Environmental Protection Agency

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Environmental Protection Agency

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Agency overview
Formed	December 2, 1970
Headquarters	William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building Washington, D.C., U.S. 38.8939°N 77.0289°WCoordinates: 38.8939°N 77.0289°W
Employees	13,758
Annual budget	$9,057,401,000 (2020)
Agency executives	Michael S. Regan, Administrator Janet McCabe, Deputy Administrator
Website	www.epa.gov

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it began operation on December 2, 1970, after Nixon signed an executive order. The order establishing the EPA was ratified by committee hearings in the House and Senate. The agency is led by its administrator, who is appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. The current Administrator is Michael S. Regan. The EPA is not a Cabinet department, but the administrator is normally given cabinet rank.

The EPA has its headquarters in Washington, D.C., regional offices for each of the agency's ten regions, and 27 laboratories. The agency conducts environmental assessment, research, and education. It has the responsibility of maintaining and enforcing national standards under a variety of environmental laws, in consultation with state, tribal, and local governments. It delegates some permitting, monitoring, and enforcement responsibility to U.S. states and the federally recognized tribes. EPA enforcement powers include fines, sanctions, and other measures. The agency also works with industries and all levels of government in a wide variety of voluntary pollution prevention programs and energy conservation efforts.

In 2018, the agency had 13,758 employees. More than half of EPA's employees are engineers, scientists, and environmental protection specialists; other employees include legal, public affairs, financial, and information technologists.

Many public health and environmental groups advocate for the agency and believe that it is creating a better world. Other critics believe that the agency commits government overreach by adding unnecessary regulations on business and property owners.

History

Background

Stacks emitting smoke from burning discarded automobile batteries, photo taken in Houston in 1972 by Marc St. Gil [cs], official photographer of recently founded EPA

 

Same smokestacks in 1975 after the plant was closed in a push for greater environmental protection

Beginning in the late 1950s and through the 1960s, Congress reacted to increasing public concern about the impact that human activity could have on the environment. Senator James E. Murray introduced a bill, the Resources and Conservation Act (RCA) of 1959, in the 86th Congress. The bill would have established a Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President, declared a national environmental policy, and required the preparation of an annual environmental report.

The 1962 publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson alerted the public about the detrimental effects on the environment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides.

In the years following, similar bills were introduced and hearings were held to discuss the state of the environment and Congress's potential responses. In 1968, a joint House–Senate colloquium was convened by the chairmen of the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Senator Henry M. Jackson, and the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Representative George P. Miller, to discuss the need for and means of implementing a national environmental policy. In the colloquium, some members of Congress expressed a continuing concern over federal agency actions affecting the environment.

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) was modeled on the 1959 RCA bill. President Nixon signed NEPA into law on January 1, 1970. The law created the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) in the Executive Office of the President. NEPA required that a detailed statement of environmental impacts be prepared for all major federal actions significantly affecting the environment. The "detailed statement" would ultimately be referred to as an environmental impact statement (EIS).

Establishment

Ruckelshaus sworn in as first EPA Administrator.

On July 9, 1970, Nixon proposed an executive reorganization that consolidated many environmental responsibilities of the federal government under one agency, a new Environmental Protection Agency. This proposal included merging pollution control programs from a number of departments, such as the combination of pesticide programs from the United States Department of Agriculture and the United States Department of the Interior. After conducting hearings during that summer, the House and Senate approved the proposal. The EPA was created 90 days before it had to operate, and officially opened its doors on December 2, 1970. The agency's first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, took the oath of office on December 4, 1970.

EPA's primary predecessor was the former Environmental Health Divisions of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS), and its creation caused one of a series of reorganizations of PHS that occurred during 1966–1973. From PHS, EPA absorbed the entire National Air Pollution Control Administration, as well as the Environmental Control Administration's Bureau of Solid Waste Management, Bureau of Water Hygiene, and part of its Bureau of Radiological Health. It also absorbed the Federal Water Quality Administration, which had previously been transferred from PHS to the Department of the Interior in 1966. A few functions from other agencies were also incorporated into EPA: the formerly independent Federal Radiation Council was merged into it; pesticides programs were transferred from the Department of the Interior, Food and Drug Administration, and Agricultural Research Service; and some functions were transferred from the Council on Environmental Quality and Atomic Energy Commission.

Upon its creation, EPA inherited 84 sites spread across 26 states, of which 42 sites were laboratories. The EPA consolidated these laboratories into 22 sites.

1970s

In its first year, the EPA had a budget of $1.4 billion and 5,800 employees. At its start, the EPA was primarily a technical assistance agency that set goals and standards. Soon, new acts and amendments passed by Congress gave the agency its regulatory authority. A major expansion of the Clean Air Act was approved later that month.

EPA staff recall that in the early days there was "an enormous sense of purpose and excitement" and the expectation that "there was this agency which was going to do something about a problem that clearly was on the minds of a lot of people in this country," leading to tens of thousands of resumes from those eager to participate in the mighty effort to clean up America's environment.

When EPA first began operation, members of the private sector felt strongly that the environmental protection movement was a passing fad. Ruckelshaus stated that he felt pressure to show a public which was deeply skeptical about government's effectiveness, that EPA could respond effectively to widespread concerns about pollution.

