“I've been serving on this job for over two and a half years and I've completed plenty of work defending among the company’s most high-profile rul
“I’ve been serving on this job for over two and a half years and I’ve completed plenty of work defending among the company’s most high-profile rules, and it was simply the best time for me and my household to maneuver on from public service and again into personal observe,” he mentioned in an interview.
Leopold will probably be changed in an performing capability by Principal Deputy Normal Counsel David Fotouhi, who has been at EPA since March 2017.
In a resignation letter on Thursday, Leopold mentioned he’s pleased with the Trump EPA’s authorized report. He added within the interview with POLITICO the company has received round two-thirds of the substantive authorized challenges towards it, regardless of claims from company critics that it had prevailed in solely 20 to 30 % of the main instances.
Leopold lately defended EPA’s report in an opinion piece, and contended among the authorized trackers distorted the report by chalking up EPA losses in instances the place judges largely sided with EPA on most points however dominated towards it on some factors.
His workplace had recorded a “fairly good common,” he mentioned. “However extra importantly, I believe we’ve superior the rule of regulation considerably by not over-reading our authority, by staying inside the lane Congress gave us and never making an attempt to easily attain an consequence by taking a authorized place.”
Leopold is leaving simply as most of the Trump EPA’s largest deregulatory actions are present process judicial scrutiny or being finalized by the company, however he predicted the actions will “fare effectively within the courts.”
“I believe the president’s completed an unimaginable job of getting folks on the bench, significantly the circuit courts, which have an affordable strategy to studying the regulation, making use of the regulation as written, performing as umpires, not substituting their judgment to interact in judicial activism to achieve a specific consequence,” Leopold mentioned.
As Congress has gone many years because it final overhauled key environmental legal guidelines such because the Clear Air Act and Clear Water Act, Leopold mentioned lawmakers ought to step up and go new laws as wanted.
“Actually as new environmental challenges come up, I believe Congress has an vital position,” he mentioned, pointing to the 2016 revisions to the Poisonous Substances Management Act.
However Leopold declined to say whether or not Congress ought to go new laws addressing greenhouse gases and local weather change.
“I’m not going to wade into the local weather change debate,” he mentioned. “I’m the lawyer for the company and my major job is to implement the legal guidelines that Congress has given. … It’s not my position to name for particular laws.”
He added that EPA is regulating greenhouse gases from energy vegetation and different sources — although environmental teams are suing the Trump administration for relieving these necessities instituted by the Obama administration.