What Lee Zeldin’s Nomination Means for the EPA

Zeldin, a 44-year-old lawyer and former Military lieutenant, doesn’t have a background in environmental coverage. He made his foray into politics via the New York State Senate in 2011, serving till 2014. That yr, he was elected to be the US consultant for the state’s 1st Congressional District, which encompasses a lot of Lengthy Island.

As a congressman, Zeldin didn’t serve on any subcommittees overseeing environmental coverage. He recurrently voted towards progressive local weather and surroundings insurance policies, incomes him a lifetime rating of just 14 percent from the League of Conservation Voters, an advocacy group that tracks congressmembers’ positions on environmental laws. On the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2020, he voted towards an modification to dam the EPA from finalizing a Trump-era soot customary that might expose communities of colour to extra air air pollution that research have linked to elevated Covid mortality. The modification finally handed.

In 2021, Zeldin voted against a bill that might require public corporations to reveal details about the local weather dangers of their enterprise fashions. That invoice handed as properly. The next yr, he supported a failed bill that might have rescinded US participation within the United Nations Framework Conference on Local weather Change, a course of that encourages worldwide coordination on local weather coverage and consists of participation in the annual UN climate conference.

Notably, Zeldin voted in favor of a invoice that might require the EPA to set a ingesting water customary for PFAS and PFOA, the so-called “ceaselessly chemical compounds” that accumulate within the surroundings and have been linked to a spread of cancers and different critical well being points. Final yr, a neighborhood information station discovered that 33 of Long Island’s 48 water districts have traces of these chemicals of their ingesting water.

In 2022, Zeldin ran for governor of New York and misplaced to Hochul.

Zeldin’s appointment marks a departure from present EPA administrator Michael Regan, whose time period will expire when Trump assumes workplace in January. Not like Zeldin, Regan has a background in environmental science, and earlier than being nominated as administrator served as secretary of North Carolina’s Division of Environmental High quality and labored as an air high quality specialist within the EPA. As EPA administrator, he has overseen the Biden administration’s historic push towards environmental justice, which has included group engagement classes, the strengthening of nationwide requirements for particulate matter, and the overhaul of laws for a lot of chemical crops.

It stays to be seen whether or not and to what extent Regan’s initiatives and laws will persist over time of a second Trump administration. Zeldin’s nomination should be confirmed with a vote from the Senate, which gained a Republican majority within the elections earlier this month.

If confirmed, Zeldin can have appreciable energy to form the nationwide path of local weather and surroundings coverage. Along with overseeing the enforcement of present environmental legal guidelines and laws, he shall be tasked with preparing the EPA’s annual budget, which determines how a lot funding shall be allotted towards efforts like state oversight and air monitoring. A extra fossil fuel-inclined administrator would possibly select to intestine these elements of the company, enabling industry-friendly state businesses just like the Louisiana Division of Environmental High quality or the Texas Fee on Environmental High quality to control at the hours of darkness.

Trump ran on a platform that prioritized minimizing regulatory oversight and maximizing fossil gas manufacturing. Zeldin’s appointment could be key for seeing that via.