New Legislation Aims to Restore EPA’s Core Mission

Photos by Micheli Oliver

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) used to protect your air and water. Now Congress has to protect the EPA.

For five decades, the EPA has stood as a vital institution in American life that both parties helped build and maintain with the shared agreement that clean air and clean water were never supposed to be partisan. That agreement is now broken. The agency created to safeguard public health is being hollowed out from within, and the impacts will be felt far beyond its office walls. It’ll show up in our lungs, in our rivers, in our snowpack, and in the lives of those who come after us.

On September 16, Congress moved to restore that agreement. POW was honored to join Rep. Sean Casten and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse as they introduced the Environmental Health Restoration Act (EHRA), legislation built to restore the EPA’s core mission: protecting public health, clean air, clean water, and our climate.

What the EHRA Actually Does

Over the last year, federal actions have gutted environmental protections tied to clean air, clean water, and climate pollution, and crippled the EPA’s authority to enforce those protections. The EHRA is Congress’s solution to that. It restores the EPA’s authority to protect public health, reinforces science-based safeguards, and makes clean air and clean water protections harder to unravel every time administrations change.

Pollution doesn’t respect state lines. Wildfire smoke, air pollution, and contaminated waterways hit communities and economies across the map, and the outdoor recreation, tourism, agriculture, hunting, and fishing industries pay the price.

“The Trump EPA has fully abandoned its decades-long duty to protect Americans’ health and safety. Its relentless attacks on science have delivered for big political donors while poisoning our air and water and speeding up the climate crisis,” said Sen. Whitehouse. “Our bill would jumpstart the long process of restoring the science, the scientists, and the original mission guiding the EPA.”

Why POW Was in the Room

We supported Congressional action for a durable, affirmative response to the Trump administration’s rollback of environmental protections. And we brought together a coalition of athletes, scientists, businesses, and outdoor communities to advocate for a common-sense solution that puts community and environmental health first. As a result, POW showed up in D.C. to celebrate the bill’s formal introduction.

At the press event on the Capitol lawn, that coalition showed up in force, including:

• Rep. Sean Casten
• Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse
• Three-time Olympian, World Cup Champion, and Ski Alliance member Tommy Ford
• POW Bike Captain Barry Wicks
• POW Ski Alliance member Sierra Quitiquit
• POW Run Captain Jenny Jurek
• Former EPA scientist and POW Science Alliance member Stuart Nissenbaum 
• League of Conservation Voters

Tommy summed up what’s at stake from his years of experience training in the mountains: “I’ve seen less and less snow, glaciers shrinking at a not so glacial pace and volatile air quality. This directly affects our community’s health and economy. A stronger, more durable EPA is essential for clean air, clean water and a strong healthy community.”

We also worked with our partners from League of Conservation Voters, Surfrider, Natural Resource Defense Council, and Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance to endorse the bill, creating a broad community of support for needed Congressional leadership.

“Rolling back environmental protections has real consequences for the places and experiences that define the outdoor community. It means dirtier air, greater climate pollution, more threats to public health and accelerating damage to our winters, waterways and public lands,” said Ben Gubits, POW’s VP of Advocacy & Campaigns. “The Environmental Health Restoration Act draws a clear line: the EPA must follow science, enforce the law and put people ahead of polluters.”

Something is Building

While on the Hill for the introduction, we met with five congressional offices, including Reps. Andrew Garbarino, Maxine Dexter, and Sens. Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley, and Ron Wyden, deliberately meeting with Republicans and Democrats alike to ask each office to co-sponsor the EHRA.

In every room, the ask was the same: join the bill and help us build a durable coalition around clean air, clean water, and public health.

We’re clear-eyed that this bill likely won’t pass this year. In fact, the more realistic weather window for passage may not open until 2029. This is how major federal legislation moves. An idea develops, champions step forward, a bill is introduced, coalitions grow, and the record builds until the right conditions for passage exist.

Now we move into the next phase by growing congressional and stakeholder support, turning coalition momentum into organizing power, and playing the long game into the 120th Congress.

Now it’s time to build. Contact your lawmakers and ask them to put people over polluters by co-sponsoring the Environmental Health Restoration Act.