From the moment it was founded just over fifty years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has held up a troubling mirror to both the ecological damage caused by extractive industries and the political power these industries use to keep causing it. Formed by President Nixon in 1970 primarily to "mollify the environmental 'crazies'" after Earth Day (6), the agency has long been lambasted by the industries it oversees as a nagging impediment to economic growth. Republican administrations especially have stuffed the agency's leadership with industry insiders who have diluted (or buried) scientific research; quashed efforts to control contamination of the country's air, water, and soil; and held up efforts to mitigate climate change. As agency critics are quick to point out, the EPA has been so "captured" by industry that it often seems to function primarily as a Polluters Protection Agency.William Alley, former chief of the Office of Groundwater for the US Geological Survey, and Rosemarie Alley, a freelance writer, provide a helpful overview of how crippling the agency's political parameters can be. As "one of the most decentralized agencies in the federal government," the EPA has to battle not only powerful industry groups but its own colleagues in state regulatory agencies, who are also under constant pressure not to scare away businesses from their state economies (13).
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