An Agency For The Environment

Having dispatched these initiatives in spring, by early July the Administration could concentrate its full attention on the capstone of its program. Acting on Roy Ash's advice, the President decided to establish an autonomous regulatory body to oversee the enforcement of environmental policy. In a message to the House and Senate, he declared his intention to establish the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and left no doubts about its far-reaching powers. Nixon declared that its mission would center on:

• The establishment and enforcement of environmental protection standards consistent with national environmental goals.

• The conduct of research on the adverse effects of pollution and on methods and equipment for controlling it; the gathering of information on pollution; and the use of this information in strengthening environmental protection programs and recommending policy changes.

• Assisting others, through grants, technical assistance and other means, in arresting pollution of the environment.

• Assisting the Council on Environmental Quality in developing and recommending to the President new policies for the protection of the environment.

The President accompanied his statement with Reorganization Plan Number 3, dated July 9, 1970, in which he informed Congress of his wish to assemble the EPA from the sinews of three federal Departments, three Bureaus, three Administrations, two Councils, one Commission, one Service, and many diverse offices. The Interior Department would yield the Federal Water Quality Administration, as well as all of its pesticides work. The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare would contribute the National Air Pollution Control Administration, the Food and Drug Administration's pesticides research, and the Bureaus of Solid Waste Management, Water Hygiene, and (portions of) the Bureau of Radiological Health. The Agriculture Department would cede the pesticides activities undertaken by the Agricultural Research Service, while the Atomic Energy Commission and the Federal Radiation Council would vest radiation criteria and standards in the proposed agency. Finally, the Council on Environmental Quality's ecological research would be transferred to EPA.

The hearings on EPA, held in summer 1970, essentially supported the President. The House Government Operations Subcommittee on Executive and Legislative Reorganization, chaired by Congressman Chet Holifield of California, convened on July 22, 23, and August 4, to take testimony on Reorganization Plan Number 3. Lead witness Russell Train gave it unqualified support, predicting that its "vision of clean air and water...will provide us with the unity and the leadership necessary to protect the environment." Roy Ash testified the following day about the fragmented state of pollution control, the continuation of which "will seriously limit our solving the problem even as we expand our commitment to preserve and restore the quality of our environment." Meanwhile, witnesses appeared on July 28 and 29 before the Senate Government Operations Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization and Government Research, chaired by Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut. During these hearings, Senator Jacob Javits of New York perhaps expressed the prevailing mood of the Congress when he described the new organization as a "very strong and overdue effort to arrest and prevent the erosion of the priceless resources of all mankind and also to preserve that most priceless asset, the human being himself, who, in a singularly polluted atmosphere, may find it impossible to exist."

Congressman John Dingell of Michigan presented the only serious alternatives to Reorganization Plan Number 3. A strongwilled conservationist, Dingell wondered why the EPA encompassed neither water and sewer programs in the Departments of Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development, nor the environmental operations of the Defense and Transportation Departments. He proposed that instead of erecting EPA, the House consider a more comprehensive, cabinet-level Department of Environmental Quality. Despite his suggestion, both subcommittees approved the President's proposal and issued reports: the Holifield Committee on September 23, the Ribicoff panel six days later. Having cleared all its statutory hurdles, on December 2, 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency would at last open its doors.

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