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The Guardian: EPA's Formative Years, 1970-1973

Contents

Building an Agency

Drawing the Line

Taking to the Air

Pesticides and Public Health

Changing Captains

References


EPA 202-K-93-002
September 1993
by Dennis C. Williams

full-text (62KB)

Introduction

Few federal agencies evoke as much emotion in the average American as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Either directly or indirectly, the agency's operations confront the average person in intimate ways. Everyone wants breathable air, drinkable water, and land free from harmful pollutants on which to live. EPA's actions in pursuit of those goals have altered the nation's social, political, and economic course. Moreover, in attempting over the past quarter century to make a cleaner environment a reality, EPA has found itself regulating the personal conduct of individual citizens.

Often, the turbulent relationship between the agency and its diverse constituencies has interfered with these tasks. At various times during its history, the agency has roused business and industry, farmers, environmentalists, Congress, the White House, and the general public to ire. EPA has attempted to regulate the environment by building acceptable compromises among its constituents. Since compromises by their very nature are seldom satisfactory to everyone, EPA's constituents have given the agency mixed evaluations. Still, the agency has continued to follow many of the pollution control strategies set forth by its first administrator, William D. Ruckelshaus. Understanding the course set by Ruckelshaus and his staff illuminates not only EPA's past, but clarifies the agency's place in American society today.

Ruckelshaus's original mission appeared simple enough: clean up America. It proved to be deceptively simple. Echoing the naturalists among their ancestors, the environmentalists of the day pointed out that life on earth was intricately interconnected. Still, most Americans did not foresee that actions designed to clean the natural environment and protect public health would alter the economy, foreign policy, race relations, personal freedom, and many other areas of public life. Almost inadvertently, EPA redirected a portion of the nation's energy to reckon with the pollution problem.

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