efforts to clean up our air, water and

efforts to clean up our air, water and land. The EPA is responsible for a dozen major environmental laws, dealing with issues that literally touch the lives of every American. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, published 40 years ago, awakened the nation to the need for envi-' ronmental protection. A series of cati astrophic events in the 60s and early 70s brought the notion of environmental protection into the mainstream I of American life. i In Pittsburgh, the v iew of downr town was obscured because the air > was so polluted with the orange, acrid i smoke from the steel mills that lined > the river. In Cleveland, the Cuyahoga River carried so much debris and i industrial effluent that it actually burst 1 into flames. Pilots Hying 5,000 feet over the Delaware River near j Philadelphia could smell the stench of ; the polluted waters. Love Canal became a national symbol of corpo; rate irresponsibility as Hooker chetnis cal left an entire community sitting atop a toxic stew that was poisoning the town. Add to that depressing list the infamous Kepone incident in Hopewell, and you have a good sense a of the national perception of environ5 mental issues a quarter century ago. e The problems were great, obvious, if and crying out for national leadership.