For my monthly iteration on smog…

I grew up in the inland suburbs of Los Angeles in the 60’s & 70’s. I LOVE THE EPA!! And with all due respect to their work on water and soil pollution, their air quality work is the reason I’d sacrifice 5 of the first 10 Amendments before I’d give up the EPA. They’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I remember smog alerts. I remember when we couldn’t see the mountains 5 miles away, when I couldn’t ride my bike to school (3 miles) because the air was so crappy, the high school cancelled football practice, the elementary schools didn’t have recess, and the country club cancelled all tennis-court reservations because it was dangerous to do anything that might make people breathe hard. Factories shut down until it passed. Sometimes these alerts went for a week at a time. The dogs couldn’t even run around the yard.

Mom paid a small fortune for a special state-of-the-art air processor for the house, we had to change the filters every few weeks during ordinary times, but several times a day during smog alerts. There’d be black gunk coating the sheets, of stuff that everybody outside the house was just breathing. It stuck to the cars. Dad’s hospital, on smog days, had a special oxygen hangout room for asthmatics, babies and the elderly to come watch TV and read and breathe comfortably until it was safe for them to be out in the world.

I can almost forgive Watergate, because Nixon went along with putting special provision in the EPA that California is entitled to a waiver whenever they want to enact stricter emissions limits than the federal standard.

The EPA is my favorite federal agency of all.