EPA celebrates 40th anniversary with eye on 40 more years

Jessica Buchberger

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In 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, caught on fire. Massive amounts of waste and oil contamination from unregulated dumping were to blame for the disaster, which drew national media attention to the country's pollution problems, and which added momentum to the growing environmental movement. A year later, the first Earth Day brought together 20 million Americans demanding a cleaner and healthier environment.

Their call was answered with the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Dec. 2, 1970. Within just three years, the government passed laws that today still form the core environmental protections Americans have come to rely on: the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act. With these protections in place, our environment is in far better shape than it was at the time of the Cuyahoga River fire.

Today marks EPA's 40th anniversary of bringing tangible improvements to the quality and safety of our air, water and communities. While recognizing that there is still much work to be done, the list of what EPA has already accomplished is quite impressive.

Since its enactment, the Clean Air Act has led to a 60 percent cut in dangerous air pollutants that cause smog, acid rain, and lead poisoning, and has prevented 228,000 people from dying prematurely. In 2010 alone, the Clean Air Act will save 23,000 lives, while preventing 1.7 million asthma attacks and more than 68,000 hospitalizations and visits to the emergency room.

In 1972, two-thirds of all U.S. waterways were not safe to use. Today, more than two-thirds are considered safe for both drinking and swimming. Sixty-percent more Americans were served by publicly owned wastewater treatment facilities from 1968 to 2008. Also, the number of Americans with drinking water that met health standards increased from 79 percent in 1993 to 92 percent in 2008. The EPA also has cleaned up two-thirds of contaminated Superfund sites nationwide.

Nonetheless, there is still a lot that remains to be done. One in six women of childbearing age in the United States still has enough mercury in her body to put her unborn child at risk of neurological damage should she become pregnant. Pollution from power plants still kills 13,000 Americans each year.

Thankfully, the EPA is currently working hard to meet these challenges to protect public health and build on its track record of success. For example, the EPA is set to issue new standards for power plants and industrial facilities over the next year that will dramatically reduce mercury pollution, soot and smog, and save thousands of lives each year.

But lobbyists from oil, coal and other polluting industries are working with some in Congress to crash EPA's 40th birthday party. They've gone so far as to draft legislation blocking EPA's very authority under the Clean Air Act to continue reducing certain pollutants to protect public health.

With the health of our families and the future of our environment at stake, 40 years of tremendous progress by EPA toward cleaner air, cleaner water and improved public health deserve to be celebrated with 40 more years of such - not with setbacks from Congress.

Jessica Buchberger is a field associate for Environment Iowa, a statewide, citizen-based environmental advocacy group working for a cleaner, greener future in Iowa. Comments:

jbuchberger@environ

mentamerica.org