Like most Alaskans, I head to the great outdoors to experience Mother Nature’s gifts whenever I can. Being out in nature brings me peace and allows me to reflect on the world. I reflect on the beauty of the environment and how special Alaska is. I’m reminded that I’m pretty lucky to be living in America today. I breathe clean air. I have access to clean water. My neighborhood is not covered in waste. I am grateful that I did not experience life in America in the 1960s, before the Environmental Protection Agency existed, when cities were shrouded in smog, tap water was brown and unsafe to drink, and streets were covered with waste. I mean, have you seen the pictures from that time?
Few policies regulated how people treated the environment back then. Americans could do whatever we wanted to Mother Nature — and we did, especially if abusing her gifts resulted in financial gain. Gradually, though, the public awakened to the idea that we needed a healthy environment if we wanted to be healthy ourselves, and that the harmful pollutants we put into the environment would come back to haunt us.
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring highlighted the evidence that pesticides like DDT not only harmed birds, but also harmed human health. A movement was born, and the public demanded new laws to keep our environment clean. The EPA was established on Dec. 2, 1970. Its mission was to “protect human health and the environment,” and it has been working for a cleaner, healthier environment for the American people ever since.
Thanks to EPA’s implementation of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and other laws from that era, Americans today, including me, get to live in a healthier environment than we had half a century ago.
That’s not to say EPA has gotten everything right. Failure to regulate chlorpyrifos and events like the Gold King Mine spill in Colorado and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan prove that. But despite EPA’s mistakes and shortcomings, it does more good for America than harm. My mantra is “environmental health = human health,” and one way to achieve that goal is establishment and implementation of protective laws and regulations.
The White House budget proposal includes a 31 percent cut to EPA funds, threatening key programs that protect our environment and thousands of jobs. U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, came out against such deep cuts, citing critical sewage and water programs in rural Alaska that keep villages safe. Thank you, Senator, for standing up for Alaska.
I can’t possibly keep up with all the regulations under attack, but some that stand out to me include no longer requiring oil and gas companies to report emissions data and potentially withdrawing protections in Bristol Bay against Pebble Mine development. What happened to the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts? Are they not still law? Don’t these actions go against what the EPA stands for? How can we possibly know our air and water are healthy and safe if we do not monitor them and regulate what chemicals enter our environment?
I’m also concerned about cuts to environmental research programs and the attack on science as a rational basis for decision-making. Unless scientists are allowed to study our environment and share their findings with the public and policy makers, EPA will never be able to fulfill its mission of “protecting public health and the environment.”
I want American children to live in a healthy environment, I want them to breathe fresh air, see blue skies, and drink crystal clear water. And when the world feels slightly overwhelming, I want them to be able to escape into Mother Nature’s arms and find peace, just like I can today.
We have to work together to ensure this future, to make sure we protect environmental health and therefore human health. And we need an effective EPA, guided by sound science and appropriately funded and staffed, to ensure that industry and business are part of the effort to protect that future as well.
Please take a moment to contact Alaska’s U.S. Senators and tell them Alaskans care about clean air and water and ask them to protect EPA’s budget from further cuts.
• Veronica Padula is a student at the University of Alaska College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. She lives in Anchorage.
