The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is a federal agency of the United States Government created to protect the environment and human health through writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by the United States Congress. Designed to serve as the public’s advocate for a habitable environment, President Richard Nixon created the EPA through executive order on December 2, 1970, after which both House and Senate committees ratified the order. While not a cabinet-level position, the administrator of the EPA, which is nominated by the president and confirmed by Congress, is usually given the rank of a cabinet member in the administration (Office of the Federal Register 2017).
As a Federal Agency, and a part of the Executive Branch, the EPA works through codifying federal regulations in response to congressional actions. For example, the Clean Air Act merely states that the United States’ Government believes that clean air is important, but it is the EPA’s responsibility to decide what clean air is defined as, and who is responsible for maintaining clean air. To inform their decisions, the EPA is structured with staff offices individually focusing on one issue, receiving scientific data from EPA labs as well as states, nonprofits and educational institutions who act through EPA grants. Because of this system, the agency should be inherently non-partisan, relying on scientific facts to aide in the regulations they generate, yet because of its position in Administrations and its controversial nature, often rules and priorities dynamically change.
Starting in the 1950’s, and continuing through the 1960’s, the United States experienced an explosive post- World War 2 economic boom that brought rapid science and technology advancements into the homes of middle-class Americans. Yet, through this time period, a congruent trend of environmental destruction and widespread pollution was also occurring, leading to widespread public outcry and bipartisan activism for tougher environmental regulations and enforcement. This grassroots movement culminated in the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, designed to address the environmental pollution and widespread degradation of American lands in the previous decades. Additionally, in 1969, the Nixon Administration took office after campaigning on the promise to remove governmental overlaps and inefficiencies. Nixon’s President’s Advisory Council on Executive Organization issued the Ash Council memo in 1970, suggesting, among other things, the creation of a National Agency to centralize, codify and enforce the environmental regulations being passed by Congress (Ash, Roy L. et all 1970). President Nixon created the EPA to be the principal instrument for environmental regulations, tying the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 with other previous legislations such as the Clean Air Act of 1963. Initially, big-businesses and corporations viewed the Agency as a fad that would have no long-term substantive effects on their abilities to produce and expand their operations, leading to their support of its passing.
The initial intense enthusiasm for the agency became subdued as the 1970’s geopolitical crises wore on, with the Agency often clashing with political necessities of the time. One such example is the agency’s response to the OPEC energy crisis of 1973, where environmentally conscious low sulfur oils were in short supply. Congress pressed the EPA to ease the restrictions on fuel quality and auto emission standards, despite its negative environmental impacts, through amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1974 (National Service Center for Environmental Publications 1974). In this instance, the health and safety of the American populace was compromised specifically for the need of oil. Such clashes led to the widespread belief that the EPA was an inefficient agency, and in 1974 the Agency became the center of a report to congress criticizing the EPA’s Office of Research and Development as having too many levels of management and having too much red tape to be functional.
These efficiency problems were highlighted during Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, and in 1981 President Reagan was inaugurated based on a platform that called for examining and repealing the growth of centralized government and for, overall, providing regulatory relief. Anne Gorsuch Burford was confirmed as President Reagan’s administrator of the EPA in May of 1981, and she quickly submitted an EPA budget that reduced its own funding from $1.355 billion to $975 million dollars, with reorganization of the EPA necessary after 4,365 employees were let go (Wisman 1985). This led to the severe demoralization of the remaining employees, which was compounded after Congress charged the EPA for mishandling the $1.6 billion Superfund program, used for cleaning up hazardous waste dumps, in 1982, which led to the resignation of administrator Burford. Yet, during her nearly 2-year tenure, she managed to cut the EPA budget by 22%, reduce the amount of pending litigation, relax Clean Air Act regulations, reduce the total number of agency employees and hire staff from the industries they were supposed to be regulating (Wisman 1985).
