Discussing the coincidence of the 50th anniversary of EPA with the first Earth Day in 1970 was the agency’s administrator for District 9, serving the West from San Francisco, John Busterud, and Professor Noah Sachs at the University of Richmond School of Law in Virginia. The professor wryly noted, “The EPA is often called the federal agency no one likes to be the head of because it’s a punching bag for every interest, from the left to the right.” For sure, it’s been politically influenced over the years, and administrators with varying commitments to environmental responsibility have led it. Still, the agency has improved our lives, with cleaner air and waterways, a Superfund to remediate the mess we’ve made for more than a century and a robust recycling system, which now employs 757,000 people who receive $36.6 billion in annual wages. When EPA was founded in 1970, the national recycling rate was less than 10 percent. Today that has more than tripled to about 35 percent.
