On the origin and mission of the Environmental Protection Agency

In response to public pressure, in July 1970 President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency. In creating the EPA, President Nixon and Congress were responding to public outrage: rising unrest over the link between pollution and poor health gave birth to an environmental movement which demanded urgent and strong action from the federal government. Finally, Nixon—who was indifferent to environmental issues (but sensitive about his own popularity)—gave in to this pressure. Under the leadership of William D. Ruckelshaus, the EPA began operation on December 2, 1970.

Within the first few months of the EPA, Ruckelshaus successfully defined a broad, coherent antipollution mission, and laid the groundwork for an effective regulatory framework. After he defined the mission of the EPA, Ruckelshaus then set about communicating this mission to the American people. What he saw as the EPA’s “most important imperative” was to demonstrate its willingness “to respond to the legitimate demands of the people.” A week after his confirmation, Ruckelshaus filed suit against Atlanta, Detroit, and Cleveland for polluting rivers in violation of water quality standards. Suits against major industry players, including Jones and Laughlin Steel Company and Armco Steel Company followed shortly after. Less than a week after that, Ruckelshaus established 10 regional EPA offices across the US to engage more deeply in local environmental issues.

What would life in the US be like without an effective EPA? In order to imagine this, we should realize what the environment was like before the EPA was created in 1970. The EPA made spectacular progress in cleaning up the environment over the first 30 years of its existence. This may be why our memory of what it was like in the 1950s and 1960s has been all but wiped out: the most visible pollution has been removed from our view.

American concern with protecting the environment began in the 1960s. Astronauts had begun photographing the Earth from space, heightening awareness that the Earth’s resources are finite. Concern about air and water pollution had spread after numerous environmental disasters. An offshore oil spill in California blackened beaches with millions of gallons of oil. Outside Cleveland, Ohio, the Cuyahoga River, fuming with chemical contaminants, burst into flame. Deaths from air pollution were common in some US cities, hazardous waste sites were spreading, and air quality was so poor in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that street lights were turned on during the daytime to prevent vehicles from crashing because of poor visibility. These kinds of conditions led to an outburst of public support for environmental protection.

But today, many Americans behave as if developing and enforcing environmental regulations, although still important, is no longer a national priority. What EPA successes made this American amnesia possible? Below are four major successes of the EPA.

1. Air

Before the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, water and air pollution weren't federally regulated. But today, peer-reviewed studies show that the Clean Air Act has been a good economic investment for America. Fewer premature deaths and illnesses means Americans have better quality of life, longer lives, better worker productivity, lower medical expenses, and fewer school absences. Before the government began to rein in pollution, choking smog was a frequent occurrence in American cities and towns. In Denver and Los Angeles in the 1960s, smog often completely hid nearby mountains from view.

The Clean Air Act of 1970 gave EPA the authority to regulate dangerous air pollution. One of the most dramatic successes involved lead. At this time, lead was widely used in paint and also in gasoline. The EPA estimated that more than 5,000 Americans were dying every year from heart disease linked to lead poisoning. In addition, many children were growing up with diminished IQ. By 1974, EPA had begun a phaseout of lead from gasoline. It took until 1995 to completely end the practice, but the result has been a measurable 75 percent drop in blood lead levels in the public.

One of the EPA's early successes was an agreement with automobile manufacturers to install catalytic converters in cars, thereby reducing emissions of unburned hydrocarbons by 85 percent. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to regulate emission of pollutants that endanger public health and welfare. State and local governments also monitor and enforce Clean Air Act regulations, with oversight by the EPA.

Thanks to Clean Air Act rules, the levels of many other toxic substances in our air, such as arsenic, benzine, and mercury have also been substantially reduced. An update to the law in 1990 allowed EPA to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants, the main cause of acid rain. Complying with EPA’s air pollution rules has been expensive, but the federal Office of Management and Budget—analyzing data collected from 2004 to 2014—estimates that the health and other benefits of the rules exceeded the costs by somewhere between $113 billion and $741 billion a year.

