An Agency Seeking Its Own Level

The idea of admitting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to the Cabinet deserves little discussion or debate: Congress should just go ahead and do it.

Almost every other major nation has a ministry of the environment that shares the same high status as foreign relations, the Treasury, transportation and defense. In fact, Italy and the United States are the only two major countries in which environmental protection is not a full Cabinet-level organization, says Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio). Why should the United States remain in that category?

President Bush had opposed creation of any more Cabinet departments because he wanted to keep his circle of top officials a manageable one. A reasonable position: There are 14 Cabinet posts, the most recent being veterans affairs. But now that Bush is reported to have dropped his opposition, congressional supporters of legislation to promote the EPA say prospects for passage this year are good.

A reorganization plan sent to Congress by President Richard M. Nixon in July, 1970, created the EPA as an independent agency. Six months earlier, when he signed legislation establishing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), he declared that the nation’s policy objective was to create and maintain “conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony.”

That was the year of the first Earth Day as well, celebrated on April 22. The 1970 outbreak of environmental awareness was prompted in part by the spill from a Union Oil Co. rig in the ocean off Santa Barbara the year before. This year of 1990, a year following another major oil disaster, and following 20 years of enhanced environmental awareness and warning, is an entirely appropriate time to elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to Cabinet status. In fact, a worthy goal would be to have the President sign the bill into law on April 22.