United States Environmental Protection Agency

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it began operation on December 2, 1970, after Nixon signed an executive order. The order establishing the EPA was ratified by committee hearings in the House and Senate.
The agency is led by its administrator, who is appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. The current administrator is Lee Zeldin. The EPA is not a Cabinet department, but the administrator is normally given cabinet rank. The EPA has its headquarters in Washington, D.C. There are regional offices for each of the agency's ten regions, as well as 27 laboratories around the country.
The agency conducts environmental assessment, research, and education. It has the responsibility of maintaining and enforcing national standards under a variety of environmental laws, in consultation with state, tribal, and local governments. EPA enforcement powers include fines, sanctions, and other measures.
It delegates some permitting, monitoring, and enforcement responsibility to U.S. states and the federally recognized tribes. The agency also works with industries and all levels of government in a wide variety of voluntary pollution prevention programs and energy conservation efforts.
The agency's budgeted employee level in 2023 was 16,204.1 full-time equivalent (FTE). More than half of EPA's employees are engineers, scientists, and environmental protection specialists; other employees include legal, public affairs, financial, and information technologists.
Beginning in the late 1950s and through the 1960s, Congress reacted to increasing public concern about the impact that human activity could have on the environment. Senator James E. Murray introduced a bill, the Resources and Conservation Act (RCA) of 1959, in the 86th Congress. The bill would have established a Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President, declared a national environmental policy, and required the preparation of an annual environmental report. The conservation movement was weak at the time and the bill did not pass Congress.
The 1962 publication of Silent Spring, a best-selling book by Rachel Carson, alerted the public about the detrimental effects on animals and humans of the indiscriminate use of pesticide chemicals.
In the years following, Congress discussed possible solutions. In 1968, a joint House–Senate colloquium was convened by the chairmen of the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Senator Henry M. Jackson, and the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Representative George P. Miller, to discuss the need for and means of implementing a national environmental policy. Congress enacted the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) and the law was based on ideas that had been discussed in the 1959 and subsequent hearings.
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. Nixon signed NEPA into law on January 1, 1970. The law established the CEQ in the Executive Office of the President. NEPA required that a detailed statement of environmental impacts be prepared for all major federal actions significantly affecting the environment. The "detailed statement" would ultimately be referred to as an environmental impact statement (EIS).
On July 9, 1970, Nixon proposed an executive reorganization that consolidated many environmental responsibilities of the federal government under one agency, a new Environmental Protection Agency. This proposal included merging pollution control programs from a number of departments, such as the combination of pesticide programs from the United States Department of Agriculture and the United States Department of the Interior. After conducting hearings during that summer, the House and Senate approved the proposal. The EPA was created 90 days before it had to operate, and officially opened its doors on December 2, 1970. The agency's first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, took the oath of office on December 4, 1970.
EPA's primary predecessor was the former Environmental Health Divisions of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS), and its creation caused one of a series of reorganizations of PHS that occurred during 1966–1973. From PHS, EPA absorbed the entire National Air Pollution Control Administration, as well as the Environmental Control Administration's Bureau of Solid Waste Management, Bureau of Water Hygiene, and part of its Bureau of Radiological Health. It also absorbed the Federal Water Quality Administration, which had previously been transferred from PHS to the Department of the Interior in 1966. A few functions from other agencies were also incorporated into EPA: the formerly independent Federal Radiation Council was merged into it; pesticides programs were transferred from the Department of the Interior, Food and Drug Administration, and Agricultural Research Service; and some functions were transferred from the Council on Environmental Quality and Atomic Energy Commission.
Upon its creation, EPA inherited 84 sites spread across 26 states, of which 42 sites were laboratories. The EPA consolidated these laboratories into 22 sites.
In its first year, the EPA had a budget of $1.4 billion and 5,800 employees. At its start, the EPA was primarily a technical assistance agency that set goals and standards. Soon, new acts and amendments passed by Congress gave the agency its regulatory authority. A major expansion of the Clean Air Act was approved in December 1970.
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.
When EPA first began operation, members of the private sector felt strongly that the environmental protection movement was a passing fad. Ruckelshaus stated that he felt pressure to show a public which was deeply skeptical about government's effectiveness, that EPA could respond effectively to widespread concerns about pollution.
The burning Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1969 led to a national outcry and criminal charges against major steel companies. The US Justice Department in late 1970 began pollution control litigation in cooperation with the new EPA. Congress enacted the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, better known as the Clean Water Act (CWA). 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. Congress amended the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) in 1972, requiring EPA to measure every pesticide's risks against its potential benefits.