2. Water

The primary objective of the Clean Water Act (1972) was to restore and maintain the integrity of the nation’s waters. The objective translates into two fundamental national goals: to eliminate the discharge of pollutants into the nation’s waters, and to achieve water quality levels that are fishable and swimmable.

In the early 1960s, when Ruckelshaus was a deputy attorney general in Indiana, he was assigned to the Stream Pollution Control Board. The board had rules against pollution but wasn’t enforcing them. Ruckelshaus and a sanitary engineer “would go around the state in a panel truck and collect samples out of streams choked with dead fish,” then try to prosecute the worst violators. In general, Ruckelshaus recalled, states like Indiana were more worried about losing industry to other states with laxer rules than about preventing pollution. But when Cleveland's Cuyahoga River burst into flames in June 1969, it helped inspire the national environmental movement. The Clean Water Act of 1972 gave EPA the authority to set national rules and enforce them. Before 1970, most cities and towns simply dumped their sewage directly into waterways, with little or no treatment. Bathers in Long Island Sound were routinely surrounded by bits of used toilet paper.

The Clean Water Act led to tens of billions of federal dollars being invested in municipal sewage treatment plants. The law’s goal is to make every river, stream, and lake in the U.S. swimmable and fishable. We’re not there yet, but today people swim in the Hudson River and Boston Harbor. And toxic rivers that catch on fire have become a thing of the past.

3. Insecticides

DDT is a colorless and nearly odorless pesticide, which had been a useful weapon against disease-carrying mosquitoes, and also a benefit for farmers. But in her book Silent Spring (1962), Rachel Carson popularized emerging research that showed DDT was making birds’ eggs thin to the point of disintegration. Many bird species veered toward extinction.

Carson’s book redefined the parameters of our reality, and set the US on the road toward Earth Day and the EPA. In 1972, Ruckelshaus effectively banned the use of DDT in the U.S., except in cases where it was needed to protect public health. That same year Congress passed the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act, giving the EPA more authority to regulate pesticides in general based on their impact on health and the environment.

4. Toxic Waste

Until the 1970s, hazardous chemical waste was disposed of like ordinary trash—at best in an unlined municipal landfill from which toxic chemicals could seep into groundwater, at worst in open dumps, where runoff from corroded barrels often contaminated streams. The US contained thousands of such hazardous dumps.

In 1976 Congress passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), giving the EPA authority to regulate hazardous waste. The EPA began tracking chemical waste from hundreds of thousands of facilities, and requiring landfills to be lined and water that leaches out to be collected before it can contaminate drinking water. The RCRA also regulates municipal waste and has given a big boost to recycling.

While the RCRA is about handling waste in the present, the Superfund law is geared toward cleaning up toxic dumps from the past. In 1978, hundreds of residents of Love Canal, New York became ill because their community had been built on a toxic waste dump operated previously by the Hooker Chemical Company. The neighborhood was eventually demolished and cleaned up, and the incident helped inaugurate the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, commonly known as Superfund. As of 2014, nearly half of the more than 1,700 Superfund sites had been fully addressed—but many of them will have to be monitored indefinitely. This is crucial because 49 million Americans live close to a Superfund site.

A decade after he stepped down, Ruckelshaus was asked by President Ronald Reagan to return. The first two years of the Reagan administration were disastrous for the EPA. Under Administrator Anne Gorsuch, the EPA suffered deep budget and staff cuts, investigations, scandals, and even a key official’s imprisonment—all of which set off increasing public outrage. So, Ruckelshaus took over again and re-invigorated the EPA.

What distinguishes William D. Ruckelshaus from appointees like Gorsuch? “I've had an awful lot of jobs in my lifetime” Ruckelshaus wrote. “But it is tough to find the same degree of fulfillment I found in the government. At EPA, you work for a cause that is beyond self-interest and larger than the goals people normally pursue. You're not there for the money, you're there for something beyond yourself.”

Ruckelshaus has some timely advice for us today. In a New York Times op-ed, Ruckelshaus cautioned that “The public will tolerate changes that allow the agency to meet its mandated goals more efficiently and effectively. They will not tolerate changes that threaten their health or the precious environment. These are the lessons President Reagan learned in 1983. We would all do well to heed them.”