What If The EPA Was Never Created?

The Actual History

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established on December 2, 1970, during the administration of President Richard Nixon. The agency's formation came at a pivotal moment in American environmental consciousness, following decades of increasingly visible environmental degradation and growing public concern.

The 1960s witnessed several environmental disasters that galvanized public opinion. In 1969, the heavily polluted Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, famously caught fire, creating striking images that circulated nationwide. The Santa Barbara oil spill that same year released over three million gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean, coating beaches and killing thousands of marine animals. Rachel Carson's influential 1962 book "Silent Spring" had already awakened many Americans to the dangers of pesticides, particularly DDT, and their environmental impacts.

These events contributed to a groundswell of public support for environmental protection. The first Earth Day, held on April 22, 1970, saw approximately 20 million Americans participate in demonstrations and educational events across the country, representing what many historians consider the birth of the modern environmental movement.

President Nixon, while not personally known as an environmental advocate, recognized both the political importance of addressing environmental concerns and the need for a coordinated federal approach to pollution control. Prior to the EPA's creation, environmental responsibilities were fragmented across numerous federal departments and agencies, creating an inefficient and often ineffective regulatory framework.

On July 9, 1970, Nixon proposed a reorganization plan to consolidate many federal environmental responsibilities into a single, new independent agency. This plan received bipartisan support and led to the EPA's official establishment later that year. William Ruckelshaus was appointed as the agency's first administrator.

The EPA immediately assumed responsibility for researching, monitoring, setting standards, and enforcing regulations related to air and water pollution, solid waste management, pesticides, radiation, and toxic substances. In its early years, the agency implemented several landmark environmental laws passed by Congress, including:

The Clean Air Act of 1970, which set national air quality standards and regulated emissions from stationary and mobile sources
The Clean Water Act of 1972, which established a structure for regulating pollutant discharges into U.S. waters
The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, which protected public drinking water supplies
The Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, which regulated the introduction of new chemicals
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, which created a framework for managing hazardous waste

Over the subsequent decades, the EPA expanded its regulatory authority and faced both successes and controversies. By the early 1980s, the agency had grown to around 13,000 employees and had an annual budget exceeding $5 billion. Its initiatives contributed to significant improvements in American air and water quality, the phaseout of leaded gasoline, the remediation of toxic waste sites through the Superfund program, and increased public awareness of environmental issues.

The EPA's work has often placed it at the center of political debates about the proper balance between environmental protection and economic concerns. During its history, the agency has seen its funding, authority, and priorities shift with changing presidential administrations and congressional majorities. Nevertheless, it has remained the primary federal entity responsible for environmental protection in the United States for over five decades, fundamentally altering the American landscape and public health outcomes.

The Point of Divergence

What if the EPA was never created? In this alternate timeline, we explore a scenario where the Nixon administration chose a different path in 1970, one that did not include the establishment of a unified federal environmental protection agency.

Several plausible paths could have led to this divergence:

First, President Nixon might have yielded to pressure from his more conservative advisors and business interests who argued against centralized environmental regulation. Economic concerns were substantial in 1970, with the country experiencing rising unemployment and inflation. In our timeline, Nixon balanced these concerns against environmental priorities, but in this alternate scenario, economic worries might have prevailed. Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans and Treasury Secretary David Kennedy were known to have expressed reservations about expanding environmental regulations; their influence could have been greater in this timeline.

Second, the organizational approach could have differed significantly. Rather than creating a new independent agency, Nixon might have opted for a more modest reorganization that kept environmental functions distributed across various departments. The Council on Environmental Quality, which was established under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, might have been deemed sufficient for coordinating environmental policy across existing agencies.

Third, partisan political calculations could have shifted. While environmental protection enjoyed bipartisan support in 1970, Republican opposition to new regulatory bodies was also a factor. In this timeline, perhaps Nixon calculated that his "Southern Strategy" for reelection in 1972 necessitated stronger signals to business interests and less emphasis on regulatory expansion.

Fourth, key personnel changes might have altered the decision-making process. In our timeline, Roy Ash, who headed Nixon's Advisory Council on Executive Organization, recommended consolidating environmental programs. In this alternate history, perhaps Ash was replaced by someone less inclined toward agency consolidation, or his recommendations took a different direction.

Finally, the public mood might have been slightly different. While environmental awareness was certainly high in 1970, a few percentage points less public enthusiasm—perhaps due to greater economic anxiety or different media coverage of environmental disasters—could have given Nixon the political space to resist the creation of a new environmental agency.