The remainder of the Reagan administration, and the duration of George H.W. Bush’s presidency, left little noteworthy changes in the EPA’s structure and functioning capabilities. After Burford, and during the rest of the Reagan administration, the EPA had to repair its public image and restore the American populations confidence in it, which consumed the majority of its functioning capability. Under President George H.W. Bush, the EPA began a campaign to integrate the nation’s environmental and economic agendas, and began the process of centralizing and emphasizing the role of science for EPA decisions. Additionally, after years of congressional deadlock, in 1990 the EPA was able to push through the new Clean Air bill, reinvigorating the Agency’s litigating capabilities and making pollution prevention a priority over pollution cleanup (Reilly 1990). For the first time, the EPA played a role in assessing environmental priorities in foreign policy, with administrator Reilly part of the U.S. delegation to the 1992 Earth summit, beginning the process of international coalition behind greenhouse gas reductions. The Clinton administration built on the progress of the Bush administration with such achievements as Project XL in 1995, which sought to achieve common-sense solutions to environmental issues, seeking to attack pollution at an industry level rather than at the local level. Additionally, in 1997 the Clinton Administration passed additional restrictions on the Clean Air Act, giving the EPA authority to begin efforts to deal with global warming and authorizing the regulation of climate change-causing pollutants (EPA 2017).
George W. Bush’s administration did not direct the EPA to continue working on the climate change initiatives, and did little to combat global warming. Controversy struck the EPA after the September 11 attacks, where administrator Whitman issued a report saying that the air in New York and Washington DC was “safe to breathe” (EPA 2003). However, a 2003 report reprimanded this statement, saying that the assurance was “misleading” because there was not sufficient evidence to justify it (Office of Inspector General 2003). Additionally, Bush’s EPA controversially blocked 17 states’ efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by citing the need for a clear, national solution, and to avoid a messy piecemeal system of state rules. This desire for a national solution was continued through the Obama administration, whose EPA issued “clear and uniform national policy” regarding greenhouse gas emissions in automobiles on March 19, 2009 (Obama White House Archives 2009). This began a period of EPA transition where their role became hyper-political, as their rules and regulations directly and adversely affected many industries in the U.S. This role came under political scrutiny in 2010, where the senate unsuccessfully tried to eliminate the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions pursuant to the Clean Air Act (Congressional Archives 2010). In 2010, the EPA took a leading role in the cleanup after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, with the EPA being highly praised in its efforts to oversee environmental and public health concerns. Most recently, pursuant to the United Nation’s Paris Climate Accord, Obama’s EPA finalized restrictions on coal use in 2015, creating much stricter laws regulating coal emissions that disproportionately affected the economy of coal towns, causing political backlash.
Currently, the EPA is headquartered in Washington D.C., with 10 regional offices and 27 laboratories. In 2016, the EPA employed 15,376 full time employees, with more than half of their employees being scientists, environmentalists or engineers; the other half of their employees include public affairs, financial, legal and IT specialties (Office of the Federal Register 2017). Its current administrator, Scott Pruitt, was nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the senate on 17 February, 2017. Pruitt rejects the idea that carbon dioxide “is a primary contributor to the [sic] global warming” and believes that the United Nation’s 2016 Paris Agreement is a “bad deal” (DiChristopher 2017). Because of these views, and his ties to oil-companies, Pruitt’s confirmation was highly contested in the Senate.
On top of the obscure reaches Pruitt tried to use for global warming, he also sued the EPA over past regulations that were made specifically to keep waters clean during the Obama-era. This rule gave the EPA a wide jurisdiction over the largest rivers in the nation by controlling the pollution that enters their tributaries and wetlands. (Eilperin 2017) As we know, tributaries and wetlands are what fuel the river systems. Dismantling the EPA’s control over these areas will be making it acceptable for industries to knowingly contaminate these waters that will eventually come to interact with the waters in which we directly and indirectly come in contact. This is all due to the executive order that Trump signed regarding this rule. Under the Trump administration pollution is becoming an acceptable practice and public health is becoming a nonessential. Now that the administrator for the EPA is an individual who does not care about the veracity of the EPA, the EPA is bound to a downward spiral for the next 4 years.
