The purpose of environmental laws
A huge oil spill. A river catching fire. Lakes so polluted they were too dangerous for fishing or swimming. Air so thick with smog it was impossible to see the horizon. That was the environmental state of the nation 50 years ago. But pollution and disasters prompted action. In 1970, in a bipartisan effort, the Environmental Protection Agency was created and key legislation — the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act — came into force. Now, the Trump administration has made eliminating federal regulations a top priority. Here’s a look at five environmental disasters that shifted the public conversation and prompted, directly or indirectly, lawmakers to act: Santa Barbara oil spill
On Jan. 28, 1969, an oil rig exploded off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., spewing 3 million gallons of crude oil into the ocean in one of the worst environmental disasters in the history of the United States.
At the time, there were no federal measures in place to regulate offshore drilling.
After the spill, local officials pleaded with the federal government to end oil exploration off the California coast. But it was not until 1978 that the first federal regulations were passed.
Just over 40 years after the Santa Barbara rig blowout, on April 20, 2010, an even worse spill, the Deepwater Horizon disaster, resulted in the tightening of federal rules.
Cuyahoga River fire
On June 22, 1969, the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland caught fire — both literally and in the public imagination. A few months later, the conflagration became a big story in Time magazine, which described the Cuyahoga as a river that “oozes rather than flows.”
The story prompted outrage throughout the country, where many rivers, after decades of industrial pollution, were too dangerous for swimming, fishing or drinking.
The fire, fueled by an oil slick on the river’s surface, and resulting media coverage galvanized the outrage into broader public action.
It culminated in the passage of the 1972 Clean Water Act. That measure, like the Clean Air Act, was an extension of earlier laws. But the piecemeal nature of the earlier rules had resulted in a lack of oversight and regulatory control. The 1972 act coordinated the rules and gave regulatory authority to the nascent EPA.
Since the law’s creation, waterways across the United States are markedly cleaner, though half still fall short of national goals.
Love Canal disaster
In the late 1970s, residents of Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York, began complaining of odd smells, rashes and liquid leaching into the basements of their homes. Decades earlier, the Hooker Chemical Co. had dumped toxic waste in the canal and buried it. Outraged, the residents of Love Canal organized and were eventually relocated from their town.
While the residents of Love Canal were not the first or only community to confront the toxic legacy of industry, their plight caught the attention of national media, and ultimately, helped prompt the creation of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, commonly known as the Superfund. Passed by Congress in 1980, the law meant that chemical and petroleum companies would be taxed to create a cleanup trust fund.
Over time, however, the trust fund has dwindled, with taxpayers increasingly footing cleanup bills.
Smog-filled skies
Pittsburghers used to say that if you wore a white shirt to work in the morning, that the shirt would be as gray as the air by lunchtime. In cities and towns throughout the country, Americans didn’t just breathe the air, they could all but touch it. In the nation’s national parks, air pollution clouded the views.
This was the United States before the 1970s Clean Air Act.
There was no single smog event that led to the act. In the years leading up to its passage, though, “You had growing awareness in the scientific community about problems like smog,” said Eric Schaeffer, the executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project. “You had the beginnings of an understanding that it was bigger than any state agency could manage.”
The act was an overhaul and extension of the 1963 Clean Air Act. It enabled the newly created EPA to set standards related to six key pollutants that were known to harm human health.
Plight of the gray wolf
In the early 1970s, the gray wolf was teetering on the edge of extinction in the lower forty-eight states. Throughout the earlier part of the century, the wolf was largely considered a trophy and was hunted and skinned for its fur to within an inch of the species’ life.
In its company were dozens of other species at risk of dying out, with few laws to protect them.
In 1973, shortly after the first Earth Day, the Endangered Species Act was signed into law by President Richard Nixon.The act was designed to prohibit the killing or harassing of protected species or damaging the habitats necessary for their survival.
Shortly thereafter, the gray wolf was listed as “endangered” under the act and — alongside the bald eagle, American alligator and dozens of other species — began to slowly recover in some areas. Scientists estimate that the act has directly prevented the extinction of more than 200 species.