Wrong. The EPA has only ever been a political animal, created by Nixon as a greenie distraction from the highly unpopular Vietnam War. Industrial progress and pollution reduction was already well in hand without these interfering show ponies. Now they are nothing more than a misanthropic hinderance to humanity and the environment.
A polluted drainage ditch that once flowed with industrial waste from Lake Charles, La., petrochemical plants teems with overgrown, wild plants today.
A light-rail line zips past the spot where a now-defunct Portland, Ore., gasoline station advertised in 1972 that it had run out of gas.
A smoking Jersey City, N.J., dump piled with twisted, rusty metal has disappeared, along with the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan that were its backdrop.
Forty years after the Environmental Protection Agency sent an army of nearly 100 photographers across the country to capture images at the dawn of environmental regulation, The Associated Press went back for Earth Day this year to see how things have changed. It is something the agency never got to do because the Documerica program, as it was called, died in 1978, the victim of budget cuts.
The EPA is a living testament to one of most infamous mass murderers of all time, Rachel Carson.
I don’t think the EPA was “created by Nixon as a greenie distraction from the highly unpopular Vietnam War.” I think it was created in part from somebody with the last name of Rockefeller.
I think you’re overreacting, Editor. While there were political reasons for creation of the EPA, the article has a good point that at it’s inception, the EPA did have a real and useful mission. A mission that is mostly accomplished. People these days don’t know what real pollution looks like.
I was down on the ship channel last week and I saw over a dozen fishermen trying their rods and reels out down by the San Jacinto Monument. Not 15 years ago, the water in that area looked and smelled like battery acid. Now, you’d have to be a pregnant, subsistence fisherwoman to get even statistically harmed by the dwindling levels of mercury and PCPs. Not 30 years ago yellow smoke poured freely from smokestacks. Now, you see only the steam of wet scrubbers.
My point Ben is that environmental clean up was long underway, as a result of technological advance and a wealthier population both prepared and able to pay more for a nicer environment. The EPA was never required and has never been particularly useful. Their obstructiveness slows both technological advance and wealth generation and, as such are anti-environmental.
I worked for my company’s environmental technology group and was involved with three major environmental issues over the years. In one case a mill built in the 1920′s was violating an EPA standard for how much color the mill could add to the river. The amount of color above the EPA limit was minor and the state of North Carolina gave us a variance because the cost of meeting the requirement was excessive and the economic well being of the town of 10,000 depended on the mill’s employment.. Tennessee sued North Carolina over the variance because the river eventually flowed into Tennessee. If you could actually see the two different shades you realize the frivolousness of the whole thing. In the second case after a brand new mill opened up in Michigan we flunked an environmental test prescribed by the EPA and were told to fix the problem or shut the mill down. After reviewing the test procedure I determined that the EPA procedure was incorrect and that a new test with a correct procedure. We offered the Michigan department of environmental affairs to pay for an independent consultant of their choice to evaluate the procedure. They chose a professor at the University of Michigan who agreed the EPA procedure was flawed and who designed a correct procedure. We then passed the pollution test with flying colors. In the third case we were meeting all EPA rules on our effluent, but due to lots of new development in the area, the combined effluent from everybody going into the bay was killing both animal and plant life in the the bay. My company was then asked to meet higher standards than the EPA standards. They fought this and asked me to participate in their defense once again. I refused because we were having a real effect on the environment and I agreed with the regulators. So in summary I think its mixed bag. We need the EPA and regulations to keep industry from going too far overboard, but the regulation has to be sensible, competent and balance economic effects against environmental effects.
Over regulation creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of disaster by stifiling our ability to inovate.