The burning Cuyahoga River in 1969 had led to a national outcry. In December 1970 a federal grand jury investigation led by U.S. Attorney Robert W. Jones began, of water pollution allegedly being caused by about 12 companies in northeastern Ohio. It was the first grand jury investigation of water pollution in the area. The attorney general of the United States, John N. Mitchell, held a press conference on December 18, 1970, referencing new pollution control litigation, with particular reference to work with the new Environmental Protection Agency, and announcing the filing of a lawsuit that morning against the Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation for discharging substantial quantities of cyanide into the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland. Jones filed the misdemeanor charges in District Court, alleging violations of the 1899 Rivers and Harbors Act.

Partly based on such litigation experience, Congress enacted the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, better known as the Clean Water Act (CWA). The CWA established a national framework for addressing water quality, including mandatory pollution control standards, to be implemented by the agency in partnership with the states. Congress also amended the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) in 1972, requiring EPA to measure every pesticide's risks against its potential benefits.

Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974, requiring EPA to develop mandatory federal standards for all public water systems, which serve 90% of the US population. The law required EPA to enforce the standards with the cooperation of state agencies.

In October 1976, Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) which, like FIFRA, related to the manufacture, labeling and usage of commercial products rather than pollution. This act gave the EPA the authority to gather information on chemicals and require producers to test them, gave it the ability to regulate chemical production and use (with specific mention of PCBs), and required the agency to create the National Inventory listing of chemicals.

Congress also enacted the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in 1976, significantly amending the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965. It tasked the EPA with setting national goals for waste disposal, conserving energy and natural resources, reducing waste, and ensuring environmentally sound management of waste. Accordingly, the agency developed regulations for solid and hazardous waste that were to be implemented in collaboration with states.

To manage the agency's expanding legal mandates and workload, by the end of 1979 the budget grew to about $5.4 billion and the workforce size increased to about 13,000.

1980s

In 1980, following the discovery of many abandoned or mismanaged hazardous waste sites such as Love Canal, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, nicknamed “Superfund.” The new law authorized EPA to cast a wider net for parties responsible for sites contaminated by previous hazardous waste disposal and established a funding mechanism for assessment and cleanup.

Anne Gorsuch was appointed EPA Administrator in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan. Gorsuch based her administration of EPA on the New Federalism approach of downsizing federal agencies by delegating their functions and services to the individual states. She believed that EPA was over-regulating business and that the agency was too large and not cost-effective. During her 22 months as agency head, she cut the budget of the EPA by 22%, reduced the number of cases filed against polluters, relaxed Clean Air Act regulations, and facilitated the spraying of restricted-use pesticides. She cut the total number of agency employees, and hired staff from the industries they were supposed to be regulating. Environmentalists contended that her policies were designed to placate polluters, and accused her of trying to dismantle the agency.

Following her mismanagement of the Superfund program, Assistant Administrator Rita Lavelle was fired by Reagan in February 1983. Lavelle was later convicted of perjury. Gorsuch had increasing confrontations with Congress over Superfund and other programs, including her refusal to submit subpoeaned documents. Gorsuch (who had recently remarried, becoming Anne Gorsuch Burford) resigned in March 1983, followed by resignations of her Deputy Administrator and most of her Assistant Administrators. Reagan then appointed William Ruckelshaus as EPA Administrator for a second term. Lee M. Thomas succeeded Ruckelshaus as Administrator in 1985.

In April 1986, when the Chernobyl disaster occurred in Ukraine, the EPA was tasked with identifying any impacts on the United States and keeping the public informed. Administrator Lee Thomas assembled an interagency team, including personnel from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Energy to monitor the situation. They held press conferences for 10 days. That same year Congress passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, which authorized the EPA to gather data on toxic chemicals and share this information with the public.

EPA also researched the implications of stratospheric ozone depletion. Under Administrator Thomas, EPA joined with several international organizations to perform a risk assessment of stratospheric ozone, which helped provide motivation for the Montreal Protocol, which was agreed to in August 1987.

In 1988, during his first presidential campaign, George H. W. Bush was vocal about environmental issues. Following his election victory, he appointed William K. Reilly, an environmentalist, as EPA Administrator. Under Reilly's leadership, the EPA implemented voluntary programs and initiated the development of a "cluster rule" for multimedia regulation of the pulp and paper industry. At the time, the environment was increasingly being recognized as a regional issue, which was reflected in 1990 amendment of the Clean Air Act and new approaches by the agency.

1990s

In 1992 EPA and the Department of Energy launched the Energy Star program, a voluntary program that fosters energy efficiency.

Carol Browner was appointed EPA Administrator by President Bill Clinton and served from 1993 to 2001. Major projects during Browner's term included:

• Initiation of the Brownfields pilot program in 1995
• Initial hazardous air pollution standards for petroleum refineries in 1995
• Initial lead paint abatement regulations under TSCA in 1996
• Update of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for particulate matter and ozone in 1997.

Since the passage of the Superfund law in 1980, a special tax had been levied on the chemical and petroleum industries, to support the cleanup trust fund. Congressional authorization of the tax was due to expire in 1995. Although Browner and the Clinton Administration supported continuation of the tax, Congress declined to reauthorize it. Subsequently, the Superfund program has been supported only by annual appropriations, greatly reducing the number of waste sites that are remediated in a given year.

