In response to “EPA essentially nonessential,”
Before you were born, before many of us were born, back in the infamous summer of 1969, there was a little fire on the Cuyahoga River in Ohio. I mean the river was literally on fire, and it wasn’t the first time either. The effluent from industrial pollution had covered debris in the river with oil, and it went o’flame. This event is said to be the catalyst that led to Congress passing the Clean Water Act, and establishing the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce it. Their mission: “to protect human health and the environment.” They are here for us.
Water may be the most precious of all our resources. We need the waterways for navigation, to grow our crops, to drink fresh water and to have a good time. Let’s go fishing! Only, we’d have a very difficult time doing any of those things if we didn’t have regulations. Did you know that only 0.8 percent of freshwater is accessible to us? That’s less than 0.007 percent of the water on Earth according to a UNESCO World Science Report in 1996.
What we think about the EPA should have nothing to do with what is “left” or “right.” Instead we should think about it as what it is. A protection agency that will protect our precious resources for us and for posterity, i.e., your children and their children.
Jane Fencl is a graduate student in biology. Please send comments to opinion@kstatecollegian.com