The Earth Institute presents Origins of Environmental Law Lecture Series Description: Introduction to Early Environmental Legislation, Pre-1969.  

This seminar is part of a semester-long lecture series entitled The Origins of Environmental Law: Regulation and Evolution. Leon G. Billings and Thomas C. Jorling are the two senior staff members who led the Senate environment subcommittee which originated and developed major environmental legislation in the 1970s, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Superfund Act. Over the course of a single decade, Congress enacted a series of environmental laws that defined the direction and character of environmental policy in the US and globally. Learn about the process that led to these seminal laws from the writers of the legislation themselves.

What was the political setting before the introduction of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972? Billings and Jorling will discuss the nature of pollution politics, the structure of the Act, and the role of the Council on Environmental Quality. They will also discuss the influence of federal funds for waste treatment, and look at who the important political actors were during this time period. More generally, they will look at the relationship between funding and regulation, and the role that negotiation played in developing a national water quality standard.  

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