The Environmental Protection Agency

Created by executive order in 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency is the federal agency responsible for enforcing most American environmental laws. It writes the regulations that implement statutes like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

The Environmental Protection Agency was created by President Nixon in 1970, consolidating environmental responsibilities that had been scattered across more than a dozen different federal offices. Its first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, took office the same year Congress passed the Clean Air Act. The Clean Water Act followed in 1972. The Endangered Species Act in 1973. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in 1976. The Superfund law in 1980. The EPA writes the regulations that put these statutes into practice. It sets pollution limits, issues permits, inspects facilities, brings enforcement actions, and conducts the scientific research that underlies its standards. The agency has roughly 15,000 employees and a budget of around $10 billion, though the number of major actions it takes each year depends heavily on the priorities of the administration in office. The EPA has been at the center of nearly every major environmental policy debate of the past half-century. The Supreme Court's decision in Massachusetts v. EPA in 2007 held that the agency had to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act if it found they endangered public health, a finding the agency made in 2009. The Court's 2022 decision in West Virginia v. EPA limited the agency's authority to restructure entire industries through Clean Air Act regulation, holding that such "major questions" require clear congressional authorization. The EPA also implements commitments under international agreements like the Paris Agreement. Its scope reflects the basic American compromise on environmental policy: ambitious statutes passed by Congress, implemented through detailed regulation by an agency, subject to extensive judicial review.