The History of the American Environmental Policy Reflects How

Troubled Waters: The Confluence of Local, State and Federal Environmental Policy at the Headwaters of the Dolores River, from the Height of the Cold War to 2004 By Rebecca Levy Major: U.S. History Fort Lewis College Mentor: Michael Fry, PhD ABSTRACT Guaranteeing a sufficient supply of clean water is one of the biggest environmental problems facing the United States. This problem is dramatically exacerbated in the arid Southwest, where the limited water resources are shrinking, as demand for clean water is increasing. Compounding the problem is the environmental contamination from historic mining activities. Often located near headwaters, abandoned hard rock mines and mine waste piles deposit heavy metals into the streams and rivers of many of the western watersheds. Pollution from historic mining activities further degrades the quality of this limited resource, making the protection of clean water essential to the viability of life in the west. The town of Rico, Colorado is situated at the headwaters of the Dolores River, a tributary to the Colorado, and is surrounded by abandoned silver, lead, zinc, gold and copper mines. Rico‟s mines have been contaminating the Dolores River for over a century. Despite its isolated location, the environmental history of the Rico region illustrates how actions undertaken locally are determined by state and federal policy decisions. These policy decisions are often influenced by national public sentiment and economic trends, rather than empirical science, remedial objectives or local needs. This study is part of a growing body of environmental history that focuses on the evolution of environmental policy. By incorporating previously unused official accounts from town records, including board minutes and letters, this study contributes to future research on the history of Rico, and on environmental history in general. Levy 1 The history of American environmental policy reflects how American society valued the natural environment. During the 1960s and 1970s a significant shift occurred in the American perception of nature and the environment: ecological health became directly linked to human health, and a broad public sentiment arose that government actively enforce environmental protection regulations. In one century, the role of government in relation to natural resources went from one of management of resources for present and future uses, to preservation of resources for the enhancement of American quality of life, to protection of ecological health through punishment of those who undertook activities that threatened ecosystems. One way to explore these trends in environmental values is to examine how human health and environmental protection policies were implemented on the ground during a specific era, at a specific location. Rico, Colorado, an historic former mining town located at the headwaters of the Dolores River in the southwest San Juan Mountains, provides a laboratory setting for investigating the environmental and human health impacts of hard rock mining, and the ability of federal, state and local policies to deal with these impacts; specifically air, water and soil quality. In Rico, as well as the rest of the country, enforcement of environmental protection regulations was influenced by national political and economic trends. Popular health and environmental causes, federal budget cuts for environmental enforcement, and the will, or lack thereof, by politicians and bureaucrats to deal with the environment, determined how actions were undertaken on the ground. My paper examines how these factors influenced federal, state and local government responses to environmental problems in Rico from the late 1950s through the EPA‟s threat of designating Rico a Superfund site in the early 2000s. Through this research project, local health and environmental issues and policies specific to historic hard rock mining communities are examined and placed within the larger context of the development of American environmental policy. With this analysis, it is evident that American political and economic trends have shaped environmental policies and regulations, such that actual policy implementation and regulatory enforcement is ineffectual in providing adequate, long-term solutions to environmental problems caused by hard rock mining. To develop this argument, I will first look at the historiography of environmental history to place this study in the context of previous academic works. I will then describe the development of federal and state environmental policies, both before and after the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Next, I will describe the past sixty years of local reaction in the Rico community to negative environmental impacts brought about by hard rock mining activities, and analyze to what extent federal and state environmental policies have addressed or ignored the concerns of the local community. In the conclusion, I will summarize the influence of public opinion on environmental policy, and suggest that, as is evident in Rico, the vacillating nature of politics prevents effective solutions to long-term environmental issues. HISTORIOGRAPHY The relatively new field of environmental history began as an offshoot of intellectual and political history. The early environmental interpretations of American history often focused on the debate between utilitarian and preservationist values of conservation. These interpretations were founded on Samuel Hays‟s Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (1959) and Roderick Nash‟s Wilderness and the American Mind (1967). Hays‟s work placed utilitarian conservation in the center of the progressive political movement, while Nash‟s work placed wilderness conservation at the center of understanding American thought (White, 1985). More recently, Donald Worster approached environmental history through studying the intellectual history of science. Rather than focusing on conservation like Hays, Nash and their successors, Worster focused on the science of ecology to illustrate how those studies reflected Levy 2 specific cultural values. In Nature’s Economy (1977), Worster argued that scientific studies of nature were divided into two conflicting views; one, that humans are in a symbiotic relationship with nature, and two, that humans dominate nature. The increase in environmental regulations and their enforcing agencies has, in recent years, provided a new context for the study of political and economic influences on the environment (Smith, 2000). Rather than taking an abstract intellectual approach to determine popular American thought on the value of nature, my research will include regional and national economic and political trends and how they shaped environmental policies, and the influence of environmental policies on a particular social and natural local ecology. According to historian Richard White, focusing on small, relatively isolated regions can provide laboratory-like settings for understanding social and environmental changes that can contribute to a national understanding of environmental history (1985). THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEDERAL AND STATE POLICY In the 1960s the federal government began a number of policies to prevent environmental pollution. The Clean Air Act of 1963 attempted to clear the skies of harmful contaminants like acid rain and smog. The Water Quality Control Act of 1966 strengthened earlier water pollution legislation by authorizing federal funds for local and state governments to implement water quality controls programs (Smith, 2000). But without regulations establishing national water quality standards, an authority to enforce and hold liable those who violated regulations, and adequate funding to support regulatory enforcement and remediation, these laws had no mechanism to improve the environment. It was not until Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 that meaningful enforcement became possible. On January 1, 1970 President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) into law. NEPA clearly correlated the health of the natural environment to human health and quality of life, and paved the way for the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA was created to enforce all federal environmental regulations. Recognizing the immense human impact upon the natural environment, NEPA authorized the federal government to provide financial and technical assistance to state and local governments, as well as public and private organizations to improve environmental quality “under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans.” NEPA‟s legislative declaration attempted to cover all the ranges of thought about the value of nature, and the government‟s role in protecting and conserving the natural environment. With several high profile water quality stories, namely the Cuyahoga River fire and Santa Barbara oil spill, the federal government passed the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972 (FWPCA). Through this act, and its subsequent amendments (commonly referred to as the Clean Water Act) the federal government authorized states to implement their own water quality standards. States, under the supervision of the EPA, were to require any point source polluters to attain a pollution discharge permit under the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). Most importantly, the FWPCA gave the EPA the ability to file

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