On New Year’s Day in 1970, President Richard Nixon appeared in San Clemente, California, for the momentous signing of the National Environmental Policy Act—the congressional statute that formally recast the government’s role from conserving the wilderness to protecting the health of the environment and the general public. In the previous decade, rising unrest over the link between pollution and poor health—spurred forward by Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking 1962 exposé Silent Spring and Lady Bird Johnson’s beautification campaign—gave birth to a burgeoning environmental movement demanding strong and urgent action from the federal government. Nixon, who was largely indifferent to environmental issues but sensitive about his own popularity, succumbed to the public pressure.

There was no evidence of any indifference in San Clemente that day when he laidout his new vision for the decade: “The 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment,” he said. “It is literally now or never.”

In the following months, the president moved quickly to fulfill his promise. In February, he rolled out an unprecedented 37-point plan on the environment; by April, he approved suggestions from the Advisory Council on Executive Organization to form an independent agency dedicated to enforcing environmental regulation. Whereas such enforcement responsibilities had previously been scattered across 15 other federal organizations—water pollution under the Department of Interior, air pollution and solid waste under the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and pesticides under the Department of Agriculture, to name a few—the Environmental Protection Agency would consolidate the authority over specific areas under one umbrella. After a summer of congressional hearings, the EPA became a government agency with its own member of the Cabinet. Part of its initial budget came from the other 15 agencies; a formal separate budget wasn’t established until January of the following year. Nixon appointed William D. Ruckelshaus, a 38-year-old moderate Republican and assistant attorney general plucked from the Department of Justice, to head the agency, which opened its doors on December 2.

Ruckelshaus swearing in as the first administrator of the EPA. Left to right: Nixon, Ruckelshaus, Jill Ruckelshaus (wife), Chief Justice Warren Burger. US Government/Wikimedia Commons

As the Trump administration concludes its first 100 days in office against a backdrop of aggressive efforts to dismantle the EPA, it may seem difficult to imagine a golden era of environmental legislation, ushered in by a conservative Republican president with strong bipartisan and public support. Yet 47 years ago, within the first 100 days of the EPA, Ruckelshaus successfully established a sweeping anti-pollution vision and laid the groundwork for a sophisticated and effective regulatory framework. Looking back on the EPA’s origins and early successes is a reminder of how much the agency was able to achieve with an engaged and supportive administration, Congress, and public.

“What defined EPA in its earliest days was less the need to define a regulatory agenda than a need to convey a sense of mission and purpose to the public, the states, and the regulated community,” Ruckelshaus recalled in a March 1988 EPA Journal article.