How We Learned to Trust the Air We Breathe and Water We Drink
May 29, 2025
The people who develop our natural resources shouldn't be the same people protecting us from the consequences of that development.
That was President Nixon's reasoning for creating the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or the EPA.
In the years before the EPA's creation, American rivers were catching fire. Smog was killing hundreds of New Yorkers. Lakes were losing their ability to sustain life. The environmental movement, which had been quietly building, exploded into public discourse and, thus, our politics.
So what was the government going to do about it?
Before 1970, the government department in charge of stopping factories from dumping toxic waste into rivers was different from the department in charge of monitoring the air pollution that made people sick in cities.
The EPA was born from an administrative reshuffle blandly called Reorganization Plan No. 3. Nixon's plan brought together people already working across the government to create one independent agency focused on controlling pollution.
1970 brought us the birth of the EPA, the first Earth Day, and the first laws to strengthen the agency.
The Clean Air Act of 1970 let the EPA hold states accountable for cleaning up their cities' dirty air and forced automakers to cut the pollution coming out of their cars.
Then, the Clean Water Act of 1972 made it illegal to discharge any pollutant into waterways without permission.
After decades of progress, we can now walk through our cities without the threat of smog, drink water from our taps, and do countless other things that seem normal today.
Crisis created the EPA, but people operating within the system made it effective.
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