The Laws

The Laws Name:

1. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

2. Clean Water Act

3. National Environmental Policy Act
4. Safe Drinking Water Act
5. Occupational Health and Safety Administration
6. Clean Air act
7. Endangered Species Act
8. Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act
9. Toxic Substances Control Act
10. Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act
11. Environmental Protection Agency

Way to be on task Adan, Brenda, and Jessica 

1. ______________________________________________ - 1969

• Declared a national policy to encourage a constructive and harmonious relationship between

humans and their environment.

• Required government agencies to submit environmental impact statements for all major

projects. Each federal agency had to access and consider the significant environmental
impacts of its actions and alternative courses of action before the agency could change
government behavior and policy.

• Forced agencies to plan for the environmental consequences of their activities and gave

citizens the opportunity to challenge their findings.

• Essentially procedural.

• Created Council on Environmental Quality to advise the president on environmental issues

and ensure compliance.
 

2. ______________________________________________ - 1970

• Established by the White House and Congress in response to the growing public demand for

cleaner water, air and land.

• Develops and enforces environmental regulations in order to protect human health and

safeguard the natural environment.

3. ______________________________________________ - 1970

• The agency is set up within the Department of Labor to ensure safety in the workforce.

• Responsibilities include setting standards for employee exposure to hazardous substances.

4. ______________________________________________ - 1970

• Set deadlines for EPA to promulgate national ambient air quality standards for the

protection of public health (primary standard) and welfare (secondary standard) to be
implemented by the states, national emission standards for hazardous air pollutants, and auto
emission standards.

• Authorized citizen suits.

5. ______________________________________________ - 1972

• Sought “fishable and swimmable” waters.

• Controlled the discharge of pollution at the source.

• Bans the unpermitted discharge of pollutants into navigable waters.

• Requires application of technology-based controls on dischargers.

• Established pollutant discharge permit system.

• Increased federal grants to states to construct water treatment plants.

• Authorized citizen suits.

6. ______________________________________________ - 1972

• Requires registration of pesticides.

• Required the EPA to regulate more than 50,000 to guard against illogically adverse impact(s)

on the environment.

• Authorizes the EPA to ban unreasonably dangerous pesticides.

7. ______________________________________________ - 1972

• Prohibits ocean dumping of wastes except with a permit at sites designated by the EPA.

8. ______________________________________________ - 1973

• Prohibits federal action that jeopardizes the habitat of species in danger of extinction and

prohibits the taking of such species by any person.

• Broadened federal authority to protect all “threatened” as well as “endangered” species.

• Authorized grant programs to assist state programs.

• Required coordination among all federal agencies.

9. ______________________________________________ - 1974

• Requires the EPA to set limits for maximum allowable levels of contaminants in public

drinking water systems.

10. _____________________________________________ - 1976

• Mandate the EPA to review more than 50,000 existing chemicals and approximately 1000

new chemicals each year to identify and, as necessary, to regulate their manufacture, sale, sue
and disposal to prevent “unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment.”

• Required testing for health and environmental effects prior to a chemicals manufacture or

distribution.

• Required records to be kept and allowed EPA enforcement through civil proceedings.

 

11. _____________________________________________ - 1976

• Directs the EPA to establish regulations ensuring the safe management of hazardous waste

from “cradle to grave.”

 

 

QUIZ:

1. Are they federal, state or local laws?

2. Do they seem flexible or inflexible?

 

3. Why did so much environmental legislation pass in such a short period of time?

4. List two major air pollutants impacted by these laws.