For weeks, California regulator Mary Nichols was seen as the highest contender for the job, however environmental justice teams argued that she ha
For weeks, California regulator Mary Nichols was seen as the highest contender for the job, however environmental justice teams argued that she had not labored aggressively sufficient to deal with systemic air pollution issues in communities of coloration and low-income areas.
Home Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), a key Biden ally, and Congressional Black Caucus members backed Regan, urging Biden to decide on a southerner to guide EPA for the primary time.
Regan, who began his profession as a staffer in EPA’s air workplace earlier than main local weather and clear power work on the Environmental Protection Fund, has acquired accolades from environmental teams for his work atop North Carolina’s environmental company.
His division crafted a clear power plan geared toward decreasing greenhouse fuel emissions from the state’s energy sector by 70 % by 2030 and reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.
Earlier this 12 months, Regan notched a victory when he negotiated a multibillion-dollar cope with Duke Power to scrub up coal ash, a poisonous byproduct of burning coal for electrical energy, at six energy crops within the state. The ash is commonly saved in pits or ponds close to waterways, which has drawn complaints of leaching toxins in addition to outright spills just like the 2014 Dan River incident.
Environmentalists cheered this summer time when Regan blocked a water high quality allow for the 75-mile Southgate extension of the Mountain Valley pure fuel pipeline, which has confronted a number of authorized setbacks on allowing and building of its 300-mile essential line from West Virginia to Virginia. Citing uncertainty about whether or not the principle MVP line can be accomplished, Regan known as the Southgate extension “an pointless challenge that poses pointless dangers to the environment.”
And he spearheaded the state’s efforts to cope with poisonous PFAS chemical substances that had been dumped immediately into the Cape Concern River upstream from consuming water sources for 200,000 individuals and emitted into the air by Chemours Co. at its manufacturing facility in Fayetteville.
Thom Kay, a senior legislative consultant with Appalachian Voices, praised Regan’s monitor file in North Carolina.
“He is delicate to environmental justice points, and it is confirmed in his work on coal ash cleanup and MVP Southgate,” he stated.
Nonetheless, environmentalists have at instances clashed with Regan, akin to in 2018 when he permitted permits for the Atlantic Coast pure fuel pipeline — although the builders this summer time pulled the challenge after authorized challenges and different setbacks put it years not on time and billions of {dollars} over price range.
Environmentalists are additionally pushing again in opposition to the Trump EPA’s approval earlier this 12 months of North Carolina’s air high quality guidelines that they are saying pose a significant environmental justice risk.
EPA earlier this 12 months permitted the state’s guidelines permitting the North Carolina Division of Environmental High quality to excuse energy crops, compressor stations and different main air pollution sources from punishment over extra emissions when beginning up, shutting down or throughout malfunctions. Air pollution can spike throughout such durations, rapidly exceeding regular limits and infrequently placing the well being threats from these emissions on communities of coloration or low-income areas which are prone to be close to the supply.
Underneath Regan, NCDEQ has gotten concerned in authorized challenges introduced by environmental teams to assist defend the Trump administration’s approval, arguing that its exemption coverage has “confirmed profitable” through the years.
Regan chairs the environmental justice subcommittee of a state process power centered on racial inequality. That panel issued a report issued earlier this month that advisable a number of coverage modifications to deal with environmental justice points in North Carolina, together with creating environmental justice positions at key state businesses; growing funding to restore and clear up asbestos, radon, mildew and different threats in crumbling faculties, senior facilities, public housing and different neighborhood buildings in poor communities; and establishing laws to create an environmental justice assessment course of for main tasks.
North Carolina is broadly thought of the birthplace of the environmental justice motion, which emphasizes addressing historic and systemic air pollution issues in communities of coloration and different at-risk populations.
In 1982, the residents of a Black neighborhood in Warren County and different activists organized by the NAACP protested state pans to dump contaminated soil in a hazardous waste landfill there. Some 500 individuals had been arrested, together with Walter Fauntroy, who was on the time the District of Columbia’s nonvoting delegate within the Home of Representatives, within the finally unsuccessful protests.
Regan began his profession at EPA with a decade in varied nonpolitical jobs within the company’s air workplace. He left in 2008 for the Environmental Protection Fund, the place he finally served as affiliate vice chairman for U.S. local weather and power and because the Southeast regional director. 4 years in the past, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper positioned Regan answerable for North Carolina’s Division of Environmental High quality.
A Goldsboro native, Regan earned his undergraduate diploma from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State College, a traditionally Black college, and a grasp’s in public administration from George Washington College.
Annie Snider contributed to this report.