Major legislative updates during the Clinton Administration were the Food Quality Protection Act and the 1996 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Organization

Headquarters of the EPA at the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building

The EPA is led by the administrator, appointed following nomination by the president and approval from Congress. Michael S. Regan began serving as Administrator on March 11, 2021.

Offices

• The Andrew W. Breidenbach Environmental Research Center in Cincinnati is EPA's second-largest R&D center.
  Office of Research and Development (ORD) which as of March 2017 consisted of:
  • National Center for Computational Toxicology
  • National Center for Environmental Assessment
  • National Center for Environmental Research
  • National Exposure Research Laboratory
  • National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory
  • National Homeland Security Research Center
  • National Risk Management Research Laboratory
• Office of Land and Emergency Management (OLEM) which as of March 2017 consisted of:
  • Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation
  • Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery
  • Office of Underground Storage Tanks
  • Office of Brownfields and Land Revitalization
  • Office of Emergency Management
  • Federal Facilities Restoration and Reuse Office
• Office of Water (OW) which as of March 2017 consisted of:
  • Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water (OGWDW)
  • Office of Science and Technology (OST)
  • Office of Wastewater Management (OWM)
  • Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds (OWOW)

Regions

The administrative regions of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Creating 10 EPA regions was an initiative that came from President Richard Nixon.

Each EPA regional office is responsible within its states for implementing the agency's programs, except those programs that have been specifically delegated to states.

• Region 1: responsible within the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont (New England).
• Region 2: responsible within the states of New Jersey and New York. It is also responsible for the US territories of Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
• Region 3: responsible within the states of Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
• Region 4: responsible within the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
• Region 5: responsible within the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
• Region 6: responsible within the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.
• Region 7: responsible within the states of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska.
• Region 8: responsible within the states of Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.
• Region 9: responsible within the states of Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, the territories of Guam and American Samoa, and the Navajo Nation.
• Region 10: responsible within the states of Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

Each regional office also implements programs on Indian Tribal lands, except those programs delegated to tribal authorities.

Legal authority

The Environmental Protection Agency can only act pursuant to statutes—the laws passed by Congress. Appropriations statutes authorize how much money the agency can spend each year to carry out the approved statutes. The agency has the power to issue regulations. A regulation interprets a statute, and EPA applies its regulations to various environmental situations and enforces the requirements. The agency must include a rationale of why a regulation is needed. Regulations can be challenged in federal courts, either district court or appellate court, depending on the particular statutory provision.

Related legislation

EPA has principal implementation authority for the following federal environmental laws:

• Clean Air Act
• Clean Water Act
• Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act ("Superfund")
• Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act
• Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act
• Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
• Safe Drinking Water Act
• Toxic Substances Control Act
• Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act

There are additional laws where EPA has a contributing role or provides assistance to other agencies. Among these laws are:

• Endangered Species Act
• Energy Independence and Security Act
• Energy Policy Act
• Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act
• Food Quality Protection Act
• National Environmental Policy Act
• Oil Pollution Act
• Pollution Prevention Act

Programs

A bulldozer piles boulders in an attempt to prevent lake shore erosion, 1973

EPA established its major programs pursuant to the primary missions originally articulated in the laws passed by Congress. Additional programs have been developed to interpret the primary missions. Some of the newer programs have been specifically authorized by Congress.

Former Administrator William Ruckelshaus observed in 2016 that a danger for EPA was that air, water, waste and other programs would be unconnected, placed in "silos," a problem that persists more than 50 years later, albeit less so than at the start.

Core programs

Air quality and radiation protection

Ambient standards

• National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS)
• State Implementation Plans (SIPs)

Stationary air pollution source standards

• New Source Performance Standards
• National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAPs)
• Permits for industrial and commercial sources

Mobile source standards

• Motor Vehicle Emission and Fuel Standards, Aircraft Emission Standards, and Clean Fuel Vehicles
• The air pollution testing system for motor vehicles was originally developed in 1972 and used driving cycles designed to simulate driving during rush-hour in Los Angeles during that era. Until 1984, the EPA reported the exact fuel economy figures calculated from the test. In 1984, the EPA began adjusting city (aka Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule or UDDS) results downward by 10% and highway (aka HighWay Fuel Economy Test or HWFET) results by 22% to compensate for changes in driving conditions since 1972, and to better correlate the EPA test results with real-world driving. In 1996, the EPA proposed updating the Federal Testing Procedures to add a new higher-speed test (US06) and an air-conditioner-on test (SC03) to further improve the correlation of fuel economy and emission estimates with real-world reports. In December 2006 the updated testing methodology was finalized to be implemented in model year 2008 vehicles and set the precedent of a 12-year review cycle for the test procedures.
  • In February 2005, EPA launched a program called "Your MPG" that allows drivers to add real-world fuel economy statistics into a database on the EPA's fuel economy website and compare them with others and with the original EPA test results.
  • The EPA conducts fuel economy tests on very few vehicles. "Just 18 of the EPA's 17,000 employees work in the automobile-testing department in Ann Arbor, Michigan, examining 200 to 250 vehicles a year, or roughly 15 percent of new models. As to that other 85 percent, the EPA takes automakers at their word—without any testing-accepting submitted results as accurate." Two-thirds of the vehicles the EPA tests themselves are randomly selected and the remaining third is tested for specific reasons.
  • Although originally created as a reference point for fossil-fueled vehicles, driving cycles have been used for estimating how many miles an electric vehicle will get on a single charge.

