The History of the California Environmental Protection Agency

Commitment to the Environment

California has regulated pesticides for more than 100 years. Its citizens - through their Legislature - have established a comprehensive body of law to control every aspect of pesticide sales and use and to assure that the state’s pesticide regulators also have the tools to assess the impacts of that use.

The first pesticide-related law was passed in this state in 1901, and since the 1960s, a whole body of modern, increasingly science-based pesticide law and regulation has come into being.

The California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) protects human health and the environment by regulating pesticide sales and use and by fostering reduced-risk pest management. DPR’s strict oversight begins with product evaluation and registration, and continues through statewide licensing of commercial applicators, dealers and consultants, residue testing of fresh produce, and local permitting and use enforcement by agricultural commissioners in each of the State’s 58 counties.

Early Pesticide Regulation: Focus on Consumer Fraud

Before World War II, pesticide regulation was a low priority at both the state and federal levels. Few pesticides were used in agriculture, primarily insecticides and fungicides. There was little concern about their long-term effects on health or the environment.

The focus of pesticide regulation in the early 20th century was on protecting pesticide users from fraud by ensuring product quality. Pesticides, like many products of the time (including foods and drugs), were often adulterated or mislabeled. It was not unusual for manufacturers to make extravagant claims for products that were useless at best, and sometimes destructive to the plants on which they were used.

California’s first pesticide law, passed in 1901, charged the Director of the Agricultural Experimental Station with ensuring the quality of a single product, an arsenic-based chemical known as "Paris Green."

In 1910, Congress passed the Federal Insecticide Act, essentially a labeling law concerned with protecting consumers from ineffective products or deceptive labeling. It contained neither a federal registration requirement nor any significant safety standards.

California’s parallel legislation, the State Insecticide and Fungicide Act of 1911, was also primarily concerned with mislabeling and adulteration, but went beyond federal law in that it required pesticides be registered (with the University of California) before they could be sold.

In 1921, the Economic Poison Act, transferred responsibility for pesticide registration to the California Department of Agriculture (CDA), created two years before from the State Commission on Horticul

One of the first environmental challenges the newly founded state government faced in the mid 1800s was debris from hydraulic mining following the gold rush.  Water quality concerns, dangers of flooding, impact on agriculture and hazards to navigation were issues every bit as real to nineteenth century Californians as they are at the start of the twenty-first century.

From these beginnings, state government's environmental efforts have expanded over the last century-and-a-half, as Californians have demanded increased protection of our state's resources, natural beauty, and quality of life.  Californians have led the nation in recognizing that a healthy economy and a healthy environment must go hand-in-hand.

California has always been a national pioneer in establishing the environmental programs now housed in the boards and departments of Cal/EPA, acting over time to reduce individual environmental risks posed by air and water pollution, solid and hazardous waste management and pesticide application.

As the California Environmental Protection Agency opens its new headquarters building, it celebrates its tenth anniversary.  By the standards of other agencies in Sacramento, it is young.  however, as the chapters in this book make clear, the components of Cal/EPA have a distinguished and pioneering history.  The Department of pesticide Regulation, for instance, recently celebrated its hundredth anniversary.  Cal/EPA's other boards, departments and offices have all pioneered protection of citizens, often breaking ground with nationwide firsts.

The new Cal/EPA building is important in a variety of ways:

• The revitalization of the state's capital city
• A ground breaking city/state partnership, with the state leasing a city-owned and privately managed building.
• A thoroughly sustainable and energy-efficient workplace that can serve as both a demonstration project and laboratory to make workplaces even better in the future.
• The first common home for the state's EPA and its six constituent parts.  For the first time, specialists in air, water and land protection are housed together and can consult and collaborate informally and continuously as cross-discipline environmental protection becomes more important to all of us.

What we know today, including the questions that we know must still be answered, is vastly greater than what we knew only a decade ago.  Our knowledge base provides ever-increasing evidence of the sensitivity of the environment and human health to chemical impacts.

We also have enough experience to know that economic prosperity and environmental protection are not only consistent with but dependent on each other.

This book tells Cal/EPA's story up to today and gives us a look at what will come next.

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