Editorial: The Perils of Pendulum Politics
3/22/25 – Enough of the pendulum politics already! We seem to swing from the left to the right and from overregulation to no regulation, oblivious to any middle ground.
The latest agency in the Washington crosshairs: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). No doubt, most business people can cite an extreme example of EPA overregulation. And no doubt, many will welcome a relaxation of environmental regulations.
But the last 45 years have proven that businesses can make a fair profit while still protecting the environment, jobs and public health.
Those old enough to remember a time before the EPA know what I’m talking about. As I read several stories today about the gutting of the EPA, I not-so-fondly remembered scary images from my early childhood growing up in the Cleveland and Pittsburgh areas in the 1950s.
- The Cuyahoga river catching on fire. Multiple times. Which led to the EPA’s formation.
- Coal miners doubled over with black-lung disease, gasping for breath.
- Choking, eye-watering smokestacks of the steel mills in Pittsburgh. The mills belched so much pollution that my father had to take a change of shirts to work. A white shirt would turn gray by midday.
At one time, people thought such horrors were the price of jobs and prosperity!
But the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen fifty-fold in the 45 years after the formation of the EPA in 1970. That’s far more than the seven-fold rise in the 45 years before the EPA.
Is Changing EPA’s Mission a Wink-Wink to Polluters?
I just finished reading two articles in the New York Times about the EPA. The first began, “The Trump administration said it would repeal dozens of the nation’s most significant environmental regulations, including limits on pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks, protections for wetlands…” Yada Yada.
The second article quoted Lee Zeldrin, new head of the EPA. He reportedly said, “Those changes…would allow the agency to better focus on its core mission and powering the Great American Comeback.”
The core mission no longer seems to be environmental protection as the name of the agency implies. According to Zeldrin, the core mission is now lowering the costs of “buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”
The same article also quoted Ann E. Carlson, a professor of environmental law at the UCLA School of Law. She said the changes at EPA are “…essentially a wink, wink to…pollute with what may be close to impunity.”
Need for Consistency
No doubt, most business people in Texas can cite an example of EPA overregulation. And no doubt, many will welcome a relaxation of environmental regulations.
But consider this. In general, one of the primary needs of most businesses is consistency. What CEO would invest a billion dollars in a new plant knowing that a change in the Oval Office could cause a regulatory flip back in the opposite direction before construction of the plant even finished?
Such uncertainty slows businesses down. It makes planning, forecasting, and decision-making much more difficult as business leaders weigh political probabilities.
Opportunities Overlooked
In my opinion, rather than only trying to make government more efficient with a chainsaw, we should be trying to make it work better. And when it comes to flood mitigation, opportunities abound.
Last night, I published an article about how Montgomery County has spent an incredible eight years running the grant gauntlet to obtain money to clean logjams out of its streams. And it could still be another year or more before the work can even begin. The work will likely take only months.
But instead of focusing on such obvious opportunities, we are simply lopping off branches of government that we still need.
Why We Still Need a Strong EPA
As I not-so-fondly reminisced about those horrific images from my childhood, I received a text about Hallett’s sand mine on the West Fork San Jacinto. The text contained a video showing the mine still leaking wastewater into the public water supply – after a Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) investigation.
State, county and local government agencies, such as TCEQ, are far more susceptible to lobbying groups, such as the Texas Aggregate and Concrete Association, than a Federal agency like the EPA.
The video shows a road acting like a berm to keep wastewater from escaping. But close scrutiny shows the wastewater going under the road, rather than over it, as it used to.
Historically, different levels of government in the U.S. complement each other. When local levels fail, we need other levels to help. Without the EPA as a backstop for the TCEQ, you will likely not only experience higher flood risk, but higher health risks, too.
During the COVID pandemic, the EPA announced a pause in its enforcement operations. Air pollution surged 62% in three weeks after the announcement, according to a Texas A&M study. Such are the perils of pendulum politics.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 3/22/25
2762 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