Radiation protection

The Radiation Protection Program comprises seven project groups.

1. Radioactive Waste Management
2. Emergency Preparedness and Response Programs Protective Action Guides And Planning Guidance for Radiological Incidents: EPA developed a manual as guideline for local and state governments to protect the public from a nuclear accident, the 2017 version being a 15-year update.
3. EPA's Role in Emergency Response – Special Teams
4. Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (TENORM) Program
5. Radiation Standards for Air and Drinking Water Programs
6. Federal Guidance for Radiation Protection

Water quality

Science and regulatory standards

• The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program addresses water pollution by regulating point sources which discharge to US waters. Created in 1972 by the Clean Water Act, the NPDES permit program authorizes state governments to perform its many permitting, administrative, and enforcement aspects. As of 2021, EPA has approved 47 states to administer all or portions of the permit program. EPA regional offices manage the program in the remaining areas of the country. The Water Quality Act of 1987 extended NPDES permit coverage to industrial stormwater dischargers and municipal separate storm sewer systems. In 2016, there were 6,700 major point source NPDES permits in place and 109,000 municipal and industrial point sources with general or individual permits.
• Effluent guidelines (technology based standards) for industrial point sources and Water quality standards (risk-based standards) for water bodies, under Title III of the CWA
• Nonpoint source pollution programs
• The CWA Section 404 Program regulates the discharge of dredged or fill material into waters of the United States. Permits are to be denied if they would cause unacceptable degradation or if an alternative doesn't exist that does not also have adverse impacts on waters. Permit holders are typically required to restore or create wetlands or other waters to offset losses that can not be avoided.
• EPA ensures safe drinking water for the public, by setting standards for more than 148,000 public water systems nationwide. EPA oversees states, local governments and water suppliers to enforce the standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The program includes regulation of injection wells in order to protect underground sources of drinking water.

Infrastructure financing

• The CWA State Revolving Loan Fund Program provides grants to states which, along with matching state funds, are loaned to municipalities for wastewater and "green" infrastructure at below-market interest rates. These loans are expected to be paid back, creating revolving loan funds. Through 2014, a total of $36.2 billion in capitalization grants from the EPA have been provided to the states' revolving funds. The revolving fund replaced the Construction Grants Program, which was phased out in 1990.
• The Drinking Water State Revolving Fund provides financial assistance to local drinking water utilities.

Land, Waste and Cleanup

• Regulation of solid waste (non-hazardous) and hazardous waste under RCRA. To implement the 1976 law, EPA published standards in 1979 for "sanitary" landfills that receive municipal solid waste. The agency published national hazardous waste regulations and established a nationwide permit and tracking system for managing hazardous waste. The system is largely managed by state agencies under EPA authorization. Standards were issued for waste treatment, storage and disposal facilities (TSDFs), and ocean dumping of waste was prohibited. In 1984 Congress passed the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA) which expanded several aspects of the RCRA program:
  • The Land Disposal Restrictions Program sets treatment requirements for hazardous waste before it may be disposed on land. EPA began issuing treatment methods and levels of requirements in 1986 and these are continually adapted to new hazardous wastes and treatment technologies. The stringent requirements it sets and its emphasis on waste minimization practices encourage businesses to plan to minimize waste generation and prioritize reuse and recycling. From the start of the program in 1984 to 2004, the volume of hazardous waste disposed in landfills had decreased 94% and the volume of hazardous waste disposed of by underground injection had decreased 70%.
  • The RCRA Corrective Action Program requires TSDFs to investigate and clean up hazardous releases at their own expense. In the 1980s, EPA estimated that the number of sites needing cleanup was three times more than the number of sites on the national Superfund list. The program is largely implemented through permits and orders. As of 2016, the program has led to the cleanup of 18 million acres of land, of which facilities were primarily responsible for cleanup costs. The goal of EPA and states is to complete final remedies by 2020 at 3,779 priority facilities out of 6,000 that need to be cleaned up according to the program.
  • EPA developed standards for small quantity generators of hazardous waste.
  • EPA was mandated to conduct a review of landfill conditions nationwide. The agency reported in 1988 that the effectiveness of environmental controls at landfills varied nationwide, which could lead to serious contamination of groundwater and surface waters. EPA published a national plan in 1989 calling for state and local governments to better integrate their municipal solid waste management practices with source reduction and recycling programs.
  • Regulation of Underground Storage Tanks. The Underground Storage Tank (UST) Program was launched in 1985 and covers about 553,000 active USTs containing petroleum and hazardous chemicals. Since 1984, 1.8 million USTs have been closed in compliance with regulations. 38 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico manage UST programs with EPA authorization. When the program began, EPA had only 90 staff to develop a system to regulate more than 2 million tanks and work with 750,000 owners and operators. The program relies more on local operations and enforcement than other EPA programs. Today, the program supports the inspection of all federally regulated tanks, cleans up old and new leaks, minimizes potential leaks, and encourages sustainable reuse of abandoned gas stations.
• Hazardous site cleanup. In the late 1970s, the need to clean up sites such as Love Canal that had been highly contaminated by previous hazardous waste disposal became apparent. However the existing regulatory environment depended on owners or operators to perform environmental control. While the EPA attempted to use RCRA's section 7003 to perform this cleanup, it was clear a new law was needed. In 1980, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), commonly known as "Superfund." This law enabled the EPA to cast a wider net for responsible parties, including past or present generators and transporters as well as current and past owners of the site to find funding. The act also established some funding and a tax mechanism on certain industries to help fund such cleanup. Congress did not renew the Superfund tax in the 1990s, therefore funding now comes only from general appropriations. Today, due to restricted funding, most cleanup is performed by responsible parties under the oversight of the EPA and states. As of 2016, more than 1,700 sites had been put on the cleanup list since the creation of the program. Of these, 370 sites have been cleaned up and removed from the list, cleanup is underway at 535, cleanup facilities have been constructed at 790 but need to be operated in the future, and 54 are not yet in cleanup stage.
• EPA's oil spill prevention program includes the Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) and the Facility Response Plan (FRP) rules. The SPCC Rule applies to all facilities that store, handle, process, gather, transfer, refine, distribute, use or consume oil or oil products. Oil products includes petroleum and non-petroleum oils as well as: animal fats, oils and greases; fish and marine mammal oils; and vegetable oils. It mandates a written plan for facilities that store more than 1,320 gallons of fuel above ground or more than 42,000 gallons below-ground, and which might discharge to navigable waters (as defined in the Clean Water Act) or adjoining shorelines. Secondary spill containment is mandated at oil storage facilities and oil release containment is required at oil development sites.

