Unlikely Environmentalists: Congress and Clean Water, 1945–1972 (review)

Students of environmental politics tend to assume that knowledge or values drive history—that new laws, agencies, and ways of thinking are the product of insights into our impact on the planet, or reflect a heightened sense of the intrinsic value of nature. But as Milazzo argues, this assumption can obscure as much as it explains. In particular, it fails to account for a crucial period in American environmental history. In the early 1950s, pollution was considered to be, as President Eisenhower described it, a “uniquely local blight” not meriting federal attention (3). Yet two decades later, it was a national responsibility, impelling Washington to use both standards and subsidies to compel action.

In explaining how this change occurred, Milazzo draws attention to those who pursued environmental initiatives not just in the Sierra Club but also in more unexpected locales. Most important was Congress, which assembled the distinctive American system of environmental regulation, often far in advance of public demands. Several individuals within Congress became unlikely environmentalists—John Blatnik of Minnesota, who as chairman of the Subcommittee on Rivers and Harbors prodded Congress into passing the 1956 Water Pollution Control Act, and Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, who in the 1960s played a central part in strengthening the federal role in environmental regulation.

Blatnik, Muskie, and others were not necessarily motivated by concern for unsullied nature. For some, pollution control was merely efficient resource management—the necessary task of ensuring adequate clean water for industry. Ideas regarding management of complex systems, imported from the military and aerospace industries, as well as old-fashioned pork-barrel politics, were also important.

Ecological ideas were also sometimes influential, but often only by association with more established ways of thinking. Old ideas sometimes gained new life as they worked their way through complex institutions, demonstrating how some ways of doing things could persist even as the legislative landscape was transformed. One example was the Army Corps of Engineers’ adoption of pollution control when it became evident that the policy would complement rather than challenge its mission of building big dams. But ultimately, demands for action, as well as the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, strained the conventional apparatus of pollution control, forcing new initiatives, including the 1972 Clean Water Act—a law more rigorous than could have been imagined just a few years before.

In telling this story, Milazzo descends deeply into the detailed workings of congressional committees. In fact, the details are the story: In the forming of legislation, not just the ideas but also the institutional machinery that transformed these ideas into laws proved essential. In particular, a decentralized Congress gave opportunities for individuals like Muskie to make an area of policy their own, combining ideas and negotiating trade-offs to advance both the national agenda and their own ambitions.

Milazzo draws on many sources—legislative archives, interviews, and the published record. His approach is thoroughly interdisciplinary, combining brief biographies with legislative, political, and institutional histories, mingled with forays into environmental history and the history of science and sprinkled with insights from political science. He concludes by suggesting that his insights into the legislative process be applied to areas of policy beyond the environment. This is advice worth taking.