Environmental Protection Agency
The EPA
Looking back to the beginnings of the EPA
In his rumpled suits and quiet way George E. Brown moved to form coalitions few thought could be formed and garnered support for the first set of U.S. Congressional acts that served as foundation legislation for decades of green progress.
The First Earth Day: Personal Memories by Steven Schmidt of George's Role
Congressman Brown's work advanced environmental air quality and clean air legislation. He introduced the nation's first bill to ban lead in gasoline and was at the forefront of the Clean Air Act. He attacked Los Angeles smog, some of the worst air quality of any city in the world at the time and the air standards that came out of California became models worldwide. He succeeded in clean air and water efforts, though rarely given credit given his quiet approach to accomplishing big picture goals.
George was a key player in legislation founding the Environmental Protection Agency.
As the LA Times noted (without pomp or circumstance) in George's obituary in 1999: "He championed the creation of the federal Environmental Protection Agency". The creation of the EPA was in many ways Congressman George Brown's vision achieved..."
The founding of the EPA was based on new realizations of science and the environment. The vision of the "Whole Earth" that began with unprecedented Apollo photos on the cover of Life magazine in January 1969 led to a coming together of education, students 'teach-ins', scientific space missions studying earth systems for the first time, and popular demands for environmental protections.
A leader and a chairperson on the House science committee for over 30 years, George legislatively engineered an array of science efforts, including one that greens look to as prescient -- climate science.
When Congressman Brown drafted originating legislation establishing a national climate change research program via the National Climate Program Act of 1978, the scientific community and nation were just beginning to awaken to a new national security threat. I remember his concern, our concern. He was trained as a scientist, an engineer, with an ability to see facts and data sets in a way others could not.
Representative Brown was out in front of "Big Science". In his decades on the House Science, Space & Technology Committee, he worked to expand the reach of science. He knew that good data enabled good policy decisions. He pressed for first-generation earth science satellites and ongoing earth monitoring missions and data sharing....
Thirty plus years setting the agenda for visionary science in the House of Representatives
Rep. George E. Brown, an activist member and for many years chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
Via Wikipedia / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Brown_Jr.
Brown was known as a champion for science. He left behind a deep and expansive legacy that has shaped science and science policy in America. Among some of his many accomplishments during his service on the House Science Committee:
• Established the first federal climate change research program in the Federal Climate Program Act of 1978
• Established the Office of Science and Technology Policy
• Established the Environmental Protection Agency
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Green Infrastructure Modeling Toolkit
Green Infrastructure Wizard
Watershed Management Optimization Tool
Visualizing Ecosystems for Land Management Assessment
Storm Water Management Model
EPA's Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) is used throughout the world for planning, analysis and design related to stormwater runoff, combined and sanitary sewers, and other drainage systems in urban areas. There are many additional applications for drainage systems in non-urban areas.
National Stormwater Calculator
National Service Center for Environmental Publications
Search, retrieve, download, print, and order EPA technical, scientific, and educational materials from this site –- free of charge
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2016-2020: Deconstruction and Dismantling of the EPA
Profound shift in priorities after November 2016
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The Last Act of a Failed EPA Administrator
Pruitt seeks to limit EPA's authority to block water pollution permits
The proposed regulation would likely be the most significant change to how the EPA enforces the Clean Water Act’s restrictions on dredging or filling waterways in four decades...
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US Environmental Protection Agency Updates
- “@EPAScottPruitt is the most corrupt administrator in the @EPA’s history.”
A demoralized workforce watching as its agency is dismantled by the very people charged to lead it: That is the grim state of affairs depicted by John J. O’Grady, a longtime employee in the Chicago field office of the Environmental Protection Agency, which is tasked with protecting the nation’s air and water, while preventing the exposure of citizens to harmful chemicals. The agency is doing none of that, in O’Grady’s telling, with career officials watching in dismay as EPA administrator Scott Pruitt seemingly lurches from one scandal to another while doing the bidding of oil barons and the chemical lobby.
“Morale is not good,” O’Grady said of the agency’s 14,000 employees. “It’s so low, you need a ladder to get out of the gutter.”
O’Grady, an EPA engineer who is also a chapter leader in the American Federation of Government Employees, a public sector union, made his remarks in an on-the-record breakfast with journalists at the National Press Club, in Washington, D.C. Nearby, a television screen was tuned to CNN, where an anchor discussed Pruitt’s most recent alleged transgression: According to a Washington Post report published that morning, Pruitt had his most influential aide urging Republican donors to hire his wife Marlyn.
Judge Orders EPA to Produce Science
Via E&E News-Scientific American
June 2018 / Freedom of Information Request To Be Acted Upon
EPA must produce the opposing body of science Administrator Scott Pruitt has relied upon to claim that humans are not the primary drivers of global warming, a federal judge has ruled.
The EPA boss has so far resisted attempts to show the science backing up his claims.
Not long after he took over as EPA administrator, Pruitt appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” where he was asked about carbon dioxide and climate change. He said, “I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”
The next day, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the studies Pruitt used to make his claims. Specifically, the group requested “EPA documents that support the conclusion that human activity is not the largest factor driving global climate change.”
On Friday, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Beryl Howell, ordered the agency to comply.
“Particularly troubling is the apparent premise of this agency challenge to the FOIA request, namely: that the evidentiary basis for a policy or factual statement by an agency head, including about the scientific factors contributing to climate change, is inherently unknowable.”
If the case proceeds, it could mean that Pruitt would have to produce such research in the coming months or next year.
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US EPA Administrator Back in the News
EPA staff Wednesday morning barred POLITICO and reporters from at least two other publications from entering a national summit on toxic chemicals, a day after a partial media blackout at the same event brought criticism from congressional Democrats and a pledge by the White House to investigate the incident... the Associated Press (reported) that one of its journalists was forcibly ejected from the building.
Pruitt scheduled the PFAS summit months ago, but it has attracted increased attention after POLITICO reported that senior EPA officials had helped block the release of an HHS study that would have increased warnings about the chemicals. EPA stepped in after the White House warned in January that releasing the study would create a "public relations nightmare."
Pruitt said he was unaware of that intervention, but it has added to the criticism he has faced from lawmakers and the public in recent months. The embattled administrator is facing more than a dozen federal investigations over his first-class travel, sweetheart condo rental from a lobbyist, heavy security spending and other matters.
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Only One Country Refuses to Support the Int'l Climate Agreement
November 2017
California Gov. Jerry Brown delivers climate message in Germany
Brown has been hailed in German media as the “anti-Trump” for his efforts to keep the United States engaged in the 2015 Paris agreement’s commitments to cut greenhouse emissions...
“It’s hard to get your mind around something so extensive,” said Brown, who was appointed by Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, the U.N. conference president, to serve as a special advisor for states and regions...
“Let’s lead the whole world to realize this is not your normal political challenge,” he added. “This is much bigger. This is life itself. It requires courage and imagination.”
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- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Air_Pollution
- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Water_Pollution
Too many to count ...essential reasons why environmental protection regulations exist and need to expand around the world --
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- Deconstructing the Environmental Protection Agency
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- A Frontline Public Broadcasting Investigation
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- Dawning Thin Blue Perspective
- New Definitions of National And Global Security
- National Interests, Environmental Protection, Global & Indivisible
