USEPA | 18,718 followers on LinkedIn. EPA was founded December 2, 1970, employs 17,000 people across the country & deals with United States environmental issues both domestically & abroad. President Richard Nixon proposed & Congress supported "a strong, independent agency."​ that viewed "the environment as a whole."​ The President's charge to the first EPA Administrator [a 38-year-old Assistant Attorney General named William Ruckelshaus] was to treat "air pollution, water pollution and solid wastes as different forms of a single problem."​