This interview is a reconstruction based on historical research into early EPA enforcement strategies and state-federal regulatory partnerships in the 1970s. Vernon Stillwater is a composite character representing Pennsylvania environmental inspectors who worked the Ohio River industrial corridor during this period. The events, enforcement dynamics, and "gorilla in the closet" strategy described are documented historical facts; the personal perspective is informed speculation grounded in archival materials and oral histories.
Vernon Stillwater spent eighteen years as a water quality inspector for Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Resources, most of them watching the Ohio River turn colors that didn't exist in nature. He started in 1967, three years before the EPA existed, when state environmental enforcement meant writing reports that steel companies filed in circular cabinets. By the time he retired in 1985, he'd helped shut down discharge pipes that had been poisoning the river since before he was born.
We spoke in his Pittsburgh home, where he keeps a filing cabinet full of water samples from the 1960s. Each jar is labeled with a date and a color that shouldn't exist in water.
You started inspecting industrial sites before anyone had heard of the EPA. What was that like?
Vernon: Theater. Pure theater.
I'd show up at a steel mill with my clipboard and my water testing kit, and the plant manager would walk me around like I was a visiting dignitary. Very polite. Very accommodating. We'd stand at the discharge pipe together, watching whatever color it was that day. Sometimes rust orange. Sometimes this chemical blue that hurt to look at. And he'd nod seriously while I explained the state water quality standards they were violating.
Then I'd write it all down. He'd sign the report. We'd shake hands.
And absolutely nothing would happen.
The state had given these companies "incremental compliance schedules." Beautiful phrase, that. Meant they'd agreed to stop poisoning the river eventually, over time, when it was convenient. Most of these schedules stretched five, ten years into the future. The companies knew we wouldn't enforce them. Hell, we knew we wouldn't enforce them. Pennsylvania didn't have the money or the political will.1
What changed when the EPA formed in 1970?
Vernon: At first? Nothing. We were skeptical. Another layer of bureaucracy, we figured. More reports to file.
But then William Ruckelshaus came in as the first administrator, and he had this strategy he called being a "gorilla in the closet."2
He laughs.
I remember the first time I heard that phrase at a regional meeting. Ruckelshaus's deputy was explaining the new approach: the EPA wasn't going to replace state enforcement, they were going to back it up. Be the threat we could point to when companies dragged their feet.
The federal government with actual enforcement power and funding, just waiting in the closet. Ready to step in if the companies didn't take us seriously.
Suddenly my clipboard meant something. When I showed up at that steel mill, I wasn't just Vernon from the state office anymore. I was Vernon who could call in the EPA if they didn't start taking the compliance schedule seriously.
Did you ever actually call them in?
Vernon: Didn't have to. Not at first.
Just the possibility changed everything. I'd be in a meeting with a plant manager—same guy who'd been nodding politely at me for three years while doing nothing—and I'd mention that the EPA was reviewing cases where state compliance schedules weren't being met.
You could see it in their faces. The calculation changing.
Because the EPA could bring federal enforcement actions. Real penalties. Public scrutiny. These were companies that had been negotiating with states for decades, slow-walking everything, knowing we couldn't really touch them. Suddenly there was something in the closet that could bite.3
The first big test was Armco Steel. Ruckelshaus went after them directly for pollution violations. Every plant manager in Pennsylvania was paying attention to that case. It was like watching someone finally call a bluff that had been running for thirty years.
What was it like being on the ground during that shift?
Vernon: Complicated.
Look, I knew these guys. The plant managers, the engineers. Some of them were trying to figure out how to reduce discharge without shutting down operations. Steel mills don't just install new filtration systems overnight. It's expensive, it's technically complex, and in the early '70s nobody was entirely sure what "clean enough" even meant.
But others... they'd been getting away with it so long they couldn't imagine actually having to stop.
My job was to be the person who showed up and said: this has to stop. Here's your timeline. The EPA is watching.
He pauses, looking at his filing cabinet of water samples.
I've got a jar in there from 1969, from a discharge pipe at a mill in Monessen. The water is genuinely purple. Purple! When I showed it to the plant manager, he told me it was a temporary dye issue, they were working on it.
I filed my report. Nothing happened.
I went back in 1972, after the Clean Water Act passed, with federal backing. Took another sample. Still purple. But this time when I showed it to him, I didn't ask nicely. I told him the EPA was reviewing the case and they had six months to fix it or face federal action.
Took them four months. Four months to fix something that had been "temporary" for three years.
Did you feel like the bad guy?
Vernon: Sometimes.
Especially in towns where the mill was the only major employer. I'd be at the grocery store, and someone would recognize me—maybe their husband worked at the plant—and they'd say something about how the environmental people were going to put everyone out of work.
And I'd stand there holding my milk, thinking about the kids in those same towns with asthma rates three times the state average. The fish that had disappeared from the river. The water that came out of taps smelling like chemicals.
Someone was going to be the bad guy in that story no matter what. Either I was the bad guy for enforcing standards, or the companies were the bad guys for poisoning the river, or the politicians were the bad guys for letting it happen.
I decided I'd rather be the bad guy who stopped the purple water.
Looking back, what do you think the EPA got right in those early years?
Vernon: Ruckelshaus understood something crucial: you can't ask nicely forever.
Environmental protection isn't a favor you request from companies, it's a standard you enforce. And enforcement only works if there's actual power behind it.
Before the EPA, state regulators like me were writing reports that went nowhere. We had no leverage. The companies knew it, we knew it, everyone knew it. The EPA gave us leverage. Not because they swooped in and took over—mostly they didn't—but because they existed. Because they could swoop in.
That "gorilla in the closet" thing sounds silly, but it's exactly right. Most of the time the gorilla stays in the closet. But everyone knows it's there, and that changes the whole dynamic.4
What would you tell someone today trying to enforce climate regulations?
Vernon: He's quiet for a moment, looking at the filing cabinet again.
That it's going to take longer than you think. That you'll write reports that feel pointless. That people will call you the bad guy for trying to protect them. That companies will negotiate and delay and promise to do better eventually.
And that you need the gorilla in the closet.
Whatever the equivalent is now—federal climate enforcement, carbon pricing with teeth, something that makes voluntary compliance stop being voluntary. Because I watched thirty years of voluntary compliance on water pollution, and you know what it got us?
Purple rivers.
The only thing that worked was making it not voluntary anymore. Making it expensive to pollute and cheap to comply. Giving state and local regulators the backup to actually do their jobs.
He opens the filing cabinet, pulls out a jar from the back. The water inside is clear.
This is from 2005, same discharge pipe in Monessen. Took thirty-six years to get from purple to clear. Thirty-six years. But we got there. Not by asking nicely.