Chemicals and Toxics

• EPA regulates pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and the Food Quality Protection Act. The agency assesses, registers, regulates, and regularly reevaluates all pesticides legally sold in the United States. A few challenges this program faces are transforming toxicity testing, screening pesticides for endocrine disruptors, and regulating biotechnology and nanotechnology.
• TSCA required EPA to create and maintain a national inventory of all existing chemicals in U.S. commerce. When the act was passed in 1976, there were more than 60,000 chemicals on the market that had never been comprehensively cataloged. To do so, the EPA developed and implemented procedures that have served as a model for Canada, Japan, and the European Union. For the inventory, the EPA also established a baseline for new chemicals that the agency should be notified about before being commercially manufactured. Today, this rule keeps the EPA updated on volumes, uses, and exposures of around 7,000 of the highest-volume chemicals via industry reporting.
• The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) is a resource established by the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act specifically for the public to learn about toxic chemical releases and pollution prevention activities reported by industrial and federal facilities. TRI data support informed decision-making by communities, government agencies, companies, and others. Annually, the agency collects data from more than 20,000 facilities. The EPA has generated a range of tools to support the use of this inventory, including interactive maps and online databases such as ChemView.

Enforcement

• Civil enforcement and Criminal enforcement programs
• Compliance assistance
• Federal activities (reviews of Environmental Impact Statements)
• Federal facilities enforcement
• Environmental Justice program

In an EPA Enforcement report submitted by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) it compared EPA statistics over time. The number of civil cases have gradually decreased and, in 2018, the criminal and civil penalties from EPA claims dropped over four times their amounts in 2013, 2016, and 2017. In 2016, an amount of $6,307,833,117 of penalties were administered through EPA violations. In 2018, an amount of $184,768,000 of penalties were administered. Furthermore, federal inspection and evaluations conducted by the EPA have steadily decreased from 2015-2018. EPA Enforcement has decreased partially due to budget cuts within the Environmental Protection Agency.

