To the delight of American industrialists and their friends in the GOP, freshman U. S. Representative Cory Gardner (CO – District 4) appears determined to erode as much of the regulatory authority of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency as he is able.

The EPA was born during the term of Richard Nixon, based upon an April 1970 memorandum of the President’s Advisory Council on Executive Organization titled ‘Federal Organization for Environmental Protection. ’ If the GOP itself was aware of the need for federal regulations on polluting industries in 1970, how much more are those regulations obviously necessary in our resource-depleting and waste-generating consumerist culture of 2011?

The memorandum recognized that “The economic progress which we have come to expect, or even demand, has almost invariably been at some cost to the environment. ” It further states that “Some means must be found by which our economic and social aspirations are balanced against the finite capacity of the environment to absorb society’s wastes. ”

Before Mr. Gardner goes too far in his personal tirade against the EPA, Mr. Gardner’s zeal against environmental regulations is not only misguided and misinformed, it is downright dangerous.

Charles Hanson
Longmont, CO. 80503