EPA is declared a ‘rogue agency’

But it seemed like such a good idea at the time: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was founded with much fanfare and good will in 1970, when green thinking and eco-mindedness was a righteous thing indeed. Now the EPA is deemed “a rogue agency” that has outlived its purpose and “should be dismantled and replaced.” So says the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit that has a plan on how to do just that. “It made sense for there to be a single national agency given authority to enforce the nation’s new environmental protection laws in the first decade of the 1970s. But by the end of that decade, the lion’s share of benefits from that noble experiment were already achieved and the states could have been, and should have been, allowed to play their intended role in implementing the new programs,” says science director Jay Lehr, who authored the policy study. Instead of reforming the EPA, he proposes creating something called a “Committee of the Whole,” which has a certain 1970s ring to it. It would include all 50 state environmental protection agencies, and would replace the federal agency over a five-year period. “Fifty state environmental protection agencies with more than 30 years of experience have the talent to do the job without the oversight of 15,000 federal employees. It is, after all, well known that government close to the location of the governed is best for all,” Mr. Lehr says.  Source