Biden names picks for EPA chief, interior secretary
Presidentelect Joe Biden on Thursday offered the leadership of the Environmental Protection Agency to Michael Regan, a North Carolina regulator who has made a name pursuing cleanups of industrial toxins and helping lowincome and minority communities hit hardest by pollution. Biden also plans to nominate New Mexico Rep. Deb Haawhat land as interior secretary, making her the first Native American to head that agency.
Biden’s pick of Regan, who leads his state’s environmental agency, was confirmed by two people familiar with the selection process, as was his choice of Haaland. They were not authorized the discuss the matter publicly before the official announcement and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Regan became environmental chief in North Carolina in 2017. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who hired Regan, said this week that Regan was “a consensus builder and a fierce protector of the environment.”
In North Carolina, Regan led the negotiations that resulted in the cleanup of the Cape Fear River, which has been dangerously contaminated by PFAS industrial compounds from a chemical plant. He negotiated North Carolina says was the largest cleanup agreement for toxic coal ash, with Duke Energy.
Regan also created North Carolina’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board, to help the lowincome and minority communities that suffer disproportionate exposure to harmful pollutants from refineries, factories and freeways.
Regan previously spent almost a decade at the federal EPA, including managing a national program for airpollution issues.
His past jobs included serving as an associate vice president for climate and energy issues at the Environmental Defense Fund advocacy group and as head of his own environmental and energy consulting firm.
Tribal leaders and activists around the country, along with many Democratic figures, cheered Haaland’s selection after urging Biden for weeks to choose her. They stood behind her candidacy even when concerns that Democrats might risk their majority in the House if Haaland yielded her seat in Congress appeared to threaten her nomination.
With Haaland’s nomination, Indigenous people will for the first time in their lifetimes see a Native American at the table where the highest decisions are made — and so will everyone else, said OJ Semans, a Rosebud Sioux vote activist who was in Georgia on Thursday helping get out the Native vote for two Senate runoffs. “It’s made people aware that Indians still exist,” he said.
Haaland, 60, is a member of the Laguna Pueblo and, as she likes to say, a 35thgeneration resident of New Mexico. The role as interior secretary would put her in charge of an agency that not only has tremendous sway over the nearly 600 federally recognized tribes but also over much of the nation’s vast public lands, waterways, wildlife, national parks and mineral wealth.
The pick breaks a 245year record of nonNative officials, mostly male, serving as the top federal official over American Indian affairs.