Gov. Gavin Newsom appoints former Obama official as the state’s new EPA chief
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has named Jared Blumenfeld, a former Obama administration official and longtime environmental advocate, as the new secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency.
Blumenfeld, 49, of San Francisco, will run the agency, known as Cal-EPA, which oversees a broad range of environmental and public health regulations statewide, on topics that include air pollution, water pollution, toxics regulation, pesticides and recycling. The agency this year has a $4.6 billion budget and 5,700 employees.
Blumenfeld, who was sworn in Monday, is well known in California to environmentalists and industry. He was appointed by former President Obama as administrator of the regional office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco from 2009 to 2016.
In that job, he supervised federal environmental policy in California, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii and the Pacific islands. He focused on improving air quality in the Central Valley, stepping up enforcement efforts against toxic polluters and cleaning up abandoned uranium mines on Navajo land. In 2014, he wrote a letter to the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown saying that its controversial $17 billion Delta tunnels plan had not been given adequate environmental study, and could harm water quality in San Francisco Bay and endangered fish.
After leaving that job near the end of Obama’s presidency, Blumenfeld hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2,650-mile route that stretches from the U.S.Mexico border to the U.S.Canada border.
Prior to that, he served as director of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment from 2001 to 2009 under former Mayor Willie Brown, and during Newsom’s tenure as mayor.
Environmentalists on Tuesday cheered the news.
“I think he’s an excellent choice,” said David Lewis, executive director of Save the Bay, based in Oakland. “I’ve worked with him for two decades and he’s bold and smart on a wide range of environmental issues.”
Lewis called Blumenfeld “a visionary force, even in a big federal bureaucracy,” who is “great at communicating what’s important and urgent and possible.”
Earlier in his career, Blumenfeld also worked as general manager of San Francisco’s parks department, director of the Treasure Island Redevelopment Authority and chairman of the United Nations World Environment Day in 2005.
In the 1990s, Blumenfeld worked for environmental groups, as director of habitat protection for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and with the Natural Resources Defense Council, where he helped lead campaigns to phase out leaded gasoline, protect coral reefs and limit greenhouse gases.
Blumenfeld has law degrees from UC Berkeley and the University of London.
Over the past year, he has run a podcast called “Podship Earth” about environmental issues.
Blumenfeld succeeds Matthew Rodriguez, who served as California EPA secretary since 2011 under former Gov. Jerry Brown.
The agency, established by state law in 1991, oversees the California Air Resources Board, the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, the Department of Toxic Substances Control, the Department of Pesticide Regulation, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment and the State Water Resources Control Board. The secretary also is a member of the governor’s cabinet.