Please don’t take this personally, because I’m going to try to make it about the issue, not you personally.
The view that we don’t need the EPA anymore is myopic, and here are my reasons for saying this:
-The most obvious reason is that, if we were to shut down the EPA, polluters would not regulate themselves. They would go back to their old ways of polluting indiscriminately.
-Here in Florida, toxic algae blooms in our waterways have become a routine annual event. In Jacksonville, toxic algae blooms happen in the Saint Johns River, and the pollution comes from paper mills. With Jacksonville being a conservative town in a red state, they don’t do anything about it. It’s become the new normal. Where I live in the Treasure Coast area, the Indian River Lagoon has been experiencing toxic algae blooms caused by runoff from corporate sugar plantations. It’s hurt tourism, which is crucial to our economy, so this isn’t just a liberal hippy issue, it’s an economic issue. If that weren’t bad enough, we now also have flesh-eating bacteria in the Indian River Lagoon. Try saying those words out loud, “FLESH-EATING BACTERIA,” and then try telling me we don’t need the EPA.
-Remember that huge oil spill a few years back in the Gulf of Mexico? According to the people who live on the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, the tar balls that washed up on shore were nothing new. They’ve been a byproduct of the offshore oil rigs and oil refineries for as long as most people can remember.
-The air quality in parts of Louisiana and near Houston, where the states refuse to regulate polluters, is terrible. Cancer rates and childhood asthma rates are high in those areas thanks to those polluters. In addition to the pollution from the oil industry, chemical companies build their plants there thanks to the lack of local and state regulation.
-The EPA dropped the ball in Flint, Michigan, but the water still isn’t safe to drink there, and I’d hate to see how bad it is now if the EPA wasn’t involved in solving the problem.
I am glad air quality has improved in places like Los Angeles and New York, but there are still plenty of places where the air still isn’t safe to breathe. Try telling someone who lives in Houston who suffers from childhood asthma that we don’t need the EPA. Try telling someone who lives in a cancer pocket in West Palm Beach where Lockheed Martin poisoned the water supply that we don’t need the EPA. Living in a cancer pocket can really open your eyes to the fact that environmental regulation shouldn’t be a partisan issue.