USEPA
This page is intended to provide a quick overview of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, with an eye to assisting community-government collaboration around tools and data.
Early days
http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/birth-epa
The year was 1970, dubbed “The Year of the environment.” Starting on New Year’s Day and moving fast to match an upwelling of public opinion, Nixon established milestone upon milestone of federal standards and enforcement powers culminating on December 2 with the creation of EPA as a stand alone federal agency. Originally aiming at a bureaucratic structure embodying Nixon’s mandate to view “the environment as a whole” and treat "air pollution, water pollution and solid wastes as different forms of a single problem;" over time air, water and the three "categories" of manmade pollutants: pesticides, radiation, and solid waste became their own program areas.
Let’s take a step back, a little farther:
This is a really good read: http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/looking-backward-historical-perspective-environmental-regulations but if you’re not gonna read it, then try my hasty paraphrasing. Basically, the evolution of US environmental regulation can’t be separated from the evolution of the role of federal government itself. Common law served for settling any environmental disputes for most of the country’s history. 19th century forms of environmentalism added conservation and public health to the mix, but by the 1950s a new regulatory climate was emerging because:
“The unbridled growth of the nation's booming chemical, plastics, petroleum, automotive, aviation, and munitions works was creating highly visible forms of pollution. As a result, the traditional method of individuals seeking redress of environmental grievances under the common law became inadequate.” [...] “Not only citizens but the industries they were suing grew impatient with the lack of a priori environmental standards, both legal and scientific. Some states formed advisory commission to offer technical advice to concerned parties. From more and more quarters came the suggestion that the federal government should step in and determine exactly what were "safe" levels of various pollutants.”
1955 --> 1970 = fifteen awkward years of growing pains and rearrangements (below excerpt from same article):
The Federal Water Quality Administration (FWQA) was formed in 1965. The National Air Pollution Control Administration (NAPCA) - although not given that name until 1968 - originated as a research body in 1955 and had also acquired some standard-setting powers by the mid-1960s. Both FWQA and NAPCA were at first part of the Public Health Service, which was - as its name suggests - more committed to public health than to environmental protection. The FWQA broke off from the PHS in 1966 and became part of the Department of the Interior.
And in such style do we arrive at 1970.
The EPA today
By what authority does today’s EPA act?
At the federal level, nine principal laws regulate the environment. These are: * Clean Air Act (CAA) * Clean Water Act (CWA) * Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) * Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) (governing hazardous wastes) * Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) (covering a variety of reporting requirements for storage and releases of hazardous substances) * Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) * Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)(governing pesticide manufacture, sale and use) * Superfund (CERCLA) * Oil Pollution Act (OPA) (covering oils spills and prevention requirements)
The above laws cover four basic types of environmental regulation:
- end-of pipe,
- product regulation,
- public information requirements, and
- clean-up
What are the geographic regions of the EPA?
http://www2.epa.gov/home/health-and-environmental-agencies-us-states-and-territories
Trying to figure out which environmental management agency, and at what level, to go talk to about an environmental concern is a research project in its own right. So let’s take a look at this:
There are many nested levels of EPA jurisdictions: Federal, Region, State, and District. Additionally, states, and sometimes cities also, have their own environmental agencies (DEQ, DEP, etc). This means that, for any given location, there are overlapping agency boundaries at different levels of government. Basically, states write their own implementation plan for achieving environmental quality standards, and if a state is failing to follow its own plan, then federal EPA steps in. This is the structure of most federal statutes.
Just to make the geography of environmental management extra spicy, sometimes specific areas have special designations that supercede the regular jurisdictional tangle, like
- Superfund sites (http://www2.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-comprehensive-environmental-response-compensation-and-liability-act),
- Brownfield Remediation Areas (http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/laws/index.htm),
- Coastal Zones (http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/lzma.html) -- a voluntary category
- Wetlands (http://water.epa.gov/type/wetlands/outreach/facts_contents.cfm#reginfo),
- Environmental Justice Areas (http://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/plan-ej/ce-initiatives.html), and probably some others.
Sometimes specific areas are temporarily created during an acute incident like an oil spill or other hazardous chemical or radiation release, with the idea that these are short-term boundaries and jurisdictions -- for example, the incident command structure.
Sometimes these special jurisdictions -- and Superfund is a great example here -- have their own Community Advisory Groups. Sometimes, there is a funded position for an external facilitator. This gets a special mention because to date, most PublicLab ←→ EPA communication has been through CAGs.