After president-elect Donald Trump introduced Lee Zeldin as his nominee to guide the Environmental Safety Company, the previous Republican consultant from Lengthy Island, New York, phoned into Fox Information from Mar-a-Lago.
“You realize, the EPA has been in some methods an enemy to numerous these companies throughout America, as a result of they’ve had a protracted arm,” the Fox Information presenter mentioned after congratulating Zeldin on his nomination. “What do you propose to do on the EPA?”
Zeldin proceeded to speak vaguely about reversing a slate of laws that “are forcing companies to wrestle” and sending American jobs abroad. “We now have the power to pursue vitality dominance, to have the ability to make the US the substitute intelligence capital of the world,” he mentioned. “President Trump cares about conserving the atmosphere,” Zeldin added. “It’s a high precedence.”
After which he returned to what gave the impression to be his fundamental level: “So I’m excited to get to work to implement President Trump’s financial agenda.”
The second half of the six-minute interview was spent discussing different issues — New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s current cellphone name with Trump, the indictment in opposition to the previous president nonetheless making its method by New York’s supreme court docket.
The entire dialog supplied a sign of what to moderately anticipate from the EPA over the following 4 years: Regulatory rollbacks for fossil gas industries justified as boosts for the financial system, and platitudes concerning the significance of unpolluted air and water, with none point out of how these issues will probably be achieved concurrently. In an analogous rhetorical tact, Trump mentioned himself that Zeldin “will guarantee truthful and swift deregulatory choices that will probably be enacted in a technique to unleash the facility of American companies, whereas on the similar time sustaining the best environmental requirements, together with the cleanest air and water on the planet.”
With out saying it instantly, Zeldin signaled a troublesome highway forward for the hundreds of neighborhood advocates which have spent years pushing for stronger laws within the nation’s “sacrifice zones” — cities like Port Arthur, Texas and Lake Charles, Louisiana, the place a focus of fossil gas infrastructure and petrochemical crops dump cancer-causing pollution into the air and water.
Zeldin, a 44-year-old legal professional and former military lieutenant, doesn’t have a background in environmental coverage. He made his foray into politics by the New York State Senate in 2011, serving till 2014. That 12 months, he was elected to be the U.S. consultant for the state’s first congressional district, which encompasses a lot of Lengthy Island.
As a congressman, Zeldin didn’t serve on any subcommittees overseeing environmental coverage. He frequently voted in opposition to progressive local weather and atmosphere insurance policies, incomes him a lifetime rating of simply 14 p.c from the League of Conservation Voters, an advocacy group that tracks congress members’ positions on environmental laws. On the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020, he voted in opposition to an modification to dam the EPA from finalizing a Trump-era soot normal that will expose communities of colour to further air air pollution that research have linked to elevated COVID mortality. The modification in the end handed.
In 2021, Zeldin voted in opposition to a invoice that will require public firms to reveal details about the local weather dangers of their enterprise fashions. That invoice handed as properly. The next 12 months, he supported a failed invoice that will have rescinded U.S. participation within the United Nations Framework Conference on Local weather Change, a course of that encourages worldwide coordination on local weather coverage and contains participation within the annual U.N. local weather convention.
Notably, Zeldin voted in favor of a invoice that will require the EPA to set a consuming water normal for PFAS and PFOA, the so-called “ceaselessly chemical substances” that accumulate within the atmosphere and have been linked to a variety of cancers and different critical well being points. Final 12 months, a neighborhood information station discovered that 33 of Lengthy Island’s 48 water districts have traces of those chemical substances of their consuming water.
In 2022, Zeldin ran for governor of New York, and misplaced to Kathy 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 oversaw the Biden administration’s historic push in the direction of environmental justice, which included neighborhood 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 through the years of a second Trump administration. Zeldin’s nomination must be confirmed with a vote from the Senate, which gained a Republican majority within the elections earlier this month.
If confirmed, Zeldin may have appreciable energy to form the nationwide path of local weather and atmosphere coverage. Along with overseeing the enforcement of present environmental legal guidelines and laws, he will probably be tasked with making ready the EPA’s annual price range, which determines how a lot funding will probably be allotted in the direction of efforts like state oversight and air monitoring. A extra fossil-fuel inclined administrator would possibly select to intestine these components of the company, enabling industry-friendly state companies just like the Louisiana Division of Environmental High quality or the Texas Fee on Environmental High quality to manage at nighttime.
Trump ran on a platform that prioritized minimizing the regulatory oversight and maximizing fossil gas manufacturing. Zeldin’s appointment can be key for seeing that by.
