Unlikely Environmentalists
Subtitle: Congress And Clean Water, 1945-1972
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: September 26, 2006
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 340
ISBN-13: 9780700614752
Subjects: Central government policies; Energy & natural resources law; Pollution of rivers & water supplies; Government - Legislative Branch; Political Science; Environmental Studies; Politics/International Relations; USA; Environmental Science; Environmental Conservation & Protection - General; 20th century; Environmental law; Environmental protection; Government policy; History; Law and legislation; Pollution; United States; Water
Description: "Environmental activism has most often been credited to grassroots protesters, but much early progress in environmental protection originated in the halls of congress. As Paul Milazzo shows, a coterie of unlikely environmentalists placed water quality issues on the national agenda as early as the 1950s and continued to shape governmental policy through the early 1970s, both outpacing public concern and predating the environmental movement." "Milazzo examines a two-decade crusade to clean up the nation's water supply led by development boosters, pork barrel politicians , and the Army Corps of Engineers, all of whom framed threats to the water supply as an economic rather than environmental problem and saw pollution as an inhibitor of regional growth. Demonstrating that legislative branch acted more assertively than the executive, the book weaves the history of the federal water pollution control program into a broader narrative of political and institutional development, covering all major clean water legislation as well as many other landmark environmental laws."--BOOK JACKET.