In 1973 President Nixon appointed Russell E. Train, to be the next EPA administrator. In 1974 Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act, requiring EPA to develop mandatory federal standards for all public water systems, which serve 90% of the US population. The law required EPA to enforce the standards with the cooperation of state agencies.
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. This act gave the EPA the authority to gather information on chemicals and require producers to test them, gave it the ability to regulate chemical production and use (with specific mention of PCBs), and required the agency to create the National Inventory listing of chemicals.
Congress also enacted the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in 1976, significantly amending the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965. It tasked the EPA with setting national goals for waste disposal, conserving energy and natural resources, reducing waste, and ensuring environmentally sound management of waste. Accordingly, the agency developed regulations for solid and hazardous waste that were to be implemented in collaboration with states.
President Jimmy Carter appointed Douglas M. Costle as EPA administrator in 1977. 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.
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.
In a dramatic move to the right, President Ronald Reagan in 1981 appointed Anne Gorsuch as EPA administrator. Gorsuch based her administration of EPA on the New Federalism approach of downsizing federal agencies by delegating their functions and services to the individual states. She believed that EPA was over-regulating business and that the agency was too large and not cost-effective. 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. She cut the total number of agency employees, and hired staff from the industries they were supposed to be regulating. Environmentalists contended that her policies were designed to placate polluters, and accused her of trying to dismantle the agency.
Assistant Administrator Rita Lavelle was fired by Reagan in February 1983 because of her mismanagement of the Superfund program. Gorsuch had increasing confrontations with Congress over Superfund and other programs, including her refusal to submit subpoenaed documents. Gorsuch was cited for contempt of Congress and the White House directed EPA to submit the documents to Congress. Gorsuch and most of her senior staff resigned in March 1983. Reagan then appointed William Ruckelshaus as EPA administrator for a second term. As a condition for accepting his appointment, Ruckleshaus obtained autonomy from the White House in appointing his senior management team. He then appointed experienced competent professionals to the top management positions, and worked to restore public confidence in the agency.
Lee M. Thomas succeeded Ruckelshaus as administrator in 1985. 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. EPA also researched the implications of stratospheric ozone depletion. 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.
In 1988, during his first presidential campaign, George H. W. Bush was vocal about environmental issues. Following his election victory, he appointed William K. Reilly, an environmentalist, as EPA administrator in 1989. 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. At the time, there was increasing awareness that some environmental issues were regional or localized in nature, and were more appropriately addressed with sub-national approaches and solutions. This understanding was reflected in the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act and in new approaches by the agency, such as a greater emphasis on watershed-based approaches in Clean Water Act programs.
In 1992 EPA and the Department of Energy launched the Energy Star program, a voluntary program that fosters energy efficiency.
Carol Browner was appointed EPA administrator by President Bill Clinton and served from 1993 to 2001. 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. Congressional authorization of the tax was due to expire in 1995. Although Browner and the Clinton Administration supported continuation of the tax, Congress declined to reauthorize it. Subsequently, the Superfund program was supported only by annual appropriations, greatly reducing the number of waste sites that are remediated in a given year. (In 2021 Congress reauthorized an excise tax on chemical manufacturers.)
Major legislative updates during the Clinton Administration were the Food Quality Protection Act and the 1996 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act.
President George W. Bush appointed Christine Todd Whitman as EPA administrator in 2001. Whitman was succeeded by Mike Leavitt in 2003 and Stephen L. Johnson in 2005.
In March 2005 nine states (California, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, New Mexico and Vermont) sued the EPA. The EPA's inspector general had determined that the EPA's regulation of mercury emissions did not follow the Clean Air Act, and that the regulations were influenced by top political appointees. The EPA had suppressed a study it commissioned by Harvard University which contradicted its position on mercury controls. The suit alleged that the EPA's rule exempting coal-fired power plants from "maximum available control technology" was illegal, and additionally charged that the EPA's system of cap-and-trade to lower average mercury levels would allow power plants to forego reducing mercury emissions, which they objected would lead to dangerous local hotspots of mercury contamination even if average levels declined. Several states also began to enact their own mercury emission regulations. Illinois's proposed rule would have reduced mercury emissions from power plants by an average of 90% by 2009. 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 response, EPA announced plans to propose such standards to replace the vacated Clean Air Mercury Rule, and did so on March 16, 2011.
In July 2005 there was a delay in the issuance of an EPA report showing that auto companies were using loopholes to produce less fuel-efficient cars. The report was supposed to be released the day before a controversial energy bill was passed and would have provided backup for those opposed to it, but the EPA delayed its release at the last minute.
