summer, the House and Senate approved the proposal. Unlike other agencies such as Occupational Safety and Health Administration (also established in 1970), the EPA was not established by a single enabling act of Congress. Components of the EPA In his message to Congress President Nixon stated that the national government was "not structured to make a coordinated attack on the pollutants which debase the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land that grows our food." According to Nixon, the assigned duties and responsibilities regarding pollution control for the environment were spread out among many discrete departments, creating a structure that often defied "effective and concerted action." To create more of an interrelated and effective system for dealing with environmental pollution, he proposed "pulling together into one agency a variety of research, monitoring, standard-setting and enforcement activities now scattered through several departments and agencies." Part of the intent of the reorganization was also to take away the job of pollution control from departments with economic promotional interests, as it was seen as a conflict of interest. Under the terms of Reorganization Plan No. 3, the Environmental Protection Agency would be created to absorb the following agencies: From the Department of the Interior, EPA would absorb the entire Federal Water Quality Administration, as well as pesticide study functions located elsewhere in the department. From the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Public Health Service, EPA would absorb the entire National Air Pollution Control Administration; the Environmental Control Administration's Bureau of Solid Waste Management, Bureau of Water Hygiene, and part of the Bureau of Radiological Health, and certain pesticides-related functions of the Food and Drug Administration. From the Department of Agriculture, the responsibilities of the Agricultural Research Service to register pesticides would be transferred. The new agency would also absorb the authority of the Council on Environmental Quality to perform studies on ecological systems and the duties of the Federal Radiation Council (which was completely absorbed into EPA) and the Atomic Energy Commission regarding radiation criteria and standards. Role of the EPA On December 16, 1970, the first Administrator of the EPA, William Ruckelshaus, declared that the agency had "a broad responsibility for research, standard-setting, monitoring and enforcement with regard to five environmental hazards; air and water pollution, solid waste disposal, radiation, and pesticides." In Reorganization Plan No. 3, President Nixon outlined the following as the roles and functions of