The good news is that two members of Congress, John Faso, the Kinderhook Republican, and Peter Welch, the Vermont Democrat, are urging the federal Environmental Protection Agency to do more to prevent contamination of water supplies. The inspiration comes from the troubles first in Hoosick Falls and later in Newburgh and although the sources of the contamination are different, the chemical threat is similar.

At any other time, the letter would have been standard operating procedure — two representatives asking the EPA to do what it is supposed to do. But this is not a normal time. At the same time that the two were lobbying the EPA, a federal appeals court was forced to explain to the agency what its job is, what its responsibilities are.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the EPA cannot get rid of rules just because it does not like them, especially when the rules are critical in efforts to keep water and air clean.

The rules concerned methane emissions from new oil and gas wells, an effort by the Obama administration to restrict them from polluting air nearby. The EPA, under its new administrator, Scott Pruitt, is going after this and several other rules that at one time would have been considered essential tools in the agency’s arsenal, all in pursuit of the goals that have been at the core of the mission since it was founded in 1970.

The administrator is determined to free the nation from what he and the president say are onerous regulations, an opinion echoed by most Republicans in Congress most of the time and far too often by Faso. So it is important to remember that once upon a time, that party was on the other side.

Richard Nixon created the EPA with bipartisan support. Only in recent years has the effort to keep our water and air clean come under the attacks of those who, like Pruitt, are beholden to the interests of the oil and gas industries, among other polluters.

Earlier this year California and six other states challenged an EPA decision to allow farmers to use a pesticide which some research shows can harm children’s brains. The EPA claims that the decision to allow the use was grounded in science. A former official says that banning use of the chemical also was supported by science.

In the past, the EPA would come down on the side of caution in such cases. Not now.

We are going to see more of this. In the few months that he has been at the agency, Pruitt has worked to get rid of more than 30 environmental rules, an unprecedented reversal of the EPA’s traditional role.

The only hope for those who support efforts that the EPA and the GOP used to champion is for more court rulings like the recent one concerning methane.

It would help if Faso would see that the situations in Newburgh and Hoosick Falls are not unique, that the need to follow the science and protect both the environment and the people in it are the rightful mission of the EPA.