The most likely scenario combines elements of these factors: in this alternate timeline, Nixon announces in July 1970 that environmental issues will be addressed through strengthened coordination among existing agencies, increased funding for state-level environmental departments, and expanded authority for the Council on Environmental Quality—but without creating the EPA as a standalone federal agency.

This decision, seemingly administrative in nature, would set in motion profound differences in how the United States addressed environmental challenges over the subsequent decades.

Immediate Aftermath

Fragmented Environmental Regulation

In the absence of the EPA, environmental regulation remained divided among numerous federal departments. The Department of the Interior continued to handle many pollution issues related to federal lands and waters. The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare maintained responsibility for air pollution and some aspects of water quality. The Department of Agriculture retained control over pesticide regulation. This fragmentation led to several immediate consequences:

Coordination Problems: By 1971, government effectiveness in responding to pollution incidents was noticeably compromised. When a major chemical spill occurred on the Mississippi River in March 1971, the response was delayed by jurisdictional disputes between federal departments.
Regulatory Inconsistency: Different industries faced varying standards depending on which department held regulatory authority over their activities. Oil companies dealing with the Department of Interior confronted different requirements than chemical manufacturers answering to Health, Education, and Welfare.
Budget Limitations: Environmental programs dispersed across multiple departments failed to achieve the budget consolidation and economies of scale that the EPA realized in our timeline. Congressional appropriations for environmental protection in FY 1972 were approximately 35% lower than the combined EPA budget in the actual timeline.

Legislative Impacts

The absence of a unified environmental agency affected the landmark environmental legislation of the early 1970s:

Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970: While still passed by Congress, implementation was significantly hampered. Without the EPA's centralized authority, national air quality standards developed more slowly and with greater regional variation. The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare established an expanded Air Quality Office but lacked the institutional capacity to enforce standards uniformly.
Clean Water Legislation: The comprehensive Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 (known in our timeline as the Clean Water Act) faced stronger opposition without a dedicated agency to champion it. The legislation that ultimately passed in late 1972 was substantially weaker, maintaining the water quality standards approach rather than implementing technology-based effluent limitations for point sources.
Pesticide Regulation: The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act amendments of 1972 were significantly delayed. The Department of Agriculture, historically closer to agricultural interests than to environmental concerns, moved more cautiously on restricting DDT and other problematic pesticides.

Political Developments

The decision not to create the EPA had notable political repercussions:

Nixon's Environmental Image: President Nixon received less credit for environmental leadership, weakening his appeal to moderate voters concerned about pollution issues. His 1972 reelection campaign emphasized law and order, foreign policy, and economic management more heavily than environmental accomplishments.
Environmental Movement Strategy: Without a central federal target for advocacy, the environmental movement altered its approach. By 1972, environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and the newly formed Natural Resources Defense Council redirected resources toward state-level activism and litigation rather than federal administrative advocacy.
State-Level Responses: Several states with strong environmental constituencies moved to fill the regulatory void. By 1973, California, New York, Michigan, and Minnesota had established state environmental agencies with broader powers than existed before. However, states with less environmental advocacy or more dominant industrial interests, particularly in the South and parts of the Midwest, maintained minimal environmental regulations.

Corporate Adaptation

American businesses responded differently to the fragmented regulatory landscape:

Regulatory Forum Shopping: Some industries exploited the divided regulatory structure by seeking oversight from the most sympathetic departments. The chemical industry, for example, lobbied successfully in 1972 to have certain toxic substance regulations overseen by the Commerce Department rather than Health, Education, and Welfare.
Uneven Compliance Costs: Companies operating across state lines faced increasingly disparate environmental requirements. By 1974, a study by the National Association of Manufacturers documented compliance cost differentials of up to 300% for similar facilities in different states.
Delayed Investments: Without clear federal standards, many companies delayed investments in pollution control technology. Capital expenditures for pollution abatement in 1974 were estimated at 40% below the levels seen in our timeline.

International Positioning

The absence of the EPA affected America's international environmental stance:

Stockholm Conference 1972: At the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, the United States delegation lacked the institutional backing of a dedicated environmental agency. American leadership on global environmental issues was noticeably diminished, with Sweden and other European nations taking more prominent roles.
Bilateral Relations: Environmental cooperation with Canada, particularly regarding Great Lakes pollution and acid rain, developed more slowly and contentiously without EPA coordination on the American side.

By the mid-1970s, the consequences of not creating a unified environmental agency were becoming increasingly apparent, setting the stage for significantly different environmental outcomes in the following decades.

