Research Paper on EPA Establishes 1970: Protecting Health & Environment Since

Introduction

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in 1970 under President Nixon's administration, and its primary purpose was to protect the health and safety of United States citizens and the environment. Since 1970, there have been several legislations and programs that have been enacted by the federal government agency that seeks to protect the health of individuals and the environment (Macrory, 2014). The EPA has implemented policies and regulations continuously to match the rising concerns caused by the changes in climatic conditions, the increasing population, and the adverse environmental conditions such as pollution. The EPA's mission is to ensure that the American citizens enjoy a safe environment free form health risks by initiating programs that seek to reduce the release of waste into the environment, conserve the environment, and encourage energy saving products. This paper thus seeks to discuss how the EPA and the state regulators are working to improve how companies follow the regulations provided to promote a healthy environment and reduce health risks associated with pollution.

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Background Information

Before the establishment of the EPA, the federal government had no control over the protection of the environment and policies that regulate the environmental pollutants. The 1969 fire in Cuyahoga River sparked a lot of debates concerning pollution of the environment especially the release of toxic waste into the environment (Macrory, 2014). The fire prompted the founding of legislative acts such as the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. By 1970 more than 50% of the American population rated pollution as one of the biggest concerns (Macrory, 2014). President Richard Nixon was forced to establish the Environmental Quality Council an agency that would address all the environmental concerns such as pollution. President Nixon's administration further signed the National Environmental Policy Act that provided that planners of new constructions had to review the impact of their structure on the environment and the possible adverse effects, and this prompted the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The agency was tasked with merging the small governmental programs to establish a single umbrella that tackled the environmental concerns. The enactment of NEPA initiated the Earth Day celebrations where millions of Americans demonstrated across the nation complaining about the degradation of the environment and creating public awareness (Macrory, 2014). Following the demonstrations, Nixon's administration was forced to implement an organized plan that involved engaging the Department of Interior and the Department of Health to establish an effort aimed to address protection standards of the environment. The roles of the established body were to provide aid to agencies fighting environmental concerns and to conduct extensive research on the environment to provide appropriate recommendations to the Nixon's administration to implement better policies to protect the environment (Macrory, 2014). The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proved to be the right body concerned with addressing environmental issues over the years.

The Role of the Environmental Protection Agency

Some of the major areas the EPA handles in protecting the environment include climatic changes, the health and safety of American citizens, air pollution, water pollution, land pollution and measures to clean it up, green living, and the release of toxic products such as pesticides among others (United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2017). The Environmental Protection agency primary objective in preventing and controlling air pollution is to avoid the adverse effects of health caused by air pollution. The Clean Air Act was established by EPA to define EPA's involvement and duties for protecting and improving the country's quality of air and the stratospheric ozone layer (United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2017). The EPA is tasked with implementing issues that address the quality of air, acid rain, toxic air pollution, and the depletion of the ozone layer by ensuring that it is under control. The EPA also provides standards that regulate vehicle emissions. The Clean Air Act states that the EPA should formulate policies on National Ambient Air Quality Standards for the standard air pollutants such as carbon monoxide, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, ground-level ozone, nitrogen oxides, and lead (United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2017). According to the reports provided by EPA, particle pollution and depletion of ground-level ozone present the most severe risks to health issues.

The EPA also provides measures to ensure that the limited supply of water is protected by keeping it clean. EPA is responsible for enforcing the federal safe drinking water and clean water laws, implementing policies to prevent pollution of water, and supporting the local initiatives of conserving and controlling wastewater treatment plants (McCarthy & Copeland, 2016). Some of the acts established to protect water are the Clean Water Act and the Water Quality Act. The Clean Water Act was established in 1972 and together with National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) they were tasked with regulating pollution from point sources such as industrial facilities, government facilities, agricultural facilities, and municipal facilities (McCarthy & Copeland, 2016). The EPA can improve the quality of water by controlling these point sources and pollution from homes. The EPA also pushed for the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to curb the threats posed to drinking water by pollutants such as chemicals, animal wastes, human wastes, and wastes caused by naturally occurring activities such as erosion (McCarthy & Copeland, 2016). The SDWA is responsible for controlling the public water systems accountable for supplying water to the American population.

