Not sarcasm. The comment I replied to made the argument, likely hyperbolically, that 14,400 people should be enough to make sure water is safe. Taking that lite

Not sarcasm. The comment I replied to made the argument, likely hyperbolically, that 14,400 people should be enough to make sure water is safe. Taking that literally, according to the mighty Google, we have roughly 3,142 counties (or similar organizational units) in the States, meaning that even if clean drinking water was it's only function (which it obviously isn't) that gives you 4.58, or between 4 and 5, EPA representatives per county in the US to oversee clean drinking water. And again that is assuming there is no management structure, no supervisors, no coordinators, no managers, and that clean drinking water is their only function which it isn't. Basically I'm taking the hyperbole and showing that it's not even that hyperbolic, and while 14,400 sounds like a lot of people, when you're talking the task of protecting the environment in all 50 states, that's really not that many.