In general, regulatory agencies like the EPA are grossly underfunded. To answer your question, “we” are “paying them for” doing the best they can with a huge set of problems and limited resources while navigating challenging competing political pressures.<p>If “we” want better, it would take shifting tax money toward those government functions and adjusting the law to give regulators a stronger mandate.<p>If you personally want to see such a change, the easiest first–order action you can take is helping get out the vote or donating money in competitive congress and senate elections, working to replace Republican Party lawmakers with ones from the Democratic Party. (Party affiliation is obviously not a perfect proxy for support of the EPA, but it’s not a bad start, since opposing environmental protection and denying global climate change are a core plank of the GOP platform.) If you want to do better than that, you’ll have to educate yourself more thoroughly, and take on more deliberate activism and&#x2F;or involve yourself significantly in the political process.