Documents

EDGI and Toxic Docs are collecting thousands of internal government documents on the environment obtained by public interest groups through the Freedom of Information Act. Search the repository at the link below.

This memo from the President's Advisory Council on Executive Organization (PACEO), better known as the "Ash Council',” recommended that "key anti-pollution programs be merged into an Environmental Protection Administration, a new independent agency of the Executive Branch." This new agency would be the "principal instrument" for fulfilling the president’s pledge to "repair the damage already done, and to establish new criteria to guide us in the future."

The memo claimed that the "environmental crisis" was the result of "vastly increased per capita consumption, intensified by population growth, urbanization, and changing industrial processes." The rationale presented for an independent EPA was that: 1) There was a need to consider environmental protection in a unified way; 2) There should be a separate agency for setting key standards for other agencies so that the interests of those other agencies would not affect the standards. Consolidating these functions in a single agency would also have the benefit of simplifying intergovernmental and business relationships.

The Ash Council proposed that the key functions of the agency should be: scientific research, standard-setting, monitoring, and enforcement. It also proposed reorganizing the agency around those functions as opposed to organizing offices by the source, media, location, or effects of pollution. Doing the latter would mean not recognizing the interrelated aspects of pollution and environmental problems. The memo outlined why it rejected alternative organizational plans: A combined Department of Natural Resources and Environment would, the memo said, subject standard-setting to pressures of resource development. Putting the agency in any existing department would result in one department regulating others, which would not be ideal. Nor would creating a small, strictly standard-setting agency. This would leave monitoring and enforcement fragmented across departments.

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President Nixon's message, which drew substantially on the Ash Council memo from April 29, 1970, noted that the government's approach to the environment had grown up piecemeal over the years. It was necessary to reorganize the federal government to effectively ensure environmental protection. To that end, the federal government needed an agency that could take a coordinated approach to pollution. That would mean abandoning anti-pollution approaches that were designed primarily along lines of media (air, water, land) or types of pollutants. The proposed new agency, the EPA, could do this, provided it had sufficient support for research, monitoring, standard-setting, enforcement and aid to states.

In proposing this new agency, the president said he was "making an exception to one of my own principles: ‘new independent agencies normally should not be created.’" There was a compelling reason for doing this for the EPA, according to Nixon however, because putting these functions in a department with other goals could unduly influence the anti-pollution functions. It would require that department to constantly make decisions affecting other departments. Nixon also noted the difference between the EPA and the Council on Environmental Quality: "the Council focuses on what our broad policies in the environmental field should be; the EPA would focus on setting and enforcing pollution control standards."

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In this speech to Congress, President Nixon argued that abuse of the natural environment had gone on too long. He called for, among other things, "stricter regulations," "expanded government action," "greater citizen involvement," and "new programs to ensure that government, industry and individuals" do their jobs and pay their share of costs. He laid out a 37-point program that would comprehensively consider pollution, waste and recreation, rather than treating these in isolation. Under the subject of "Organizing for Action," he argued that deep, widespread environmental problems could only be solved through a "full national effort embracing not only sound, coordinated planning, but also an effective follow-through that reaches into every community." He announced he had directed the Ash Council to study how best to organize the executive to deal with environmental issues.

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To help EPA put science and public health front and center, PRHE collaborated with top scientists and chemical policy experts from around the country to develop evidence-based recommendations to improve hazard and risk assessment, and prevent harms from chemicals and pollutants.

Call to “rebuild” as the EDF turns to focus on climate, equity and public health “It’s not enough to make up for four lost years, we have to rebuild an America that’s healthier and more equitable than it has ever been.”