Additional programs

• The EPA Safer Choice label, previously known as the "Design for the Environment" (DfE) label, helps consumers and commercial buyers identify and select products with safer chemical ingredients, without sacrificing quality or performance. When a product has the Safer Choice label, it means that every intentionally-added ingredient in the product has been evaluated by EPA scientists. Only the safest possible functional ingredients are allowed in products with the Safer Choice label.
• Through the Safer Detergents Stewardship Initiative (SDSI), EPA's Design for the Environment (DfE) recognizes environmental leaders who voluntarily commit to the use of safer surfactants. Safer surfactants are the ones that break down quickly to non-polluting compounds and help protect aquatic life in both fresh and salt water. Nonylphenol ethoxylates, commonly referred to as NPEs, are an example of a surfactant class that does not meet the definition of a safer surfactant. The EPA Safer Choice, has identified safer alternative surfactants through partnerships with industry and environmental advocates. These safer alternatives are comparable in cost and are readily available. CleanGredients is a source of safer surfactants.
• The Energy Star program, initiated in 1992, motivated major companies to retrofit millions of square feet of building space with more efficient lighting. As of 2006, more than 40,000 Energy Star products were available including major appliances, office equipment, lighting, home electronics, and more. In addition, the label can also be found on new homes and commercial and industrial buildings. In 2006, about 12 percent of new housing in the United States was labeled Energy Star.
• The EPA estimates it saved about $14 billion in energy costs in 2006 alone. The Energy Star program has helped spread the use of LED traffic lights, efficient fluorescent lighting, power management systems for office equipment, and low standby energy use.
• EPA's Smart Growth Program, which began in 1998, is to help communities improve their development practices and get the type of development they want. Together with local, state, and national experts, EPA encourages development strategies that protect human health and the environment, create economic opportunities, and provide attractive and affordable neighborhoods for people of all income levels.
• The Brownfields Program, which was started as a pilot program in the 1990s and signed into law in 2002, provides grants and tools to local governments for the assessment, cleanup, and revitalization of brownfields. As of September 2015, the EPA estimates that program grants have resulted in 56,442 acres of land readied for reuse and leveraged 116,963 jobs and $24.2 billion to do so. Agency studies also found that property values around assessed or cleaned-up brownfields have increased 5.1 to 12.8 percent.
• EPA's Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Program helps schools to maintain a healthy environment and reduce exposures to indoor environmental contaminants. It helps school personnel identify, solve, and prevent indoor air quality problems in the school environment. Through the use of a multi-step management plan and checklists for the entire building, schools can lower their students' and staff's risk of exposure to asthma triggers.
• The National Environmental Education Act of 1990 requires EPA to provide national leadership to increase environmental literacy. EPA established the Office of Environmental Education to implement this program.
• Clean School Bus USA is a national partnership to reduce children's exposure to diesel exhaust by eliminating unnecessary school bus idling, installing effective emission control systems on newer buses and replacing the oldest buses in the fleet with newer ones. Its goal is to reduce both children's exposure to diesel exhaust and the amount of air pollution created by diesel school buses.
• The Green Chemistry Program encourages the development of products and processes that follow green chemistry principles. It has recognized more than 100 winning technologies. These reduce the use or creation of hazardous chemicals, save water, and reduce greenhouse gas release.
• The Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health (BEACH) Act, was authorized in a 2000 amendment to the Clean Water Act. The program focus is on coastal recreational waters, and requires EPA to develop criteria to test and monitor waters and notify public users of any concerns. The program involves states, local beach resource managers, and the agency in assessing risks of stormwater and wastewater overflows and enables better sampling, analytical methods, and communication with the public.
• The EPA has also established specific geographic programs for particular water resources such as the Chesapeake Bay Program, the National Estuary Program, and the Gulf of Mexico Program.
• Advance identification, or ADID, is a planning process used by the EPA to identify wetlands and other bodies of water and their respective suitability for the discharge of dredged and fill material. The EPA conducts the process in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and local states or Native American Tribes. As of February 1993, 38 ADID projects had been completed and 33 were ongoing.
• EPA's "One Cleanup Program" initiative was designed to improve coordination across different agency programs that have a role in cleanup at a particular site. The coordination efforts apply to the brownfields, federal facilities, USTs, RCRA and Superfund programs.
• EPA initiated its voluntary WaterSense program in 2006, to encourage water efficiency through the use of a special label on consumer products.

Past programs

• The former Construction Grants Program distributed federal grants for the construction of municipal wastewater treatment works from 1972 to 1990. While such grants existed before the 1972, the 1972 CWA expanded these grants dramatically. They were distributed through 1990, when the program and funding were replaced with the State Revolving Loan Fund Program.
• In 1991 under Administrator William Reilly, the EPA implemented its voluntary 33/50 program. This was designed to encourage, recognize, and celebrate companies that voluntarily found ways to prevent and reduce pollution in their operations. Specifically, it challenged industry to reduce Toxic Release Inventory emissions of 17 priority chemicals by 33% in one year and 50% in four years. These results were achieved before the commitment deadlines.
• Launched in 2006, the voluntary 2010/2015 PFOA Stewardship Program worked with eight major companies to voluntarily reduce their global emissions of certain types of perfluorinated chemicals by 95% by 2010 and eliminate these emissions by 2015.

OSV Bold docked at Port Canaveral, Florida

• In March 2004, the U.S. Navy transferred USNS Bold (T-AGOS-12), a Stalwart class ocean surveillance ship, to the EPA. The ship had been used in anti-submarine operations during the Cold War, was equipped with sidescan sonar, underwater video, water and sediment sampling instruments used in study of ocean and coastline. One of the major missions of the Bold was to monitor for ecological impact sites where materials were dumped from dredging operations in U.S. ports. In 2013, the General Services Administration sold the Bold to Seattle Central Community College (SCCC), which demonstrated in a competition that they would put it to the highest and best purpose, at a nominal cost of $5,000.

Controversies (1983–present)

Fiscal mismanagement, 1983

In 1982 Congress charged that EPA had mishandled the $1.6 billion Superfund program and demanded records from EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch. She refused and became the first agency director in U.S. history to be cited for contempt of Congress. EPA turned the documents over to Congress several months later, after the White House abandoned its court claim that the documents could not be subpoenaed by Congress because they were covered by executive privilege. Six congressional committees were investigating the Superfund program, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was exploring whether documents had been destroyed. Gorsuch resigned her post in 1983, citing pressures caused by the media and the congressional investigation. Critics charged that the EPA was in "a shambles" at that time.

TSCA and confidential business information, 1994 (or earlier)–present

TSCA enables the EPA to require industry to conduct testing of chemicals, but the agency must balance such requirements with obligations to provide information to the public and ensure the protection of trade secrets and confidential business information (the legal term for proprietary information). Arising issues and problems from these overlapping obligations have been the subject of multiple critical reports by the Government Accountability Office. How much information the agency should have access to from industry, how much it should keep confidential, and how much it should reveal to the public is still contested. For example, according to TSCA, state officials are not allowed access to confidential business information collected by the EPA.

Political pressure and scientific integrity, 2001–present

In April 2008, the Union of Concerned Scientists said that more than half of the nearly 1,600 EPA staff scientists who responded online to a detailed questionnaire reported they had experienced incidents of political interference in their work. The survey included chemists, toxicologists, engineers, geologists and experts in other fields of science. About 40% of the scientists reported that the interference had been more prevalent in the last five years than in previous years. The highest number of complaints came from scientists who were involved in determining the risks of cancer by chemicals used in food and other aspects of everyday life.

