Despite its complexity, for pollution control purposes the environment must be perceived as a single, interrelated system. Present assignments of departmental responsibilities do not reflect this interrelatedness.
Many agency missions, for example, are designed primarily along media lines - air, water, and land. Yet the sources of air, water, and land pollution are interrelated and often interchangeable. A single source may pollute the air with smoke and chemicals, the land with solid wastes, and a river or lake with chemical and other wastes. Control of the air pollution may produce more solid wastes, which then pollute the land or water. Control of the water-polluting effluent may convert it into solid wastes, which must be disposed of on land.
Similarly, some pollutants - chemicals, radiation, pesticides - appear in all media. Successful control of them at present requires the coordinated efforts of a variety of separate agencies and departments. The results are not always successful.
A far more effective approach to pollution control would:
In organizational terms, this requires pulling together into one agency a variety of research, monitoring, standard-setting and enforcement activities now scattered through several departments and agencies. It also requires that the new agency include sufficient support elements - in research and in aids to State and local antipolution programs, for example - to give it the needed strength and potential for carrying out its mission. The new agency would also, of course, draw upon the results of research conducted by other agencies.
With its broad mandate, EPA would also develop competence in areas of environmental protection that have not previously been given enough attention, such, for example, as the problem of noise, and it would provide an organization to which new programs in these areas could be added.
In brief, these are the principal functions to be transferred:
Federal Water Quality Administration. - Charged with the control of pollutants which impair water quality, it is broadly concerned with the impact of degraded water quality. It performs a wide variety of functions, including research, standard-setting and enforcement, and provides construction grants and technical assistance.
Certain pesticides research authority from the Department of the Interior. - Authority for research on the effects of pesticides on fish and wildlife would be provided to the EPA through transfer of the specialized research authority of the pesticides act enacted in 1958. Interior would retain its responsibility to do research on all factors affecting fish and wildlife. Under this provision, only one laboratory would be transferred to the EPA - the Gulf Breeze Biological Laboratory of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. The EPA would work closely with the fish and wildlife laboratories remaining with the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife.
National Air Pollution Control Administration. - As the principal Federal agency concerned with air pollution, it conducts research on the effects of air pollution, operates a monitoring network, and promulgates criteria which serve as the basis for setting air quality standards. Its regulatory functions are similar to those of the Federal Water Quality Administration. NAPCA is responsible for administering the Clean Air Act, which involves designating air quality regions, approving State standards and providing financial and technical assistance to State Control agencies to enable them to comply with the Act's provisions. It also sets and enforces Federal automotive emission standards.
Elements of the Environmental Control Administration. - ECA is the focal point within HEW for evaluation and control of a broad range of environmental health problems, including water quality, solid wastes, and radiation. Programs in the ECA involve research, development of criteria and standards, and the administration of planning and demonstration grants. From the ECA, the activities of the Bureaus of Water Hygiene and Solid Waste Management and portions of the activities of the Bureau of Radiological Health would be transferred. Other functions of the ECA including those related to the regulation of radiation from consumer products and occupational safety and health would remain in HEW.
Pesticides research and standard-setting programs of the Food and Drug Administration. - FDA's pesticides program consists of setting and enforcing standards which limit pesticide residues in food. EPA would have the authority to set pesticide standards and to monitor compliance with them, as well as to conduct related research. However, as an integral part of its food protection activities, FDA would retain its authority to remove from the market food with excess pesticide residues.
General ecological research from the Council on Environmental Quality. - This authority to perform studies and research relating to ecological systems would be in addition to EPA's other specific research authorities, and it would help EPA to measure the impact of pollutants. The Council on Environmental Quality would retain its authority to conduct studies and research relating to environmental quality.
Environmental radiation standards programs. - The Atomic Energy Commission is now responsible for establishing environmental radiation standards and emission limits for radioactivity. Those standards have been based largely on broad guidelines recommended by the Federal Radiation Council. The Atomic Energy Commission's authority to set standards for the protection of the general environment from radioactive material would be transferred to the Environmental Protection Agency. The functions of the Federal Radiation Council would also be transferred. AEC would retain responsibility for the implementation and enforcement of radiation standards through its licensing authority.
Pesticides registration program of the Agricultural Research Service. - The Department of Agriculture is currently responsible for several distinct functions related to pesticides use. It conducts research on the efficacy of various pesticides as related to other pest control methods and on the effects of pesticides on non-target plants, livestock, and poultry. It registers pesticides, monitors their persistence and carries out an educational program on pesticide use through the extension service. It conducts extensive pest control programs which utilize pesticides.
By transferring the Department of Agriculture's pesticides registration and monitoring function to the EPA and merging it with the pesticides programs being transferred from HEW and Interior, the new agency would be given a broad capability for control over the introduction of pesticides into the environment.
The Department of Agriculture would continue to conduct research on the effectiveness of pesticides. The Department would furnish this information to the EPA, which would have the responsibility for actually licensing pesticides for use after considering environmental and health effects. Thus the new agency would be able to make use of the expertise of the Department.
As no disjointed array of separate programs can, the EPA would be able - in concert with the States - to set and enforce standards for air and water quality and for individual pollutants. This consolidation of pollution control authorities would help assure that we do not create new environmental problems in the process of controlling existing ones. Industries seeking to minimize the adverse impact of their activities on the environment would be assured of consistent standards covering the full range of their waste disposal problems. As the States develop and expand their own pollution control programs, they would be able to look to one agency to support their efforts with financial and technical assistance and training.
In proposing that the Environmental Protection Agency be set up as a separate new agency, I am making an exception to one of my own principles: that, as a matter of effective and orderly administration, additional new independent agencies normally should not be created. In this case, however, the arguments against placing environmental protection activities under the jurisdiction of one or another of the existing departments and agencies are compelling.
In the first place, almost every part of government is concerned with the environment in some way, and affects it in some way. Yet each department also has its own primary mission - such as resource development, transportation, health, defense, urban growth or agriculture - which necessarily affects its own view of environmental questions.
In the second place, if the critical standard-setting functions were centralized within any one existing department, it would require that department constantly to make decisions affecting other departments - in which, whether fairly or unfairly, its own objectivity as an impartial arbiter could be called into question.
Because environmental protection cuts across so many jurisdictions, and because arresting environmental deterioration is of great importance to the quality of life in our country and the world, I believe that in this case a strong, independent agency is needed. That agency would, of course, work closely with and draw upon the expertise and assistance of other agencies having experience in the environmental area.
One natural question concerns the relationship between the EPA and the Council on Environmental Quality, recently established by Act of Congress.
It is my intention and expectation that the two will work in close harmony, reinforcing each other's mission. Essentially, the Council is a top-level advisory group (which might be compared with the Council of Economic Advisers), while the EPA would be an operating, 'line' organization. The Council will continue to be a part of the Executive Office of the President and will perform its overall coordinating and advisory roles with respect to all Federal programs related to environmental quality.
The Council, then, is concerned with all aspects of environmental quality - wildlife preservation, parklands, land use, and population growth, as well as pollution. The EPA would be charged with protecting the environment by abating pollution. In short, the Council focuses on what our broad policies in the environment field should be; the EPA would focus on setting and enforcing pollution control standards. The two are not competing, but complementary - and taken together, they should give us, for the first time, the means to mount an effectively coordinated campaign against environmental degradation in all of its many forms.