Reform may be difficult but it's not impossible. Scrapping it is. Environmental protection has strong support with the public. To scrap the agency, you have to repeal the laws and that's not going to happen.We aren't drilling in the tiny TINY portion of ANWR, an area that is literally an arctic desert bereft of human occupation, minimal wildlife occupation, and with no aesthetic beauty whatsoever because the EPA won't approve ANY process for going after the substantial oil reserves there.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have burned up when we lost California homes to wildfires because the EPA would not allow the homeowners to clear the brush away from their homes due to that MIGHT disturb the habitat of some protected rat. (I'm sure those fires didn't disturb that habitat though.)
We haven't built a major, large capacity refinery in this country since 1977, mostly because the EPA regulations make it far too difficult and expensive to do so. The few very small refineries and expansions that have finally met EPA specifications and have been built since then--the last in 2008 in Wyoming--have not handled more than a tiny fraction of the increase in demand since 1977.
We have millions of acres of prime cropland producing crops for ethanol, almost all at a cost to the taxpayer, because the government is making it more lucrative to use for that purpose than to grow food crops. And, in addition to that consuming large quantities of taxpayer monies as no ethanol plant has yet turned a profit, we are also seeing the higher costs of fruit and produce at the supermarket along with a much higher amount of imported produce coming in which has to be affecting trade balances.
We recently had a plastics manufacturer wanting to build a plant here in Albuquerque and he had bid on some property that suited his needs continent on him being able to get the necessary permits. After three years of waiting for EPA studies and approval to be given, he gave up and took his millions of dollars and 800 jobs to Texas. Shortly after that the EPA approved a chicken processing outfit--a much MUCH dirtier operation than the plastics manufacturing would have been--on that same land. As that expanded an existing operation, net new jobs, about 15. I suppose it was just coincidence--according to a local investigative reporter--that the chicken outfit had made a large donation to the Democratic Party??????
There are hundreds, probably thousands of examples like this that should be of concern to Americans of whatever political ideology. Reform doesn't seem possible. Just scrap the darn thing and start over with the small, efficient, effective agency that the EPA was when it first started out.
The size of the Dept. would have little effect on the headline grabbers you listed. ANWR is protected by laws and international treaties. The EPA would move to stop drilling regardless of their size. If the EPA was seriously reduced in size, the super funds used to cleanup toxic waste would most probably be cut serious as would services to businesses such as education and and certification.
I'm sorry but I'm not buying it. When an agency becomes so big that it exists only for itself, it is time to dismantle it and start over. All they have to do is pass legislation that assigns the necessary functions of the EPA to other agencies, then defund and dismantle it. There is nothing, not even Supreme Court decisions, that cannot be undone if we have the will and competence to do it when necessary.
That's a huge "if," but your position is still 100% on the mark.