EPA research has also been suppressed by career managers. Supervisors at EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment required several paragraphs to be deleted from a peer-reviewed journal article about EPA's integrated risk information system, which led two co-authors to have their names removed from the publication, and the corresponding author, Ching-Hung Hsu, to leave EPA "because of the draconian restrictions placed on publishing". EPA subjects employees who author scientific papers to prior restraint, even if those papers are written on personal time.

EPA employees have reported difficulty in conducting and reporting the results of studies on hydraulic fracturing due to industry and governmental pressure, and are concerned about the censorship of environmental reports.

In February 2017, U.S. representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) sponsored H.R. 861, a bill to abolish the EPA by 2018. According to Gaetz, "The American people are drowning in rules and regulation promulgated by unelected bureaucrats. And the Environmental Protection Agency has become an extraordinary offender." The bill was co-sponsored by Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Steven Palazzo (R-Ms.) and Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.).

Fuel economy, 2005–2010

In July 2005, an EPA report showing that auto companies were using loopholes to produce less fuel-efficient cars was delayed. The report was supposed to be released the day before a controversial energy bill was passed and would have provided backup for those opposed to it, but the EPA delayed its release at the last minute.

In 2007, the state of California sued the EPA for its refusal to allow California and 16 other states to raise fuel economy standards for new cars. EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson claimed that the EPA was working on its own standards, but the move has been widely considered an attempt to shield the auto industry from environmental regulation by setting lower standards at the federal level, which would then preempt state laws. California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with governors from 13 other states, stated that the EPA's actions ignored federal law, and that existing California standards (adopted by many states in addition to California) were almost twice as effective as the proposed federal standards. It was reported that Stephen Johnson ignored his own staff in making this decision.

After the federal government had bailed out General Motors and Chrysler in the Automotive industry crisis of 2008–2010, the 2010 Chevrolet Equinox was released with an EPA fuel economy rating abnormally higher than its competitors. Independent road tests found that the vehicle did not out-perform its competitors, which had much lower fuel economy ratings. Later road tests found better, but inconclusive, results.

Mercury emissions, 2005

In March 2005, nine states (California, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, New Mexico and Vermont) sued the EPA. The EPA's inspector general had determined that the EPA's regulation of mercury emissions did not follow the Clean Air Act, and that the regulations were influenced by top political appointees. The EPA had suppressed a study it commissioned by Harvard University which contradicted its position on mercury controls. The suit alleged that the EPA's rule exempting coal-fired power plants from "maximum available control technology" was illegal, and additionally charged that the EPA's system of cap-and-trade to lower average mercury levels would allow power plants to forego reducing mercury emissions, which they objected would lead to dangerous local hotspots of mercury contamination even if average levels declined. Several states also began to enact their own mercury emission regulations. Illinois's proposed rule would have reduced mercury emissions from power plants by an average of 90% by 2009. In 2008—by which point a total of fourteen states had joined the suit—the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the EPA regulations violated the Clean Air Act.

In response, EPA announced plans to propose such standards to replace the vacated Clean Air Mercury Rule, and did so on March 16, 2011.

Climate change, 2007–2017

In December 2007, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson approved a draft of a document that declared that climate change imperiled the public welfare—a decision that would trigger the first national mandatory global-warming regulations. Associate Deputy Administrator Jason Burnett e-mailed the draft to the White House. White House aides—who had long resisted mandatory regulations as a way to address climate change—knew the gist of what Johnson's finding would be, Burnett said. They also knew that once they opened the attachment, it would become a public record, making it controversial and difficult to rescind. So they did not open it; rather, they called Johnson and asked him to take back the draft. Johnson rescinded the draft; in July 2008, he issued a new version which did not state that global warming was danger to public welfare. Burnett resigned in protest.

A $3 million mapping study on sea level rise was suppressed by EPA management during both the Bush and Obama administrations, and managers changed a key interagency report to reflect the removal of the maps.

On April 28, 2017, multiple climate change subdomains at EPA.gov began redirecting to a notice stating "this page is being updated." The EPA issued a statement announcing the overhaul of its website to "reflect the agency's new direction under President Donald Trump and Administrator Scott Pruitt." The removed EPA climate change domains included extensive information on the EPA's work to mitigate climate change, as well as details of data collection efforts and indicators for climate change.

Gold King Mine waste water spill, 2015

In August 2015, the 2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill occurred when EPA contractors examined the level of pollutants such as lead and arsenic in a Colorado mine, and accidentally released over three million gallons of waste water into Cement Creek and the Animas River.

Collusion with Monsanto chemical company

In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a branch of the World Health Organization, cited research linking glyphosate, an ingredient of the weed killer Roundup manufactured by the chemical company Monsanto, to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. In March 2017, the presiding judge in a litigation brought about by people who claim to have developed glyphosate-related non-Hodgkin's lymphoma opened Monsanto emails and other documents related to the case, including email exchanges between the company and federal regulators. According to an article in The New York Times, the "records suggested that Monsanto had ghostwritten research that was later attributed to academics and indicated that a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency had worked to quash a review of Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, that was to have been conducted by the United States Department of Health and Human Services." The records show that Monsanto was able to prepare "a public relations assault" on the finding after they were alerted to the determination by Jess Rowland, the head of the EPA's cancer assessment review committee at that time, months in advance. Emails also showed that Rowland "had promised to beat back an effort by the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct its own review."

