaders hope to have it on President Reagan's desk by mid-March.

President Reagan is considering appointing David F. Linowes, a professor at the University of Illinois, to conduct a thorough study of the management problems at the troubled Environmental Protection Agency, a senior White House official disclosed today. The official said Mr. Linowes might head a special committee to recommend changes in the agency's management approach that would bar problems of the kind it is now encountering. The E.P.A. is under investigation by a half-dozen Congressional committees and by the Justice Department because of allegations of mismanagement and suspicions of political influence on its program to clean up toxic waste dumps. New Inquiry Is Sought The chairman of one of those subcommittees said today that he had asked the Justice Department to conduct a criminal investigation of two of its top administrators and a former consultant. In another development today, the Administration handed over four volumes of documents to another subcommittee, as part of the compromise to end charges of contempt of Congress against Anne McGill Burford, the Environmental Protection Administrator.

Six months after it started, Mayor Koch's work camp program for those who commit minor crimes is faltering. Last May, the Mayor said he hoped that up to 9,000 quality-of-life criminals - three-card monte players, small-time marijuana sellers, turnstile jumpers and the like - would be sent to the camps. Between last September, however, when the program began, and the end of January, only 338 such offenders served sentences in a work camp. A new dormitory on Rikers Island that had been set aside for 75 socalled quality-of-life criminals instead now houses 100 regular inmates awaiting trial.

Ninety-nine cent gasoline is back, for the first time in four years. Motorists in parts of the New York area - though not in New York City - and around the nation are buying regular leaded gasoline for less than $1 a gallon, and dealers say they expect prices to continue falling. ''It's a good feeling,'' said Bernard Azrolan, a New York City taxi driverlining up yesterday at the Getty service station in Fort Lee, N.J., less than a mile west of the George Washington Bridge. A big red sign told passing drivers they could buy regular gasoline for 99.9 cents a gallon. That was down almost 14 cents from a year ago, with most of the drop coming in the last few months.