Throughout, the EPA poses a unique intersection between science and industry, where regulations can create negative economic impacts for industries. This relationship can best be summed by Nixon’s Ash Council memo, which states: “The economic progress which we have come to expect, or even demand, has almost invariably come at some cost to the environment.” (Ash, Roy L. et all 1970). Thus, in order to mitigate environmental costs, the economic progress is usually stifled, creating conflict between the public health and safety goals of the EPA and the capitalist profits of industry. The EPA relates to the politics of health through its interaction with Biological Citizenship, where environmental disasters qualify individuals living in a geographic area for increased compensation or care because of their exposure to toxins or pollutants. One such example is the Love Canal Disaster near Buffalo, New York, which gained prominence in 1978 after residents began discovering toxins that had leached from a toxic waste dump (Fletcher 2011). Their shared geographic condition brought them recognition by the state, which in turn triggered a governmental response to their conditions. The most prominent tool the EPA uses to emphasize the role of biological citizenship in the work that it does is through the Superfund system, where the EPA regulates and performs clean up services after environmental disasters. Through the Superfund, a political tool that directly affects the health of those that it touches, the EPA is able to combat health ailments after a disaster. Yet, its utilization can be controversial, with a long lobbying process necessary to be placed on the Superfund list. Because of this, biological citizenship is not the only determinant in receiving EPA recognition, an afflicted population must also navigate a bureaucracy to receive treatment. Therefore, the EPA uses a form of biological citizenship ‘plus’ – a form that requires additional recognition besides biological citizenship to gain access to recognition.
References
Office of the Federal Register. 2017. “Environmental Protection Agency.” Accessed March 12, 2017. https://www.federalregister.gov/agencies/environmental-protection-agency
National Service Center for Environmental Publications (NSCEP). 1974. “Clean Air Act: as Amended, June 1974.” Accessed March 12, 2017. https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/91016SR6.TXT?ZyActionD=ZyDocument&Client=EPA&Index=Prior+to+1976&Docs=&Query=&Time=&EndTime=&SearchMethod=1&TocRestrict=n&Toc=&TocEntry=&QField=&QFieldYear=&QFieldMonth=&QFieldDay=&IntQFieldOp=0&ExtQFieldOp=0&XmlQuery=&File=D%3A%5Czyfiles%5CIndex%20Data%5C70thru75%5CTxt%5C00000019%5C91016SR6.txt&User=ANONYMOUS&Password=anonymous&SortMethod=h%7C&MaximumDocuments=1&FuzzyDegree=0&ImageQuality=r75g8/r75g8/x150y150g16/i425&Display=hpfr&DefSeekPage=x&SearchBack=ZyActionL&Back=ZyActionS&BackDesc=Results%20page&MaximumPages=1&ZyEntry=1&SeekPage=x&ZyPURL
Ash, Roy L., Baker, George P., Connaly, John B., Kappel, Frederick R., Paget, Richard M., and Thayer, Walter N. 1970. “Memorandum for the President Subject: Federal Organization for Environmental Protection.” Executive Office of the President; President’s Advisory Council on Executive Organization.
DiChristopher, Tom. 2017. “EPA chief Scott Pruitt says carbon dioxide is not a primary contributor to global warming.” CNBC, 9 March 2017.
Wisman, Phil. 1985. “EPA History 1970-1985.” EPA Office of Public Awareness. US Environmental Protection Agency Online Archive. Accessed March 12, 2017. https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/epa-history-1970-1985.html
Reilly, William K. 1990. “EPA: 20 Years young.” Speech, National Archives. EPA Archives. Accessed March 11, 2017.
EPA. 2017. “Evolution of the Clean Air Act.” Accessed March 12, 2017. https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/evolution-clean-air-act
EPA. 2003. “EPA’s Response to September 11 2001.” Accessed March 11, 2017. https://archive.epa.gov/wtc/web/html/
Office of the Inspector General. 2003. “Survey of Air Quality Information Related to the World Trade Center Collapse.” Report No. 2003-P-00014. September 26, 2003.
Congressional Archives. 2010. “S.J.Res.26 – A joint resolution disapproving a rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to the endangerment finding and the cause or contribute findings for greenhouse gases under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act.” Accessed March 12, 2017.
Obama White House Archives. 2009. “President Obama Announces National Fuel Efficiency Policy.” Accessed March 13, 2017. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/realitycheck/the-press-office/president-obama-announces-national-fuel-efficiency-policy
Fletcher, Thomas. 2011. “Love Canal.” Bishop’s University.
Eilperin, Juliet and Mufson, Steven. “Trump administration to propose repealing rule giving EPA broad authority of water pollution.” Accessed July 17, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/06/27/trump-administration-to-propose-repealing-rule-giving-epa-broad-authority-over-water-pollution/?utm_term=.faba1d084710
Stanley Darnell Gatlin, II
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