It may be hard to believe but before 1970 a factory could spew black clouds of toxic chemicals into the air filling the city air with haze or dump hazardous waste into lakes and rivers coating them with sludge And it was all perfectly legal Companies were rarely convicted and ordered to stop such behaviors There was no agency or law in place to prevent people from endangering the environ ment and there were no punishments either In December 1970 the United States Senate confirmed president Richard Nixon's choice of an administrator for a new federal agency to tackle envi ronmental issues In the words of the U S Environmental Protec tion Agency EPA its purpose is to ensure that all Americans are protected from significant risks to human health and the environ ment where they live learn and work The EPA coordinates and supports research and antipollution activities conducted by state and local governments private and public groups individuals and educational institutions Without the EPA there would be no legal way to limit or eliminate pollution to air water and land and all life on Earth could be in
In the late 1800s pollution from factories in industrial cities such as Pittsburgh Pennsylvania filled the
CHAPTER ONE A Dirty World Notions of environmental responsibility existed centuries before the EPA was created As early as 1652 when the U S was still a collection of colonies the city of Boston established a public water supply to provide clean water to its citi zens Other large cities then followed its exam ple Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries as more people settled in the U S the negative ef fects of having large populations occupy relative ly small areas became more apparent Sewage often lined city streets and floated into rivers and the ocean and drinking water was often mixed with sediment and other contaminants The rapid industrialization that occurred in the late 19th century only added to the environmental pollution Factory smokestacks blew chemical heavy soot into the air Industrial waste and oil floated in waterways By the 1860s some people had become concerned about the harm being done to the environment A new conservation movement was born In 1872 geologist Ferdinand Hayden convinced Congress to make Yellowstone a national park The found ing of Yellowstone began a worldwide national Conservationists became worried that wild places such as the Grand Canyon would be ruined by human
