The life cycles of the Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency: 1970-2035

213 Pages·2016·1.96 MB·English

by  Balint

The Life Cycles of the Council
on Environmental Quality and the
Environmental Protection Agency

The Life Cycles of the Council
on Environmental Quality and
the Environmental Protection
Agency
1970–2035
JAMES K. CONANT
AND
PETER J. BALINT
1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
© Oxford University Press 2016
First Edition published in 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Conant, James K., author. | Balint, Peter J., 1950– author.
Title: The life cycles of the Council on Environmental Quality and the
Environmental Protection Agency : 1970–2035 / James K. Conant and Peter J.
Balint.
Description: Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2016] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015032488| ISBN 9780190203702 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780190203719 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Environmental policy—United States. | United States.
National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. | Council on Environmental
Quality (U.S.) | United States. Environmental Protection Agency.
Classification: LCC GE180 .C658 2016 | DDC 363.7/05610973—dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015032488
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Webcom, USA
In Memory of John W. Gaston, Jr.
Whose visionary leadership of the Water Resources and Hazardous
Waste Divisions in New Jersey’s Department of Environmental
Protection during the 1980s provided the inspiration for this book.
J.K.C.
To Judy
P.J.B.

CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
1. Environmental Politics, Policy, and Administration in the United
States 1
2. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Rise of
Environmental Protection in the 1970s, and the Political Drama of the
Next Three Decades 13
3. Life Cycle Models of Organizations 28
4. The Council on Environmental Quality: 1970–2010 52
5. The Environmental Protection Agency: 1970–2010 71
6. Comparing the Paths of the Council on Environmental Quality and
the Environmental Protection Agency and Assessing the Life Cycle
Models 102
7. The Future of the Council on Environmental Quality and the
Environmental Protection Agency: 2015–2035 121
Postscript: Sustainability and the Environmental Protection Agency 142
Appendix 1 153
Appendix 2 162
Notes 165
Bibliography 183
Index 191

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the U.S. governmental system, executive branch agencies are assigned
the duty of implementing legislation passed by Congress and signed into
law by the president. Consequently, whether a public law is successfully
implemented will depend in part on the health, vitality, and even sur-
vival (life cycle) of the agency or agencies assigned to implement it. In
this book, we present a life cycle study of the Council on Environmental
Quality (CEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These
two agencies are assigned the task of implementing a variety of laws de-
signed to protect the environment and human health. The CEQ was cre-
ated in the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), which
was signed into law on January 1, 1970. The EPA was created by President
Richard Nixon in Reorganization Plan No. 3, which was submitted to
Congress in July 1970.
The development of this book was a multiyear collaboration in which
each author made equal contributions to the final product. This book
manuscript incorporates the work on the CEQ and EPA we had published
in two previous journal articles; it also contains a substantially expanded
version of the work contained in those articles. In developing this book we
drew upon the literatures of public administration, organization theory,
public policy, political science, and environmental politics and policy—
and we think we make a useful contribution to each of them.
The intellectual origins of this book date back to the 1980s, when
Conant was teaching environmental politics and policy at Rutgers