As we mark the 20th anniversary of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more than a dozen federal environmental statutes have been passed since the Agency was created in 1970. Congress' method for solving environmental problems has been to enact more laws, often in reaction to catastrophes.¹ Pending legislation to create a cabinet-level Department of the Environment represents a unique opportunity to restructure federal laws and environmental regulatory programs. Rather than reflecting reaction to the latest environmental catastrophe, environmental laws should provide strong incentives to prevent the generation of pollution in the manufacturing process and recognize the cross-media effects of pollution by setting standards that assess a plant's overall impact on air, soil, surface water, and ground-water.² Now is the time for the Administration and Congress to organize and recodify the federal environmental statutes into a single coherent structure.