Conduct of Administrator Scott Pruitt, 2017

On February 17, 2017, Scott Pruitt was appointed administrator by President Donald Trump. The Democratic Party saw the appointment as a controversial move, as Pruitt had spent most of his career challenging environmental regulations and policies. He did not have previous experience in the environmental protection field and had received financial support from the fossil fuel industry. In 2017, the Trump administration proposed a 31% cut to the EPA's budget to $5.7 billion from $8.1 billion and to eliminate a quarter of the agency jobs. However, this cut was not approved by Congress.

Pruitt resigned from the position on July 5, 2018, citing "unrelenting attacks" due to ongoing ethics controversies.

Environmental justice

The EPA has been criticized for its lack of progress towards environmental justice. Administrator Christine Todd Whitman was criticized for her changes to President Bill Clinton's Executive Order 12898 during 2001, removing the requirements for government agencies to take the poor and minority populations into special consideration when making changes to environmental legislation, and therefore defeating the spirit of the Executive Order. In a March 2004 report, the inspector general of the agency concluded that the EPA "has not developed a clear vision or a comprehensive strategic plan, and has not established values, goals, expectations, and performance measurements" for environmental justice in its daily operations. Another report in September 2006 found the agency still had failed to review the success of its programs, policies and activities towards environmental justice. Studies have also found that poor and minority populations were underserved by the EPA's Superfund program, and that this situation was worsening.

Barriers to enforcing environmental justice

Many environmental justice issues are local, and therefore difficult to address by a federal agency, such as the EPA. Without strong media attention, political interest, or 'crisis' status, local issues are less likely to be addressed at the federal level compared to larger, well publicized incidents.

Conflicting political powers in successive administrations: The White House maintains direct control over the EPA, and its enforcement actions are subject to the political agenda of who is in power. Republicans and Democrats differ in their approaches to environmental justice. While President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, the Bush administration did not develop a clear plan or establish goals for integrating environmental justice into everyday practices, affecting the motivation for environmental enforcement.

The EPA is responsible for preventing and detecting environmental crimes, informing the public of environmental enforcement, and setting and monitoring standards of air pollution, water pollution, hazardous wastes and chemicals. "It is difficult to construct a specific mission statement given its wide range of responsibilities." It is impossible to address every environmental crime adequately or efficiently if there is no specific mission statement to refer to. The EPA answers to various groups, competes for resources, and confronts a wide array of harms to the environment. All of these present challenges, including a lack of resources, its self-policing policy, and a broadly defined legislation that creates too much discretion for EPA officers.

The EPA "does not have the authority or resources to address injustices without an increase in federal mandates" requiring private industries to consider the environmental ramifications of their activities.

Louisiana and Environmental Justice at a Federal Level, 2018-2021

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed a multitude of laws such as the Clean Air Act (CAA), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), which all attempt to prevent and reconcile environmental damages. The EPA, starting in 2018 under Andrew Wheeler, has redeveloped pollution standards resulting in less overall regulation. Furthermore, the CAA's discretionary application has caused a varied application of the law within Louisiana. In 1970, Louisiana deployed the Comprehensive Toxic Air Pollutant Emission Control Program to satisfy the Federal Act. This program does not require monitoring that is equivalent to other states.

In 2021, President Joe Biden selected Michael Regan to serve as the EPA Chief. Michael Regan claimed that he looked to push aggressively on key environmental issues, which starkly contrasts Andrew Wheeler's official EPA policy from 2018. During Michael Regan's Senate Confirmation hearing, Senator Cory Booker specifically mentioned Cancer Alley in St. John's Parish as a place where there is harm being done to low income communities of color.

Freedom of Information Act processing performance

In the latest Center for Effective Government analysis of 15 federal agencies which receive the most Freedom of Information Act FOIA requests, published in 2015 (using 2012 and 2013 data, the most recent years available), the EPA earned a D by scoring 67 out of a possible 100 points, i.e. did not earn a satisfactory overall grade.

Scientific integrity official barred from Congressional hearing

On July 17, 2019, the top scientific integrity official from the EPA, Francesca Grifo, was not permitted to testify by the EPA in front of a House committee hearing. The EPA offered to send a different representative in place of Grifo and accused the committee of "dictating to the agency who they believe was qualified to speak." The hearing was to discuss the importance of allowing federal scientists and other employees to speak freely when and to whom they want to about their research without having to worry about any political consequences.

Office of the Administrator (OA). As of October 2020 the office consisted of 12 divisions:

• Office of Administrative and Executive Services
• Office of Children's Health Protection
  • Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee
• Office of Civil Rights
• Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations
• Office of Continuous Improvement
• Office of the Executive Secretariat
• Office of Homeland Security
• Office of Policy
• Office of Public Affairs
• Office of Public Engagement and Environmental Education
• Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization
• Science Advisory Board

Office of Air and Radiation (OAR)

Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP)

Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO)

Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA)

Office of General Counsel (OGC)

Office of Inspector General (OIG)

Office of International and Tribal Affairs (OITA)

Office of Mission Support (OMS)