EPA struggles while citizens celebrate Earth Day
It seems I am at the mercy of what kids now call TMI. After an Internet search to discover the current status of proposed legislation on toxic chemicals, I’m totally flummoxed. Three hours online produced a ton of information, much of it dated and very little of it useful.
In an Earth Day roundup in the local paper, an Associated Press story (dateline Washington) says the Environmental Protection Agency, which battled pollution after its inception in 1970, now battles politics.
Well, that started in 1978 when Congress killed the EPA’s Documerica project, which dispatched 100 photographers across the country to document sites of pollution. There are 20,000 images in the archives, many documenting what ultimately became EPA Superfund sites that were restored after years of meticulous cleanup. The original Documerica project caused Congress to respond with bedrock environmental regulations, many passed unanimously, designed to protect the country’s air and water, and leading to the first Earth Day.
Fast forward to 2012. The presumptive Republican candidate for president, Mitt Romney, is calling for the firing of EPA chief Lisa Jackson. Romney’s erstwhile competitor Newt Gingrich has said the entire agency should be replaced. We’ve also seen the introduction of dozens of bills to limit environmental regulations in the interests of job protection and economic growth.
At a time of weak growth and high unemployment it’s hard to tighten regulations that might hamper business. But this is also a time of increasing influence by corporations (remember, they are people now) and industry groups seizing the current conditions to have their way with Congress.
For instance, a push to update the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act has been underway in Washington for several years. About 80,000 chemicals have been inventoried under TSCA. A 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences offered a roadmap to update the EPA’s process of assessing chemical hazards. Currently, the EPA must prove a substance poses an “unreasonable risk” before trying to regulate it. The agency has met this burden of proof fewer than a half dozen times.
Still, pro business and industry groups say the approach taken by reform advocates would stifle innovation, eliminate jobs and compromise trade secrets. Whew!
Starting in 1998, the EPA took steps to curb toxic substances in drinking water, including perchlorate, a contaminant found in dry cleaning fluid and rocket fuel that persists in the environment for decades. The Safe Drinking Water Act authorizes the EPA to decide whether to regulate contaminants from its Contaminant Candidate List, but the process is onerous. In 2009, the agency made a final regulatory determination for perchlorate in drinking water, which initiated a process to develop rules for perchlorate pertaining to its presence near drinking water. This reversed a 2008 decision. But as far as I can tell, public water systems are not required to take any action regarding this determination.
Years ago, many dry cleaning establishments voluntarily switched to perchlorate-free products even as industry groups were yelling that regulation would put mom-and-pop dry cleaners out of business. This didn’t happen because as information circulated, consumers began to demand environmentally safe dry cleaning fluids.
Within a couple miles of where I live, a strip mall owner has been embroiled in a long legal controversy because a now-defunct dry cleaning business contaminated soil by dumping its used cleaning fluids. The city will now be involved in the cleanup at taxpayers’ expense.
Anyway, in honor of Earth Week, I’ve tried to find more information on EPA regulations and have come up really short. It’s not that the agency refuses to regulate toxic substances, it’s that Congress, at the behest of industry groups, has placed innumerable road blocks to that mission, all the while cutting EPA funding in the name of limiting government and balancing the budget.
So states have been left struggling to update toxic chemical regulations. Plasticizers, phthalates and other endocrine disruptors common in consumer product packaging and children’s toys enter the oceans through storm water runoff.
Washington state has passed some of the most comprehensive regulations, including chemicals of high risk to children. But a patchwork of mismatched state laws can actually create impediments to business; an updated, comprehensive federal law is what’s really needed.
Cities across the nation have hosted recycling efforts, trash cleanup on beaches and stream banks, farmers markets and educational programs in honor of Earth Day. Why can’t the people who support these efforts press their legislators to amend antiquated regulations and support a vigorous agency for environmental protection?
The problems are systemic and require political will; the health of our children and our planet must come first.