Michigan's Call to Protect the EPA

The United States senate will soon vote on whether or not to protect one of the most important environmental watchdogs in our country: the Environmental Protection Agency. Created in strong nonpartisan agreement with a 73 to 0 vote in the Senate, the EPA has been protecting our air, water and land for over forty years. When many of our state and local environmental protection agencies are losing funding, the EPA  should be the agency to step up and protect our environment on a federal level.  Now, even the EPA is under attack.

Luckily, Environmental Protection Agency advocates are putting up a strong offensive to ensure the attack is not a success. Republicans and Democrats alike see the importance of continuing the EPA’s legacy of protecting our country’s air, water, and land from pollution. According to a recent poll administered by the League of Conservation Voters 63% of Michigan voters say they trust the EPA more than Congress to decide whether there should be new standards for carbon pollution. A recent Muskegon Chronicle editorial highlights two Republican’s positions on the subject.

Christine Todd Whitman, a former governor of New Jersey, was EPA administrator from 2001 to 2003 and William D. Ruckelshaus was administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from 1970 to 1973 and 1983 to 1985. Together they write, “the air across our country is appreciably cleaner and healthier as a result of EPA regulation of trucks, buses, automobiles and large industrial sources of air pollution.”

Whitman and Ruckelshaus warn, “It is easy to forget how far we have come in the past 40 years. We should take heart from all this progress and not, as some in Congress have suggested, seek to tear down the agency that the President and Congress created to protect America’s health and environment.”

The rallying cries of Whitman, Ruckelshaus, and others should serve as a wake up call to our representatives. As constituents, it may be time for us to back up these EPA experts and let our senators know what we think. They are expected to take a vote soon on this very important issue. Contact Senators Stabenow and Levin here. 

Keep up to date on the movement of McConnell’s official Senate Amendment 183, which would severely weaken the EPA, here.

photo credit: Treehugger.com