I have no idea what you think I misread, or what you think I acknowledged misreading. The words are pretty simple to me: to provide for the general welfare. While many misinterpret that to mean "to provide endless handouts", it refers to providing an environment minimizing the threats that are too large for the ordinary citizen to mitigate on an individual level. Those threats include pollution, unsafe food supplies, and invasions by hostile forces.
The states do have individual EPAs that handle matters inside the state. But those state EPAs have no jurisdiction over neighboring states, and pollution does not stop at borders. So the national EPA imposes a uniform set of pollution standards. The problem with the EPA is not in its performing its Constitutional mandate--the problem is that politicians (of the leftist variety) install political hacks to run the EPA, who understand nothing of environmental science but understand a lot about restricting people's liberty in the name of protecting the environment. And those hacks, unfortunately, set the tone for how the organization is run.
If nationwide environmental/industrial controls are supported by the vast majority of the people, then legally amend the constitution and don't do it through unelected bureaucrats and nine black-robes.
We don't need to amend the Constitution. Provision for the general welfare is already there, as is regulation of interstate commerce.
You cannot legitimately read a code of law into a single term taken out of its 18th century context and history.
If a duty to promote the general welfare was a sufficient basis for all federal power, then the enumerated powers of section eight that followed were unnecessary.