EPA initiated its voluntary WaterSense program in 2006 to encourage water efficiency through the use of a special label on consumer products.
In 2007 the state of California sued the EPA for its refusal to allow California and 16 other states to raise fuel economy standards for new cars. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson claimed that the EPA was working on its own standards, but the move has been widely considered an attempt to shield the auto industry from environmental regulation by setting lower standards at the federal level, which would then preempt state laws. California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with governors from 13 other states, stated that the EPA's actions ignored federal law, and that existing California standards (adopted by many states in addition to California) were almost twice as effective as the proposed federal standards. It was reported that Johnson ignored his own staff in making this decision.
In 2007 it was reported that EPA research was suppressed by career managers. Supervisors at EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment required several paragraphs to be deleted from a peer-reviewed journal article about EPA's integrated risk information system, which led two co-authors to have their names removed from the publication, and the corresponding author, Ching-Hung Hsu, to leave EPA "because of the draconian restrictions placed on publishing". The 2007 report stated that EPA subjected employees who author scientific papers to prior restraint, even if those papers are written on personal time.
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. Associate Deputy Administrator Jason Burnett e-mailed the draft to the White House. White House aides—who had long resisted mandatory regulations as a way to address climate change—knew the gist of what Johnson's finding would be, Burnett said. They also knew that once they opened the attachment, it would become a public record, making it controversial and difficult to rescind. So they did not open it; rather, they called Johnson and asked him to take back the draft. Johnson rescinded the draft; in July 2008, he issued a new version which did not state that global warming was danger to public welfare. Burnett resigned in protest.
In April 2008, the Union of Concerned Scientists said that more than half of the nearly 1,600 EPA staff scientists who responded online to a detailed questionnaire reported they had experienced incidents of political interference in their work. The survey included chemists, toxicologists, engineers, geologists and experts in other fields of science. About 40% of the scientists reported that the interference had been more prevalent in the last five years than in previous years.
President Barack Obama appointed Lisa P. Jackson as EPA administrator in 2009.
In 2010 it was reported that a $3 million mapping study on sea level rise was suppressed by EPA management during both the Bush and Obama administrations, and managers changed a key interagency report to reflect the removal of the maps.
Between 2011 and 2012, some EPA employees reported difficulty in conducting and reporting the results of studies on hydraulic fracturing due to industry and governmental pressure, and were concerned about the censorship of environmental reports.
President Obama appointed Gina McCarthy as EPA administrator in 2013.
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.
In 2015, the EPA discovered extensive violations by Volkswagen Group in its manufacture of Volkswagen and Audi diesel engine cars, for the 2009 through 2016 model years. Following notice of violations and potential criminal sanctions, Volkswagen later agreed to a legal settlement and paid billions of US dollars in criminal penalties, and was required to initiate a vehicle buyback program and modify the engines of the vehicles to reduce illegal air emissions.
In August 2015, the EPA finalized the Clean Power Plan to regulate emissions from power plants, projecting a 15-year cut of 32%, or 789 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. In 2019 it was voided and replaced by the Affordable Clean Energy rule under the Trump administration, and in 2022 its constitutionality was ruled out by the Supreme Court.
In August 2015, the 2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill occurred when EPA contractors examined the level of pollutants such as lead and arsenic in a Colorado mine, and accidentally released over three million gallons of waste water into Cement Creek and the Animas River. In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a branch of the World Health Organization, cited research linking glyphosate, an ingredient of the weed killer Roundup manufactured by the chemical company Monsanto, to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. In March 2017, the presiding judge in a litigation brought about by people who claim to have developed glyphosate-related non-Hodgkin's lymphoma opened Monsanto emails and other documents related to the case, including email exchanges between the company and federal regulators. 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. Emails also showed that Rowland "had promised to beat back an effort by the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct its own review."
On February 17, 2017, President Donald Trump appointed Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator. The Democratic Party saw the appointment as a controversial move, as Pruitt had spent most of his career challenging environmental regulations and policies. He did not have previous experience in the environmental protection field and had received financial support from the fossil fuel industry. In 2017, the Presidency of Donald Trump proposed a 31% cut to the EPA's budget to $5.7 billion from $8.1 billion and to eliminate a quarter of the agency jobs. However, this cut was not approved by Congress. Pruitt resigned from the position on July 5, 2018, citing "unrelenting attacks" due to ongoing ethics controversies.
