National Environmental Protection Act
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The "National Environmental Protection Act of 1969" is mistakenly cited as the origin of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. In fact, no such law exists.[1] A "National Environmental Policy Act" was indeed passed in 1969,[2] but that law envisions a "Council on Environmental Quality" rather than a full-fledged regulatory agency.
The EPA was created in 1970 by President Richard Nixon's Reorganization Plan No. 3, which pulled together in one regulatory agency many environmental regulatory functions that had previously been scattered among multiple agencies (chiefly the Departments of Agriculture, Interior, and Health, Education and Welfare, and the Atomic Energy Commission). However, the fact that EPA never had a statutory "organic act" left its Administrator without clear authority to fully integrate its various statutorily separate programs, or to change priorities among them except through the annual budget process.
Over the subsequent decade, 1970-1980, a series of additional regulatory laws and amendments greatly increased EPA's authority and responsibilities, but left them still organized and managed under separate statutes. These laws included:
- Clean Air Act
- Clean Water Act
- Federal Environmental Pesticides Control Act, amending the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act
- Safe Drinking Water Act
- Toxic Substances Control Act
- Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
- Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, ("Superfund")
[edit] References
- ^ U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. Popular Names of Acts in in the US Code. Website maintained by Cornell University Law School.
- ^ National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, Pub. L. 91-190, January 1, 1970; as amended. EPA web site, accessed October 21, 2006
