Preview

EPA Doing More To Fight Environmental Injustice

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2173 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
EPA Doing More To Fight Environmental Injustice
Should the EPA Be Doing More to Fight Environmental Injustice?

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should be doing more to fight the environmental injustice spreading throughout our country. Right now with all of the budget cuts that are forced to happen due to the recession and need for jobs, it probably won’t happen for awhile. The injustice due to toxic dumping and other pollutants are not being handled as swiftly as they should be handled. The reason for that is because the area that is affected is not a big campaign contributor to a state or government politician. There has always been and always will be institutionalized racism or classism, because only certain classes of people are affected by corporate waste.
Yes, they should do more First thing we need to understand is who is the EPA and what powers do they actually have to do more. The EPA was officially formed on December 2, 1970 by then president Richard Nixon. The agency is led by its administrator, who is appointed by the President and approved by Congress. The current administrator is Lisa P. Jackson. The EPA is not a Cabinet department, but the administrator is normally given cabinet rank. The agency has approximately 18,000 full-time employees. The EPA has fourteen offices and has 10 regions that
…show more content…
Superfund is the name given to the environmental program established to address abandoned hazardous waste sites. It is also the name of the fund established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, as amended (CERCLA statute). This law was enacted in the wake of the discovery of toxic waste dumps such as Love Canal and Times Beach in the 1970s. It allows the EPA to clean up such sites and to compel responsible parties to perform cleanups or reimburse the government for EPA-lead

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    A Superfund Program is the federal government’s program to clean up the nation’s uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. (U.S Environmental Protection Agency, 2010)…

    • 621 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Pad 505 Assignment 1

    • 1511 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The purpose of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is to protecting human health and the environment by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress. According to EPA website, Born in the wake of elevated concern about environmental pollution, EPA was established on December 2, 1970 to consolidate in one agency a variety of federal research, monitoring, standard-setting and enforcement activities to ensure environmental protection. This agency, US Environment Protection Agency is run by its Administrator. The current Administrator is Lisa P. Jackson. The President appoints an administrator for U.S. Environment Protection Agency and Congress can approve or decline the person. The US Environmental Protection Agency is an independent agency. The agency has approximately 17,000 full-time employees and engages many more people on a contractual basis.…

    • 1511 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Superfund Research Paper

    • 1189 Words
    • 5 Pages

    It is hard to think of a government program with a wider gulf between ambitions and results than Superfund, the program enacted in 1980 to clean up thousands of toxic waste dumps across America. The Clinton Administration now advances a promising plan to redo that law. With health care on the agenda, Congress may not have the political stamina to address Superfund. But it should; every day that the present law is in operation represents another day of misdirected resources.…

    • 1189 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In many cases, most people in the United States; even around the world do not acknowledge that our planet is being polluted by coal plants and other industrialized nations. Climate change is a problem and threat to the world. In the reading of “Environmental Warriors Going To The Root Of The Problem” by Greg Jobin- Leeds and AgitArte, it talked mainly about the Earth being polluted and the reasons for that. The people that aren’t wealthy are affected by the plants that are built in the cities around them. The non wealthy do not have the authority to stand up and make the environment better for themselves.…

    • 581 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Superfund Case Study

    • 228 Words
    • 1 Page

    The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), informally called Superfund, was established by the Congress in 1980 in response to rising concerns over the health and environmental risks posed by hazardous waste sites. This law was enacted in the wake of the finding of toxic waste such as Love Canal and Valley of the Drums.…

    • 228 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Agencies did not care to make warnings available to other ethnicities and cultures. MEJO had to fight for the Hmong people in Madison. The Hmong had a different language and culture than the whites in the commission, and this caused the Hmong people to be neglected. The Madison commission was not consuming fish as much as the Hmong, and they did not see the problems of the toxins in the lakes and waterway in Madison. Also, they did not speak the language of the Hmong, and they did not care to translate the pamphlet and the signs their language. They did not care to include this group because no one on the community is from this culture. Last, is how agencies and scientists treated street science because these people were poor, and these agencies deemed them as uneducated. The people in these communities did not go to college, and these agencies knows that some may not be uneducated. When there is one that is educated, and took the time to become an expert, the person will not be treated with the respect they deserve because of their class. Then they must go above and beyond the call of duty to receive respect and see change. They must know how to inform and gather together their community, they must learn the jargon of the science and agencies that are promoting pollution and environmental injustice, and lastly, build a network of people who can work…