President Trump appointed Andrew R. Wheeler as EPA administrator in 2019. Trump promised to eliminate EPA "in almost every form" leaving "only tidbits" intact.
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.
In September 2019 air pollution standards in California were once again under attack, as the Trump administration attempted to revoke a waiver issued to the state which allowed more stringent standards for auto and truck emissions than the federal standards.
President Joe Biden appointed Michael S. Regan to be administrator in 2021. Regan began serving on March 11, 2021.
In October 2021 EPA announced its "PFAS Strategic Roadmap." PFASs are organofluorine chemical compounds referred to as "forever chemicals". The roadmap is a "whole-of-EPA" strategy and the agency will consider the full life cycle of PFAS, including preventing PFAS from entering the environment, holding polluters accountable, and remediation of contaminated sites. It also will include drinking water monitoring and risk assessment for PFOA and PFOS in biosolids (processed sewage sludge used as fertilizer).
In December 2021 EPA issued new greenhouse gas standards for passenger cars and light trucks. The standards, which will reduce climate pollution and improve public health, became effective for the 2023 vehicle model year.
In March 2022 the Biden administration allowed California to again set stricter auto emissions standards.
In August 2022 the EPA was allotted a listed ~$53.216 billion in funding pursuant to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The EPA listed 24 total initiatives, the most notable among them being greenhouse gas reduction and monitoring, a superfund petroleum tax, replacing current heavy-duty vehicles with zero-emission vehicles, and a methane incentive program.
On February 3, 2023, more than 100 train cars were derailed in East Palestine, and around half of those cars containing chemicals like butyl acrylate, vinyl chloride, and ethylhexyl acrylate. 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. The EPA is monitoring the situation and experts recommend that local residents take part in the EPA's at-home air screening.
On April 12, 2023, EPA proposed new federal vehicle tailpipe emissions standards that would accelerate the transition to electric vehicles (EVs). The standards would require at least two-thirds of all new cars sold in the United States to be zero-emissions vehicles by 2032. The rules seek to reduce air pollution and climate change. The EPA sought public comment by July 25, 2023. If the rules were approved it would have a significant impact on the transportation sector and public health. In March 2024, EPA finalized the new rules and projected they would cut emissions by 7 billion metric tons, or 56% of 2026 levels, by 2032.
In April 2024, EPA finalized new standards for power plant carbon emissions, projecting cuts of 65,000 tons by 2028 and 1.38 billion tons by 2047. The agency also issued final drinking water standards for six PFAS compounds.
In December, 2024 the EPA announced it approved California's plan to end the sale of gasoline-only vehicles by 2035. EPA Administrator Michael Regan granted a waiver under the Clean Air Act to California to implement the plan which was first announced in 2020. It required that by 2035 at least 80% of new cars sold be electric and up to 20% plug-in hybrid models. California's rules were adopted by 11 other states including New York, Massachusetts and Oregon.
On February 27, 2025, EPA received a White House memo issued by Russell Vought to prepare for mass layoffs. Hours earlier, Donald Trump said that there would be a 65 percent reduction in its roughly 17,000 personnel, which was later corrected to 65 percent overall agency budget cuts. In March 2025, the EPA dropped a lawsuit against Denka Performance Elastomer to reduce its emissions of chloroprene at a plant in LaPlace, Louisiana.
The EPA is led by the administrator, appointed following nomination by the president and approval from Congress.
Creating 10 EPA regions was an initiative that came from President Richard Nixon. See Standard Federal Regions. Each EPA regional office is responsible within its states for implementing the agency's programs, except those programs that have been specifically delegated to states.
Each regional office also implements programs on Indian Tribal lands, except those programs delegated to tribal authorities.
The Environmental Protection Agency can only act pursuant to statutes—the laws passed by Congress. Appropriations statutes authorize how much money the agency can spend each year to carry out the approved statutes. The agency has the power to issue regulations. A regulation interprets a statute, and EPA applies its regulations to various environmental situations and enforces the requirements. The agency must include a rationale of why a regulation is needed. (See Administrative Procedure Act.) Regulations can be challenged in federal courts, either district court or appellate court, depending on the particular statutory provision.
EPA has principal implementation authority for the following federal environmental laws:
There are additional laws where EPA has a contributing role or provides assistance to other agencies. Among these laws are:
EPA established its major programs pursuant to the primary missions originally articulated in the laws passed by Congress. Additional programs have been developed to interpret the primary missions. Some of the newer programs have been specifically authorized by Congress. 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.
