DDT Wars: Rescuing Our National Bird, Preventing Cancer, and Creating the Environmental Defense Fund

by Charles F. Wurster

in 1971 EDF was able to hire Dr. Leo M. Eisel, a water resources engineer with a PhD from Harvard University. Leo’s economic analyses on several of EDF’s dam cases clearly showed that these projects were not justified economically.

The Army Corps of Engineers, along with local construction and real estate interests, usually favored such projects to gain “free” federal funding in the name of flood control. As such projects continued to be built at great cost, so also did flood damage continue to increase.

EDF therefore advocated flood plain management, especially not building flood-sensitive structures within the flood plain.

If the fledgling EDF had prevailed in its lawsuit in the early 1970s, this catastrophic oil spill would not have happened.

In 1971 EDF hired Ernst R. Habicht Jr., a chemist with a PhD from Stanford University.

Utilities had to have the capacity to meet the peak periods of demand, with idle capacity the rest of the time.

The results were inefficient and excessive use of energy, increased pollution, decreased earnings for utilities, and inequitable distribution of costs to consumers.

Dr. Charles J. Cicchetti and William J. Gillen,

They argued for time-of-day or peak-load pricing to solve these problems. Some consumers would shift their demand to off-peak times to save money, the peak would be lower, pollution would be less, and utilities would not have to build as many power plants, or enlist the most expensive energy sources, to meet the lower peak.

price elasticity, which means that people buy less at higher prices, more at lower prices.

These EDF arguments were strongly influenced by Dr. William S. Vickrey of Columbia University, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1996, just three days prior to his death.

peak-load electricity pricing has spread around the country, especially for large consumers, but its adoption is still not as extensive as might be expected.

This beginning in energy policy, starting in 1971, has had a profound influence on EDF’s policies to the present day.

We encountered economic arguments from opponents, so if we were to prevail, we needed economists to make economic arguments of our own.

If an industry found it profitable to pollute, we would rearrange the economics to make it...

Applying the successful cap-and-trade strategy to carbon dioxide emissions has been a major emphasis in EDF’s climate change program.

These actions were initiated when EDF was barely a fledgling organization. All it took was for the science to be organized and articulated and the package presented by competent attorneys, and the matter was then on the public agenda.

By the end of 1972, the first year that EDF produced an annual report, EDF was pursuing 80 cases around the country.

Public membership rose from zero to 36,000 in those 22 months.

Economics had already appeared as a third leg on the stool, a discipline that was to become a vital force in EDF’s future. “If it works, try it” was the forerunner of EDF’s current tagline, “Finding the ways that work.”

few years later, in April 1971, he, along with a number of scientists and attorneys based in Auckland, incorporated the Environmental Defence Society (EDS). Its name and the method of approaching environmental protection came directly from EDF.

Meanwhile in the United States, five young lawyers, four from the Yale Law School, founded the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in 1970 as a public-interest law firm.

This informal arrangement works well and has had a significant influence on American environmental policies.

We had to get through that thicket, especially the standing barrier, before the scientific case against DDT could be heard and before EDF could play a role in protecting the environment and public health. We thank the legal team in Washington for their brilliance and perseverance in helping create what we now call environmental law, which allows public representation on issues to be heard and decided on their merits.

Late in 1970, President Nixon proposed and Congress approved creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in the process transferring the Pesticide Regulation Division from USDA to EPA. For pesticide regulation, this was no minor matter.

The first administrator of EPA was William D. Ruckelshaus, an attorney with a sterling record of public service in government.

The standing for citizens to sue the government, previously unavailable, had now been established by this precedent-setting decision. This was the firm beginning of what we now call “environmental law.”

If EDF had made no other contribution to the legal system than this, they would have made a highly significant mark in our legal history.

There are many environmental organizations that have taken on a case and made a useful precedent. There are, of course, instances where such organizations have obtained a particular result they sought, as with a particular highway, or a dam or wetland filling project. I know of no organization that has taken on a problem area, as EDF did with pesticides and DDT particularly, in which there has been anything like the long term commitment and sense of purpose that characterizes EDF.

At first they [the local trustees] were a little skeptical of this idea, but … it apparently grew on them, particularly when they found they had enough money to risk it. So they offered me a job and, more surprising, I accepted. They could only guarantee me three months’ salary [at a rate of $9,000 per annum]. But I liked the idea of being my own boss in my own office, even if the office consisted only of me.

Some of EDF’s work in [Washington, DC,] had been done by the public law firm of Berlin, Roisman and Kessler. Because of this association the EDF Board graciously rented a bit of space for me in this firm’s offices.

1910 N Street NW. Right

Chemicals are not “innocent until proven guilty”; they do not have human rights. Unless we treat them as guilty until proven innocent, they will deprive real human beings of their rights to health. The burden of proof must be on the chemicals and their makers—not on the human population. —CHARLES F. WURSTER (1972)

EDF was founded by average scientists and citizens without financial assets in 1967, as a child of the “DDT wars.”

EDF has matured into one of the largest and most influential environmental advocacy organizations in America,

with an increasing presence aroun...

Every new or difficult hurdle seemed to attract a new and dedicated person who knew how to surmount it

The EDF team was well educated and highly interdisciplinary; they worked well together and became good friends.

We used to joke that we were “saving the world”— now EDF is doing just that.

From its initial emphasis on litigation, strategies and tactics are now very different. Over the years “sue the bastards” evolved into something more like “finding the ways that work,” EDF’s current tagline.

Reducing the solid waste stream or increasing energy efficiency, for example, reduces environmental impact while increasing profit margins.

EDF convinced fisheries regulatory agencies and fishermen that the “catch shares” approach will benefit the fish, reduce bycatch, increase safety and profits for fishermen, and lead to sustainability for fisheries worldwide.

Economic arguments, long an EDF special strength, make such a...

EDF played a role in solving the “ozone hole” problem and in reversing acid rain effects.

EDF economist Dr. Dan Dudek advanced the “cap-and-trade” mechanism, which became part of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and significantly reduced acid rain at minimal cost.

Dan Dudek has convinced China to test cap-and-trade to reduce air pollution; he found “a way that works.

EDF has recently won important air quality victories through litigation. The true victors are healthier citizens … especially the children.

The legal actions aimed at controlling DDT changed the world. Scientists with plaintive voices became articulate plaintiffs, powerfully armed with information and experience. Newspapers discovered and wrote about ecology, poisons and the public welfare. The mission of government in protecting the public from such poisons became clear and the road to the enactment in the early 70’s of the revolutionary environmental laws was opened wide. Those laws are now protected and strengthened by powerful conservation-law groups who follow the early model established in the DDT wars that led to the Environmental Defense Fund more than four decades ago.

EDF is a thriving organization dedicated to improving the quality of the environment. It is a well-respected national and international organization with multiple offices both in the United States and overseas. With nearly 500 employees, it has combined law, science and economics in “finding the ways that work,”

Alexis de Tocqueville