Long-term Impact

Environmental Quality Divergence

By the 1980s, the absence of the EPA had led to markedly different environmental conditions across the United States:

Air Quality

Without the EPA's uniform national standards and enforcement, air quality improvements progressed unevenly:

Urban Disparities: Cities in states with strong environmental regulations, such as California and New York, saw modest improvements in air quality. However, metropolitan areas in states with weaker regulations continued to suffer severe smog problems. By 1985, cities like Houston, Birmingham, and Cincinnati experienced ozone levels approximately 60% higher than in our timeline.
Interstate Pollution: The problem of air pollution crossing state boundaries remained largely unaddressed. The Ohio Valley's coal-fired power plants continued to cause acid rain in the Northeast without effective federal intervention. By the 1990s, forest damage in Appalachian states and New England was significantly more extensive than in our timeline.
Lead Exposure: The phaseout of leaded gasoline occurred more slowly and inconsistently. While California banned leaded gasoline by 1985, several southern and midwestern states still permitted it into the early 1990s. Consequently, average blood lead levels in American children remained elevated, with associated cognitive and developmental impacts.

Water Quality

Water pollution control suffered from the lack of centralized oversight:

Watershed Challenges: Rivers crossing multiple states, such as the Mississippi and Ohio, continued to deteriorate through the 1980s without coordinated basin-wide management. Major fish kills remained common occurrences, with incidents 250% more frequent than in our timeline by 1990.
Drinking Water Safety: Without the Safe Drinking Water Act's implementation through EPA regulations, drinking water standards varied dramatically by location. A 1992 Congressional investigation found that approximately 40 million Americans regularly consumed water that would have violated EPA standards in our timeline.
Wetlands Loss: The rate of wetland destruction accelerated without the Clean Water Act's Section 404 program as administered by the EPA. By 2000, the United States had lost an additional 15 million acres of wetlands compared to our timeline, with corresponding impacts on flood control and wildlife habitat.

Public Health Consequences

The environmental regulatory gaps translated directly into public health outcomes:

Respiratory Disease: By the 1990s, asthma rates in metropolitan areas were approximately 35% higher than in our timeline. A landmark 1998 epidemiological study estimated that air pollution was causing 75,000 excess deaths annually in the United States—nearly double the rate of our timeline.
Cancer Clusters: Industrial areas experienced more pronounced cancer clusters related to unregulated toxic exposures. Locations like "Cancer Alley" along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans showed cancer rates up to 70% higher than in our timeline by 2000.
Developmental Impacts: Higher exposure to lead, mercury, PCBs, and other neurotoxins resulted in measurable cognitive impacts in exposed populations. A 2005 study estimated that average IQ scores nationally were 2.5 points lower than they would have been with stricter environmental controls, with more dramatic differences in industrial hotspots.

Economic and Industrial Patterns

The absence of unified federal environmental regulation reshaped American industry and economic geography:

Regulatory Havens and Races to the Bottom

Interstate Competition: Some states actively marketed themselves as "business-friendly" by maintaining minimal environmental standards. By the 1990s, a clear pattern emerged of heavily polluting industries relocating to states with the weakest regulations.
Corporate Consolidation: Without uniform federal standards, compliance with the patchwork of state regulations favored larger corporations that could afford specialized legal and technical departments. By 2000, industrial concentration in sectors like chemical manufacturing, paper production, and metal finishing was approximately 30% higher than in our timeline.

Innovation Impacts

Delayed Environmental Technology: The pollution control technology sector developed more slowly without nationwide regulatory drivers. American companies fell behind Japanese and European competitors in developing clean production methods, catalytic converters, and scrubber technologies.
Green Chemistry Gap: The chemical industry faced less pressure to develop safer alternatives to toxic substances. Consequently, the "green chemistry" revolution occurred primarily in Europe rather than the United States, creating an innovation gap that persisted into the 21st century.

Global Environmental Position

America's international environmental standing evolved differently:

Leadership Deficit: Without the institutional capacity and expertise that the EPA developed, the United States ceded environmental leadership on the global stage. The European Union became the world's primary environmental standard-setter by the 1990s, with its regulations often becoming de facto global standards.
Treaty Participation: The United States took more hesitant positions on international environmental agreements. Treaties addressing ozone depletion, transboundary air pollution, and hazardous waste shipments either excluded the United States or contained significant exemptions for American industries.
Comparative Reputational Damage: By the early 2000s, the United States was widely perceived as an environmental laggard rather than a leader. This perception complicated American diplomatic efforts on other issues and contributed to a generalized "American exceptionalism" narrative that damaged soft power.