The EPA is also responsible for addressing the growing concern caused by the release of toxic and hazardous waste that is very harmful to both the environment and human health (McCarthy & Copeland, 2016). The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) was implemented to address municipal and industrial waste (McCarthy & Copeland, 2016). The RCRA provides national standards that seek to address the issues of waste disposal, energy, and natural resources conservation, reducing the amount of waste production, and ensuring that waste is managed correctly (McCarthy & Copeland, 2016). The RCRA bans all open dumping and instead encourages recycling.

How EPA and State Regulators Ensure that Organizations follow EPA Regulations

The EPA and State regulators have developed different strategies to ensure that companies comply with the regulations. This paper seeks to give an in-depth analysis of how environmental regulators and state agencies enforce compliance by identifying the different intervention strategies. Enforcement of EPA regulations involves two primary practices which are where to allocate resources and identification of organizations that need inspection and supervision (Macrory, 2014). The EPA and state regulators should first identify where and how to intervene. In determining where to allocate resources, EPA implements a risk-based regulation practice (Macrory, 2014). The type of methodology applied by EPA and state regulators involves issuing a formal policy to the field officers and organizations on the guidelines of environmental protection. Some of the strategies employed to ensure enforcement include:

Advice and Persuasion

Advice and persuasion focus on cooperation between organizations and EPA bodies. This strategy aims to ensure that organizations willingly comply with the regulations by engaging in activities such as persuasion and negotiation (Macrory, 2014). It is assumed that organizations will comply voluntarily and sanctions should be avoided or used as a last resort measure.

Criteria Strategies

This strategy provides the state regulators and EPA bodies a list of factors to consider when determining a case based on the circumstances. There is no prescriptive formula on how the regulators should enforce the guidelines and regulations, but instead, each case is decided based on the prevailing conditions (Macrory, 2014).

Rules and Deterrence

Rules and deterrence emphasize on the need for sanctions in case the provided regulations are not adhered to or in case of a rule-breaking action or behavior. This strategy assumes that regulators are rational bodies with the ability to give necessary punishment to organizations that violate the provided rules (Macrory, 2014). The deterrence strategy involves punishing violators with sufficient severity to deter future violations. The EPA's role is to monitor violations and collect the necessary evidence to help provide enforcement measures (Macrory, 2014). The United States EPA is adversarial because it resorts to confrontation and litigation strategies to resolve its issues by emphasizing that enforcement is essential in ensuring compliance.

Responsive Regulation

This strategy involves applying coercion and persuasion practices based on the circumstances of the case. Regulators are tasked with providing the appropriate measures and regulations through persuasion by assuming that organizations will voluntarily adhere to the rules (Macrory, 2014). When the rules are not followed, then regulators should be in a position to issue deterrence and punitive measures.

Risk-Based Regulation

The risk-based regulation provides that the type of intervention applied should depend on the assessment of the damage caused to the environment and health safety as a result of non-compliance.

Smart Regulation

Smart regulation emphasizes the need to use the civil society, institutional frameworks and market regulations as surrogate regulators that can help the state and EPA regulators to enforce compliance (Macrory, 2014). Smart regulation gives insights on how complementary practices of enforcement strategies are more efficient compared to stand-alone methods.

Meta-regulation

Meta-regulation strategies involve tasking organizations to provide their plans and state the measures they are taking to protect the environment to the state regulators and EPA bodies for approval (Macrory, 2014). Meta-regulation applies risk management strategies because it involves the regulators to approve and oversee the plans set forth by organizations and use a responsive approach where necessary.

Hybrid Strategies

The hybrid strategies involve applying more than one compliance strategies. Hybrid strategies include applying a mix of workable approaches to a specific circumstance to ensure compliance by organizations (Macrory, 2014). The use of a hybrid strategy is essential because studies reveal that the use of compliance strategies has not been effective when used in isolation.

Enforcement of EPA Regulations

Enforcement of EPA regulations involves applying measures that provide environmental justice. The enforcement programs aim to ensure compliance by planning and implementing appropriate measures. The EPA and state regulators also ensure that they identify cases where the communities are overburdened by environmental pollution (United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2017). The enforcement programs are stipulated in the civil and criminal laws that provide for pollution violations. The civil and criminal enforcement differ in terms of the legal standards, the burden of proof and the remedies (United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2017). The cleanup enforcement bodies are responsible for identifying organiza...