A polluted drainage ditch that once flowed with industrial waste
from Lake Charles, La., petrochemical plants teems with overgrown, wild
plants today.A
light-rail line zips past the spot where a now-defunct Portland, Ore.,
gasoline station advertised in 1972 that it had run out of fuel.A
smoking Jersey City, N.J., dump piled with twisted, rusty metal has
disappeared, along with the twin towers of the World Trade Center in
lower Manhattan that were its backdrop.
Forty
years after the Environmental Protection Agency sent an army of nearly
100 photographers across the country to capture images at the dawn of
environmental regulation, The Associated Press went back for Earth Day
this year to see how things have changed. It is something the agency
never got to do because the Documerica program, as it was called, died
in 1978, the victim of budget cuts.
AP
photographers returned to more than a dozen of those locations in
recent weeks, from Portland to Cleveland and Corpus Christi, Texas.
Gone are the many obvious signs of pollution — clouds of smoke
billowing from industrial chimneys, raw sewage flowing into rivers,
garbage strewn over beaches and roadsides — that heightened
environmental awareness in the 1970s, and led to the first Earth Day
and the EPA's creation in 1970. Such environmental consciousness caused
Congress to pass almost unanimously some of the country's bedrock
environmental laws in the years that followed.
Today's
pollution problems aren't as easy to see or to photograph. Some in
industry and politics question whether environmental regulation has
gone too far and whether the risks are worth addressing, given their
costs.
"To a
certain extent, we are a victim of our own success," said William
Ruckelshaus, who headed the EPA when it came into existence under
Republican President Richard Nixon and was in charge during the
Documerica project. "Right now, EPA is under sharp criticism partially
because it is not as obvious to people that pollution problems exist
and that we need to deal with them."
Environmental
laws that passed Congress so easily in Ruckelshaus' day are now at the
center of a partisan dispute between Republicans and Democrats. Dozens
of bills have been introduced to limit environmental protections that
critics say will lead to job losses and economic harm, and there are
those who question what the vast majority of scientists accept — that
the burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming.
In
the 1970s, the first environmental regulations were just starting to
take effect, with widespread support. Now, according to some officials
in the oil and gas and electric utility industries, which are
responsible for the bulk of emissions and would bear the greatest
costs, the EPA has gone overboard with rules.
For
instance, Documerica photographers captured a wave of coal-fired power
plants under construction. Republicans and the industry now say
environmental regulations are partly to blame for shuttering some of
the oldest and dirtiest coal plants.
Jim
DiPeso of ConservAmerica, a group that recently changed its name from
Republicans for Environmental Protection, says the EPA is caught in the
center of a perfect storm. "This time of greater cynicism about
government, more economic anxiety and the fact that the problems are
not immediately apparent, has created this political problem for EPA,"
he said.