Leon G. Billings, the architect of the Clean Air and Clean Water Act, passed away from a stroke at the age of 78 on Nov. 15 in Nashville, where he was visiting a grandson.

Billings was born on Nov. 19, 1937 and grew up in Helena, Montana, breathing clean air and enjoying country life. His parents were editors of a weekly newspaper, The People’s Voice, which was owned by a farmer-labour cooperative.

The Voice did battle with daily newspapers controlled by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, and Leon’s father Harry was known as a firebrand who lived by the motto above his column in The People’s Voice: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of moral crisis, refuse to take a stand.”

Leon graduated from the University of Montana in 1959, majoring in history and political science. He worked as a reporter and farmworker organiser in California, and went on to become a lobbyist for public power companies on the one hand and an environmental aide on Capitol Hill on the other.

After lobbying for the American Public Power Association, Billings was recruited to join the Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution of the Senate Committee on Public Works in 1966, and worked as Mr. Muskie’s chief of staff from 1966 to 1978. Billings later followed Muskie to the State Department, and when Muskie was named to the cabinet, he became Muskie’s executive secretary.

Billings went on to teach and consult, advising clients and corporations on how to “live and profit” while complying with environmental laws. It was as an environmental aide on Capitol Hill that Billings forged his greatest legacy though – helping Americans breathe a little easier as the largely unheralded chief architect of the 1970 Clean Air Act.

Mr. Billings was also instrumental in drafting the 1972 Clean Water Act, as well as amendments, passed in 1977, to both landmark antipollution laws.

The Clean Air Act was “probably the most radical statute ever enacted,” Billings said in an interview: “We were in a full-scale war between protecting public health and welfare from environmental degradation and the profit motives of corporate America.”

Billings was seen as being abrasive by many, and was not very popular on the Hill, but in a time when there was rampant oil pollution, the first Earth Day had just been sponsored by Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Wisconsin Democrat, and the Nixon administration was under pressure, Billings engineered his legislative coups as a shrewd, credible and dauntless negotiator.

In short, Billings got the job done, and we have a lot to thank him for.

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