evidence: A Democratically led Congress had the option to reject the plan. But Congress greeted the proposal with widespread, bipartisan support. With few objections, the plan went into effect by law in September, 1970. [...] First, the widespread, bipartisan support for environmental protection led politicians to push for aggressive institutional reforms, even when those politicians, like Nixon, were not personally enthusiastic about the environment. It is not likely that the EPA could be created today, given the extreme polarization of the parties and the strong rightward shift of the Republican Party. This is despite the fact that the agency’s key functions – protecting clean air, water and land – are very popular with the public. [...] Plans for the agency made it clear that the EPA was supposed to have the scientific capacity to set standards and respond to new, unforeseen, threats to the environment and human health. It was also intended to have the capacity to monitor compliance with and ensure enforcement of standards. Above all, the EPA was clearly supposed to be focused on environmental protection – meaning both human health and ecological health – not a balancing of resource development and environmental protection. That formulation had been explicitly rejected.