By Alan Caruba
For years
now I have been saying that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must be
eliminated and its powers given to the fifty states, all of which,have their
own departments of environmental protection. Until now, however, there has been
no plan put forth to do so.
Dr. Jay
Lehr has done just that and his plan no doubt will be sent to the members of
Congress and the state governors. Titled “Replacing the Environmental Protection Agency” it should be read by everyone who, like Dr. Lehr, has
concluded that the EPA was a good idea when it was introduced in 1971, but has
since evolved into a rogue agency threatening the U.S. economy, attacking the
fundamental concept of private property, and the lives of all Americans in
countless and costly ways.
 |
| Dr. Jay Lehr |
Dr. Lehr
is the Science Director and Senior Fellow of The Heartland Institute, for whom
I am a policy advisor. He is a leading authority on groundwater hydrology and
the author of more than 500 magazine and journal articles, and 30 books. He has
testified before Congress on more than three dozen occasions on environmental
issues and consulted with nearly every agency of the federal government and
with many foreign countries. The Institute is a national nonprofit research and
education organizations supported by voluntary contributions.
Ironically,
he was among the scientists who called for the creation of the EPA and served
on many of the then-new agency’s advisory councils. Over the course of its
first ten years, he helped write a significant number of legislative bills to
create a safety net for the environment.
As he
notes in his plan, “Beginning around 1981, liberal activist groups recognized
EPA could be used to advance their political agenda by regulating virtually all
human activities regardless of their impact on the environment. Politicians
recognized they could win votes by posing as protectors of the public health
and wildlife. Industries saw a way to use regulations to handicap competitors
or help themselves to public subsidies. Since that time, not a single
environmental law or regulation has passed that benefited either the
environment or society.”
“The
takeover of EPA and all of its activities by liberal activists was slow and
methodical over the past 30 years. Today, EPA is all but a wholly owned
subsidiary of liberal activist groups. Its rules account for about half of the
nearly $2 trillion a year cost of complying with all national regulations in
the U.S. President Barack Obama is using it to circumvent Congress to impose
regulations on the energy sector that will cause prices to ‘skyrocket.’ It is a
rogue agency.”
Dr. Lehr
says that “Incremental reform of EPA is simply not an option.” He's right.
“I have
come to believe that the national EPA must be systematically dismantled and
replaced by a Committee of the Whole of the 50 state environmental protection
agencies. Those agencies in nearly all cases long ago took over primary
responsibility for the implementation of environmental laws passed by Congress
(or simply handed down by EPA as fiat rulings without congressional vote or
oversight.”
Looking
back over the years, Dr. Lehr notes that “The initial laws I helped write have
become increasingly draconian, yet they have not benefited our environment or
the health of our citizens. Instead they suppress our economy and the right of
our citizens to make an honest living. It seems to me, and to others, that
this is actually the intention of those in EPA and in Congress who want to see
government power expanded without regard to whether it is needed to protect the
environment or public health.”
Eliminating
the EPA would provide a major savings by eliminating 80% of its budget. The
remaining 20% could be used to run its research labs and administer the
Committee of the Whole of the 50 state environmental agencies. “The Committee
would determine which regulations are actually mandated in law by Congress and
which were established by EPA without congressional approval.”
Dr. Lehr
estimates the EPA’s federal budget would be reduced from $8.2 billion to $2 billion.
Staffing would be reduced from more than 15,000 to 300 and that staff would
serve in a new national EPA headquarters he recommends be “located centrally in
Topeka, Kansas, to allow the closest contact with the individual states.” The
staff would consist of six delegate-employees from each of the 50 states.”
“Most
states,” says Dr. Lehr, “will enthusiastically embrace this plan, as their
opposition to EPA’s ‘regulatory train wreck’ grows and since it gives them the
autonomy and authority they were promised when EPA was first created and the
funding to carry it out.”
The EPA
was a good idea when it was created, the nation’s air and water needed to be
cleaned, but they have been at this point. Since then, the utterly bogus
“global warming”, now called “climate change”, has been used to justify a
torrent of EPA regulations. The science the EPA cites as justification is
equally tainted and often kept secret from the public.
“It’s time
for the national EPA to go,” says Dr. Lehr and I most emphatically agree. “All
that is missing is the political will.”
© Alan
Caruba, 2014
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