To the Editor:

We have made much progress in our long-term protections of air, water and the environment since President Richard Nixon signed the Environmental Protection Agency into law in 1970. 

I was a young adult in the 1970s. One of the big problems then was the depletion of the ozone layer. This layer, above the earth’s atmosphere, was being thinned by chemicals, including CFCs used in refrigerators and aerosol cans, including hairspray. Another problem was acid rain, which includes any type of precipitation that forms and contains toxic chemicals, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, and is very toxic to plants and wildlife.

 I remember there was a dispute over Tennessee acid rain blowing over into the North Carolina mountains and harming our trees and plants. If you remember the haze or smog atmosphere that often hung over the Western North Carolina mountains, blocking out the long-distance view, then you remember acid rain.  

I also remember mercury in fish, not being able to swim in or fish in contaminated beaches, lakes and ponds, the Great Lakes being so depleted of oxygen that they were called dead lakes and could not sustain life, pesticides such as DDT that nearly wiped out our American Bald Eagle, and large oil and chemical spills, leaking drums of toxic byproducts around waterways and in landfills, smoke stacks spewing noxious smog into the air and many other problems caused by an unregulated system with no oversight.  

Therefore, I was very concerned over President Trumps gutting the EPA with an executive order, blocking implementation of grants to states to help with environmental issues such as the coal ash dump by Duke Energy and putting forth an appointee to head the EPA, Scott Pruitt, who as attorney general of Oklahoma, is in several lawsuits against the EPA in his state and has proposed to do away with the agency.

We have made such progress in following EPA’s standards that we have forgotten, or maybe you have never experienced, what it was like before. Let’s all reflect on what we may be giving up without the environmental protections we now enjoy before we return to the “blighted landscape” that we are still struggling to overcome.

PJ Coulter

Waynesville