Call for President Donald Trump and U.S.Congress to support mission of Environmental Protection Agency and maintain operation at Region 5 office in Chicago Committee on Health and Environmental Protection
RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, On July 9, 1970, Republican President Richard M. Nixon sent a Special Message from the President to the Congress transmitting a reorganization plan to establish the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA"). In President Nixon's words: "As concern with the condition of our physical environment has intensified, it has become increasingly clear that we need to know more about the total environment - land, water and air . . . This requires pulling together into one agency a variety of research, monitoring, standard-setting and enforcement activities now scattered through several departments and agencies. It also requires that the new agency be given sufficient support elements ... to give it the needed strength and potential for carrying out its mission."; and
WHEREAS, Established on December 2, 1970, the EPA was the product of growing concern about environmental degradation in the United States in the form of rivers so polluted they caught fire; entire towns built on sites so toxic that the only recourse was to abandon them; air pollution so thick in some cities that people changed their shirts twice a day; pollution-induced eutrophication and massive fish kills so pervasive that Lake Erie was pronounced "dead"; West Coast cities, such as Denver and Los Angeles, frequently veiled in thick, deadly smog; and entire ecosystems in the Northeastern United States destroyed by acid rain; and
WHEREAS, Since its founding almost fifty years ago, the EPA has made remarkable inroads into solving these problems and in fulfilling its mission to protect all Americans from significant risks to human health in the environment; to monitor our environment to reduce environmental risks; to ensure that environmental protection is taken into account when developi...
Click here for full text