The Office of Air and Radiation (OAR) describes itself as the official authority in charge of "developing national programs, policies, and regulations for controlling air pollution and radiation exposure." The OAR is responsible for enforcing the Clean Air Act, the Atomic Energy Act, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Land Withdrawal Act, and other applicable laws. The OAR is in charge of the Offices of Air Quality Planning and Standards, Atmospheric Protection, Transportation and Air Quality, and the Office of Radiation and Indoor Air.
The Radiation Protection Program comprises seven project groups.
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. The number of civil cases filed by EPA have gradually decreased, and in 2018 the criminal and civil penalties from EPA claims dropped over four times their amounts in 2013, 2016, and 2017. In 2016 EPA issued $6,307,833,117 in penalties due to violations of agency requirements, and in 2018 the agency issued $184,768,000 in penalties. EPA's inspections and evaluations have steadily decreased from 2015 to 2018. Enforcement activity has decreased partially due to budget cuts within the agency.
Congress enacted laws such as the Clean Air Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and CERCLA with the intent of preventing and reconciling environmental damages. Beginning in 2018 under Administrator Andrew Wheeler, EPA revised some pollution standards that resulted in less overall regulation. Furthermore, the CAA's discretionary application has caused a varied application of the law among states. In 1970, Louisiana deployed its Comprehensive Toxic Air Pollutant Emission Control Program to comply with federal law. This program does not require pollution monitoring that is equivalent to programs in other states.
The EPA has been criticized for its lack of progress towards environmental justice. Administrator Christine Todd Whitman was criticized for her changes to President Bill Clinton's Executive Order 12898 during 2001, removing the requirements for government agencies to take the poor and minority populations into special consideration when making changes to environmental legislation, and therefore defeating the spirit of the Executive Order. 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. Another report in September 2006 found the agency still had failed to review the success of its programs, policies, and activities toward environmental justice. Studies have also found that poor and minority populations were underserved by the EPA's Superfund program, and that this situation was worsening. In August 2022 the EPA was allotted a listed ~42.8 billion in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) towards what the EPA classifies as "Advancing Environmental Justice", and published the statement "Through the Inflation Reduction Act, EPA will improve the lives of millions of Americans by reducing pollution in neighborhoods where people live, work, play, and go to school; accelerating environmental justice efforts in communities overburdened by pollution for far too long; and tackling our biggest climate challenges while creating jobs and delivering energy security." In September 2022 EPA announced the creation of a new Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights that reports directly to the EPA administrator. The new office has an expanded budget and staff with broader responsibilities than under the previous organizational arrangement.
In the latest Center for Effective Government analysis of 15 federal agencies which receive the most Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, published in 2015 (using 2012 and 2013 data, the most recent years available), the EPA earned a D by scoring 67 out of a possible 100 points, i.e. did not earn a satisfactory overall grade.
Pebble Mine is a copper and gold mining project located in the southwest region of Alaska in the Bristol Bay region organized by Northern Dynasty Minerals. In 2014 the EPA released its statement on the impacts that mining would have on Bristol Bay and its tributaries. Among many things, the statement assesses geological, topographic, ecological, hydrological, and economic data and determined that mining could negatively impact the salmon population. Seeing as Bristol Bay and its watershed provides around 46% of the world's sockeye salmon, the EPA did not want to risk an ecological disaster. In July 2014, before Northern Dynasty Minerals had submitted its EIS, EPA's Region 10 office proposed restrictions pursuant to section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act, restrictions that would effectively prohibit the project. Northern Dynasty Minerals protested this decision and on July 18, 2014, in a published statement, Pebble Partnership CEO Tom Collier said that the project would continue its litigation against EPA; noted that the EPA's action was under investigation by the EPA inspector general and by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform; and noted that two bills were pending in Congress seeking to clarify that EPA did not have the authority to preemptively veto or otherwise restrict development projects prior to the onset of federal and state permitting. Collier's statement also said that EPA's proposal was based on outdated mining scenarios that were not part of the project's approach. Multiple journalists and organizations have reported on the controversy including the Natural Resources Defense Council in support of the cancelation of the project and John Stossel in support of the development of the mine. As of 2023, the mine remains a controversial topic. On January 30, 2023, the EPA vetoed the mine.
Ohio governor Mike DeWine and administrator of the EPA Michael Regan drank tap water in East Palestine, Ohio, on February 3, 2023, after a train derailment to show that the water was safe. The derailment caused a fire and the release of toxic chemicals into the air and water making locals and environmental groups concerned for the quality of water in the area. Despite the EPA's assurance that the water is safe some residents do not trust the quality of the water and question its long-term effects.