President Biden’s head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Michael Regan, tried to reassure Republicans that their concerns about job losses would be heard under his leadership.
Questioned by GOP senators, Regan, 45, promised to “follow the law, do not exceed my legal power” by introducing a number of new regulations on everything from power supplies to vehicle exhaust pipes, mercury emissions to waterways .
Meanwhile, Regan told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Wednesday, “We can not just regulate our way out of every problem.”
“If you want to tackle complex challenges, you have to be able to see them from all sides. You have to be able to put yourself in others’ shoes,” he continued.
The Trump administration has returned more than 100 environmental rules that they say are unnecessary and cumbersome for business, and Biden has strived to put them back in place.
Since Biden took office last month, Republicans have been furious over a series of executive orders aimed at shoving the country of fossil fuels – from the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline permit to the issuance of an interruption of one year on oil and gas leasing in federal lands.
TC Energy said it hoped to hire more than 11,000 by 2021 to build the pipeline and generate more than $ 1.6 billion in wages. About 1,000 were fired because of the order.
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Asked why Biden had not yet consulted with states before issuing the order, he said he described the orders as ‘setting goals and visions’.
“They leave enough room for the implementation of these things,” he said.
Regan was approved by two Republican senators from his home state – Thom Tillis and Richard Burr. Burr calls Regan “extremely qualified” and Tillis says Regan is someone who “can appeal to lawmakers to be honest”.
Burr said Regan’s work to clean up agriculture in his homeland strikes a balance between ‘the values of environmental management and the needs of rural communities’.
Regan, who would be the first black EPA administrator, stressed his commitment to stand up for environmental justice and to work with community and business groups “who know their own communities better than the federal government could ever do. ″
Regan told of his own experience where he had to use an inhaler due to a respiratory condition that he said was exacerbated by highly polluting factories and power plants in East North Carolina.
Republican Sen. Shelley Capito, West Virginia, has questioned whether the Biden government’s commitment to environmental justice would fall back on itself if impoverished communities trying to protect themselves from pollution eventually lost their jobs. The closure of coal mines has hit states like West Virginia particularly hard.
“Where is the justice when many people are plunged into poverty, drug addiction and homelessness?” she asked Regan.
“It is difficult to rebuild better, as the president said, if we can build nothing,” Capito added.
McCarthy said last week that Biden’s new executive action would set up a ‘working group’ dedicated to renovating coal and power plant communities to compensate for losses.
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Capito also questioned what Regan’s role would be in the Biden climate agenda, as the White House had already instructed other officials to oversee the matter.
She asked if climate officials would ‘stumble over each other’, as Regan is likely to work with Gina McCarthy, Home Climate Adviser, and John Kerry, special climate envoy.
“Who’s really going to make decisions now?” Capito asked. She expressed concern that ‘unelected and unaccountable’ climate ‘tsars would exert a real influence while avoiding congressional scrutiny.
Regan said he expects a “healthy debate” on the issues, but adds that he answers Biden, not Kerry or McCarthy.
For the past four years, Regan has served as the most important environmental regulator in North Carolina. Under Regan, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality has blocked a certification to extend the Mountain Valley pipeline, but approved it for the since-abandoned Atlantic Coast pipeline, which clashes with environmentalists.
Regan has also entered into an agreement with Duke Energy to clear up a massive pollution of coal ash.
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Prior to that, Regan spent years with the Environmental Defense Fund and worked from 1998 to 2008 as an environmental regulator in the Clinton and Bush administration.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.