The United States Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) is a federal agency of the government of the United States. Established in December 1970 by Pres. Richard M Nixon, the agency was created for the purpose of protecting the general health of the population and the environment. The agency, while guided by laws passed by Congress, is responsible for writing and enforcing regulation within its 10 regions and 27 laboratories across the country.
The EPA maintains and enforces national standards using environmental laws that are created through careful consultation with state and local governments. As well as the input of tribal leadership. It also works within all manner of industry and levels of government through a variety of voluntary programs. Their purpose being to limit the inherent causes of pollution and the conservation of the Nation’s energy sources. It also delegates the monitoring, the permitting and the enforcement of these environmental laws.
In the 1960s and as early as the late 1950s, there was increased and at times, heated, public concern as to whether or not humanity, and its industrial activity as a whole, could negatively impact the environment. The Resources and Conservation Act of 1959 and the subsequent National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 were bills introduced by Congress to discuss the need and implementation of a national environmental policy. However, as with the current controversy swirling around climate change and the environment, some members of Congress possessed a growing aversion to federal agency efforts to regulate activity affecting the environment.
When Pres. Nixon signed NEPA into law it created the Council on Environmental Quality and required an accompanying detailed statement itemizing anything that impacted the environment by any action conducted by the federal government. This itemized list became known as An Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). After an executive reorganization, most of the federal government’s responsibilities were consolidated under one agency and the Environmental Protection Agency that we know today came into play.
In 2017, the Trump administration proposed a 31% cut to the EPA’s budget. The result? The elimination of one quarter of the Agency’s engineers, scientists and data analysts. However, due to regulation of greenhouse gasses adopted by the majority of energy producing countries, the EPA is going to be hard pressed to adhere to any international pressure to reign-in any current activity contributing to climate-change affecting the environment. Trump’s cuts come at a time when the EPA can little afford to fall behind the rest of the World in it’s fight to save our planet.