    • 903 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The EPA is a federal agency charged with enforcing laws intended to protect the environment.…

    • 1126 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Since Donald Trump has taken the office of Presidency this past February, there have been many policy changes within our federal government. One of the more notable change of policy has been that of the environment, specifically focusing on the Environment Protection Agency (EPA). President Trump’s viewpoints on the environment are often compared to those of Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan believed in a free market ideology with little to no influence from the government. This led to him deregulating many environmental policies in order to put business before the safety of the environment.…

    • 970 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    EPA Controversy

    • 394 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Overall, the EPA has been shown, especially through this act, that they have acted irresponsibly and with too much leisure to a major situation. This is problematic for the future because it brings up the question about how they are going to react to other major crises that may appear in the future. If the EPA is seen to maintain this amount of leisure that they displayed in regard to Flint, there is a strong possibility that the crisis will be hyped up by the media and the area itself, just to bring and maintain awareness that something needs to be…

    • 394 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    On December 2 of 1970, President Richard Nixon founded the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because he wanted to "transform our land into what we want it to become” through the utilization of an independent agency to regulate the environment. This organization protects the environment by enforcing regulations to support environmental laws created by Congress. The Environmental Protection Agency's mission statement is "to support the protection of human health and the environment by advocating and advancing the business, regulatory, and environmental compliance concerns of small and socio-economically disadvantaged businesses and minority academic institutions" (US Enviromental Protection Agency, 2010).…

    • 417 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Environmental Justice

    • 2381 Words
    • 10 Pages

    1. You should have a basic understanding of the terms ‘valid’ and ‘sound’ and be able to identify valid and sound arguments.…

    • 2381 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Even though racism is and has always been an issue, we don’t often think about all the ways it can affect people of color. One example of this is environmental justice and racism, this is where corporations dump environmentally hazardous or degraded elements, such as toxic waste, pollution and urban decay near low-income or minority communities (Environmental Racism 2012, 1). It’s another unjust way African Americans have been and still continue to be treated. Many families have grown up in danger of being affected by these harmful substances and haven’t had a fair say when it comes to the accumulation of waste proximal to their area. From the early 1920s-1978, more than 80% of Houston's garbage landfills and incinerators have been located…

    • 646 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Birth of Epa

    • 541 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The EPA is an organization whose purpose is to preserve and protect the environment that we live in. EPA stands for Environmental Protection Agency and it is one of the main reasons that our planet has survived thus far. EPA was primarily created due to many Americans concerns about the deterioration conditions of the water, air, and land. EPA has done a lot for this planet, but one of the main concerns that it still has to deal with is our air pollution.…

    • 541 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Environmental Racism

    • 1203 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Additionally, concern is also focused and geared towards the economic and social struggles in the lack of environmental policy, including environmental racism and justice. While President Nixon created the Environment Protection Agency, others after him, such as President George H.W. Bush’s Administration revisited these victories by leading America to losses for it’s environmentalists. With so many failed attempts in gathering the loyal attention from the public in decades, and engaging them in how important and absolutely necessary it is in creating and maintaining an environment in which fossil fuels, carbon emissions, rises in sea levels, and hazards to aquatic life, are constantly fought against, there needs to be more strength in how the scientific information is shared. Additionally, the lack of consistency and cooperation from differing parties regarding the importance of climate change and global warming, especially in Congress, continuously hurts the work the United States can accomplish in combating climate change. Today, President Obama is criticized for his work towards environmental policy. However, the Obama Administration has been a leading force in the fight for a healthier and more green future, and that has been evident in the policies he has been pushing through with the Environmental Protection…

    • 1203 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Today, pollution has been a problem and still affecting everyone around the world. They are disposing toxic waste in the blacks and Hispanics community. They're not disposing it in the white community due to the high Income that they receive; because of their race and income, millions of people around the world are having problems in their town. The high income payers (Whites) are making the pollution and are setting it on low income area. Environmental racism is a part of our everyday life and many are starting to be affected by the bad outcomes that follow, through the whites, the government and high-income payers.…

    • 665 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays