EPA Deregulation: What NYC Looked Like Before the EPA | Invesloan.com

By the end of the 1960s, New York City had already been dealing with the effects of its unregulated pollution.

The city shorelines were seen as “municipal chamber pots,” landfills and illegal dumping lined the city’s surroundings, and the air quality had gotten so bad that it was affecting people’s lungs, The New York Times reported.

In the first six months of 1973, more than 300 oil spills occurred in the New York City area, The New York Times reported.

According to a 1973 Coast Guard survey cited by the newspaper, more than 800 oil spills occurred in the mid-Atlantic region during the same time period.

The high air pollution levels meant residents often had their view of the cityscape obscured.

A historic smog event in 1966, when a mass of warm air trapped pollutants from vehicles, factories, and chimneys, prompted the city to update its local air quality laws in the late 1960s, the Times reported.

The Clean Air Act, passed in 1970, allowed the EPA to set regulations for industrial pollution and authorized the agency to create National Ambient Air Quality Standards to promote air quality regulation throughout the country.

Today, the EPA regulates landfills and auto salvage yards, protecting shores from becoming junkyards.

Over the years, the EPA has spearheaded mass trash removals that focus on toxic chemicals. According to the agency, some New York City residents worried about pollution and ecological damage from the Jamaica Bay landfill in the early 1970s.

In 2011, the city of New York and the US Interior Department reached an agreement for a collaborative effort to improve the bay’s environmental conditions.

Efforts to continue improving the shore have continued into the 2020s.

In the 1970s, New Jersey began to crack down on illegal dumping after toxic waste began being detected on the marshes of Newark, as reported by The New York Times.

A landfill in Staten Island, called Fresh Kills, was the largest in the world. In 2023, the first phase of its restoration into a park was completed and North Park opened.

In 2013, The New York Daily News reported that a New York City Sanitation Department study found high concentrations of two toxins banned by the EPA on the Gravesend Bay landfill, where the children in the picture played.

By 1992, regulations to prevent waste from being dumped on the shores around the city and efforts to clean them up had begun, with The New York Times reporting the end of the era of “using the ocean as a municipal chamber pot.”

The 1992 EPA mandate meant that processing plants for raw sewage began popping up around the city.

Today, the EPA sets standards on waste produced by oil and gas industries, with the goal of limiting public health hazards.

Building construction has long contributed to air pollution in NYC, though the EPA now regulates emissions from construction equipment.

In 2010, the EPA estimated that the Clean Air Act prevented over 160,000 early deaths, 130,000 heart attacks, and millions of cases of respiratory illness.

The Trump administration has announced plans to cut back on EPA funding and staffing, with The New York Times reporting in March that the administration planned to eliminate the agency’s research branch.

As the current administration’s EPA leadership launches the “Biggest Deregulatory Action in US History,” as called by the agency, regulations for how industries emit waste into the air, water, and soil will begin to change.

Some reports suggest that if the Trump administration dismantles more of the EPA, Americans could return to the environmental and health conditions that predated the agency’s regulations.