Political Evolution and Environmental Justice

The different regulatory landscape reshaped American politics around environmental issues:

Litigation Explosion: Without administrative remedies through an EPA, environmental conflicts increasingly moved to the courts. Environmental tort litigation expanded dramatically, with class action lawsuits against polluters becoming commonplace by the 1990s. This juridification of environmental policy created uncertainty for businesses and uneven outcomes for affected communities.
Environmental Justice Movement: The disproportionate impacts of pollution on low-income communities and communities of color were even more pronounced without EPA oversight. The environmental justice movement emerged earlier and with greater militancy in this timeline, with major protests occurring in heavily polluted areas throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Political Realignment: Environmental protection became a more sharply partisan issue earlier than in our timeline. By the 1990s, polling showed a 45-point gap between Democratic and Republican voters on prioritizing environmental protection versus economic growth—nearly double the partisan divide in our timeline.

Twenty-First Century Outcomes

By 2025, the cumulative effects of a half-century without the EPA had created a significantly different United States:

Climate Policy Fragmentation: Without the EPA's eventual role in regulating greenhouse gases, American climate policy remained entirely state-driven. Sixteen states had implemented carbon pricing mechanisms by 2025, while others maintained no climate policies whatsoever, creating an economically inefficient patchwork approach.
Infrastructure Divergence: Environmental infrastructure quality varied dramatically by region. Northeastern and West Coast states maintained water and waste treatment systems comparable to European standards, while some southern and rural areas had infrastructure more characteristic of developing nations.
Adaptive Governance: The absence of the EPA eventually spawned innovative alternative governance approaches. Interstate environmental compacts emerged as the primary mechanism for addressing cross-boundary pollution issues. The Great Lakes Environmental Compact, the Northeast Air Quality Agreement, and the Western States Water Authority became powerful regional entities with regulatory authority transcending individual state boundaries.
Regulatory Federalism: After decades of fragmentation, a new model of environmental federalism began emerging in the 2020s. This approach emphasized federal scientific research and standard-setting, coupled with state-level implementation and enforcement—ironically recreating some features of the EPA model that was never established in this timeline.

The absence of the EPA thus led not to the absence of environmental regulation, but rather to a dramatically different, more uneven, and ultimately less effective environmental governance regime in the United States.

Expert Opinions

Dr. Jonathan Adler, Professor of Environmental Law at Case Western Reserve University, offers this perspective: "The absence of the EPA would not have meant the absence of environmental regulation, but rather its evolution along dramatically different institutional lines. The EPA centralized and rationalized environmental policy in our timeline. Without it, we would likely have seen greater state leadership, more reliance on common law remedies, and eventually the emergence of interstate compacts to address transboundary issues. The outcomes would have been more heterogeneous, with some states achieving environmental quality comparable to what we see today, while others would have lagged significantly. The most substantial difference would have been in addressing collective action problems like interstate air pollution and watershed management, where the lack of a federal coordinating entity would have created persistent governance challenges."

Dr. Sheila Olmstead, Environmental Economist at the University of Texas, provides this economic analysis: "The fragmentation of environmental regulation without the EPA would have significantly increased overall compliance costs for industry while potentially reducing environmental benefits. Businesses operating across state lines would have faced a regulatory patchwork with substantial transaction costs. The economies of scale in scientific research, standard-setting, and enforcement that the EPA achieved would have been lost. Most crucially, without the EPA's emphasis on cost-benefit analysis that developed in the 1980s and 1990s, environmental regulations would have been less economically efficient. We would likely have seen both over-regulation in some areas and under-regulation in others, with cumulative economic losses likely exceeding 1-2% of GDP annually by the 2000s."

Dr. Robert Bullard, considered the father of environmental justice research, explains: "Without the EPA and particularly without the Office of Environmental Justice established in 1992, the disparate environmental impacts on communities of color and low-income communities would have been even more severe and persistent. The EPA provided a federal channel for addressing environmental inequality—imperfect, certainly, but vital. In its absence, environmentalism might have developed an even stronger class and racial divide, with potentially profound implications for social cohesion and environmental politics. The grassroots environmental justice movement would likely have been more radical and confrontational, as institutional pathways for addressing grievances would have been severely limited. By 2025, I believe we would be seeing environmental conditions in disadvantaged communities more reminiscent of the 1960s than what we experience today."