ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Having dispatched these initiatives in spring, by early July the Administration could concentrate its full attention on the capstone of its program. Acting on Roy Ash's advice, the President decided to establish an autonomous regulatory body to oversee the enforcement of environmental policy. In a message to the House and Senate, he declared his intention to establish the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and left no doubts about its far-reaching powers. Senator Jacob Javits of New York perhaps expressed the prevailing mood of the Congress when he described the new organization as a "very strong and overdue effort to arrest and prevent the erosion of the priceless resources of all mankind and also to preserve that most priceless asset, the human being himself, who, in a singularly polluted atmosphere, may find it impossible to exist." |
Nixon declared that its mission would center on:
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