A Reflection on the EPA
Dear Reader, Today I wanted to talk about the Environmental Protection Agency, or the EPA. First, a brief history. The EPA was born out of crisis. In the 1960s, America was waking up to the environmental damage wrought by decades of industrial growth. Rivers were catching fire (most infamously in 1969, when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio caught fire due to years of unchecked industrial pollution), smog was choking cities, and pesticides like DDT (or dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, a crystalline chemical compound) were decimating wildlife populations. Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring , had sounded a nationwide alarm, linking pollution and chemical use to widespread ecological harm and public health issues. By the end of the decade, the public had had enough. In 1970, under President Richard Nixon, the EPA was established by executive reorganization. It officially opened its doors on December 2 of that year. The idea was to consolidate numerous federal programs under on...