The agency also works with industries and all levels of government in a wide variety of voluntary pollution prevention programs and energy conservation efforts.

[11][9] The Richard Nixon administration made the environment a policy priority in 1969-1971 and created two new agencies, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and EPA.

[18] EPA staff recall that in the early days there was "an enormous sense of purpose and excitement" and the expectation that "there was this agency which was going to do something about a problem that clearly was on the minds of a lot of people in this country," leading to tens of thousands of resumes from those eager to participate in the mighty effort to clean up America's environment.

[20] The burning Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1969 led to a national outcry and criminal charges against major steel companies.

[21] The CWA established a national framework for addressing water quality, including mandatory pollution control standards, to be implemented by the agency in partnership with the states.

[22] Congress amended the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) in 1972, requiring EPA to measure every pesticide's risks against its potential benefits.

[26][27] In October 1976, Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) which, like FIFRA, related to the manufacture, labeling and usage of commercial products rather than pollution.

[32] To manage the agency's expanding legal mandates and workload, by the end of 1979 the budget grew to $5.4 billion and the workforce size increased to 13,000.

[1] In 1980, following the discovery of many abandoned or mismanaged hazardous waste sites such as Love Canal, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, nicknamed "Superfund."

The new law authorized EPA to cast a wider net for parties responsible for sites contaminated by previous hazardous waste disposal and established a funding mechanism for assessment and cleanup.

During her 22 months as agency head, she cut the budget of the EPA by 22%, reduced the number of cases filed against polluters, relaxed Clean Air Act regulations, and facilitated the spraying of restricted-use pesticides.

[41] In 1986 Congress passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, which authorized the EPA to gather data on toxic chemicals and share this information with the public.

Under Administrator Thomas, EPA joined with several international organizations to perform a risk assessment of stratospheric ozone, which helped provide motivation for the Montreal Protocol, which was agreed to in August 1987.

[32] Under Reilly's leadership, the EPA implemented voluntary programs and initiated the development of a "cluster rule" for multimedia regulation of the pulp and paper industry.

[46] Major projects during Browner's term included: Since the passage of the Superfund law in 1980, an excise tax had been levied on the chemical and petroleum industries, to support the cleanup trust fund.

Subsequently, the Superfund program was supported only by annual appropriations, greatly reducing the number of waste sites that are remediated in a given year.

[32] In March 2005 nine states (California, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, New Mexico and Vermont) sued the EPA.

[59] In 2008—by which point a total of fourteen states had joined the suit—the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the EPA regulations violated the Clean Air Act.

In December 2007 EPA administrator Johnson approved a draft of a document that declared that climate change imperiled the public welfare—a decision that would trigger the first national mandatory global-warming regulations.

[32] In 2014, the EPA published its "Tier 3" standards for cars, trucks and other motor vehicles, which tightened air pollution emission requirements and lowered the sulfur content in gasoline.

According to The New York Times, the "records suggested that Monsanto had ghostwritten research that was later attributed to academics and indicated that a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency had worked to quash a review of Roundup's main ingredient, glyphosate, that was to have been conducted by the United States Department of Health and Human Services."

The records show that Monsanto was able to prepare "a public relations assault" on the finding after they were alerted to the determination by Jess Rowland, the head of the EPA's cancer assessment review committee at that time, months in advance.

[32] On July 17, 2019, EPA management prohibited the agency's Scientific Integrity Official, Francesca Grifo, from testifying at a House committee hearing.

EPA offered to send a different representative in place of Grifo and accused the committee of "dictating to the agency who they believe was qualified to speak."

The hearing was to discuss the importance of allowing federal scientists and other employees to speak freely when and to whom they want to about their research without having to worry about any political consequences.

[101] Subsequently, the chemicals combusted into a flame being seen from miles around and the fumes filled the air with residents reporting animals falling ill and a burning sensation in their eyes and nose.

[131] Former administrator William Ruckelshaus observed in 2016 that a danger for EPA was that air, water, waste and other programs would be unconnected, placed in "silos", a problem that persists more than 50 years later, albeit less so than at the start.

[133] In 2019 the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative, "a network of academics, developers, and non-profit professionals", published a report which compared EPA enforcement statistics over time.

[196] In a March 2004 report, the inspector general of the agency concluded that the EPA "has not developed a clear vision or a comprehensive strategic plan, and has not established values, goals, expectations, and performance measurements" for environmental justice in its daily operations.

Among many things, the statement assesses geological, topographic, ecological, hydrological, and economic data and determined that mining could negatively impact the salmon population.