Bay Area Environmentalists Criticize Trump’s Pick to Lead EPA

Bay Area environmentalists are shaking their heads at President-elect Donald Trump’s tapping of a former New York congressman to run the federal Environmental Protection Agency with marching orders to ensure “fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses.”

His pick, Lee Zeldin, served four terms in the House, during which he was a vocal defender of Trump and sat on the Veterans’ Affairs, Foreign Affairs and Financial Services committees — but had little experience with environmental or climate-related issues.

He would take charge of the EPA as the incoming Trump administration is almost certain to clash with California over oil and gas regulation as well as rules meant to combat climate change and protect environmental resources.

Zeldin, in his own statement posted to social media, promised to “restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs and make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”

Environmental leaders expressed concern that Trump’s choice all but confirmed a deregulatory shift at the federal level.

“We are disappointed but not surprised,” Sejal Choksi-Chugh, executive director of San Francisco Baykeeper, told KQED. “[Zeldin] has very little environmental experience, but that also seems to be the reason he was chosen. It looks like he’s going to be very pro-fossil fuels, pro-pollution and just trying to get rid of the regulations that protect human health across the country.

“We’re expecting from day one the administration [will propose] rollbacks and a lot of anti-climate deregulation that’s going to impact the entire country,” Choksi-Chugh said. “Every single person in the country is going to be harmed by the increased pollution that we’re going to see if they succeed in getting the oil industry to expand and in deregulating power plants. It’s just going to be a mess.”

The Oakland-based Sierra Club said in a statement that Zeldin is an unqualified and anti-American choice who will be terrible for the nation’s air and water.

“Our lives, our livelihoods, and our collective future cannot afford Lee Zeldin — or anyone who seeks to carry out a mission antithetical to the EPA’s mission,” the environmental organization said.

Local leaders have been discussing for several months what a second Trump term could mean for the Bay Area environment and are prepared for years of litigation to defend climate rules, Choksi-Chugh said.

During the first Trump administration, California was involved in dozens of major legal cases, most directly on issues of the environment, according to a tracker developed by a Marquette University political scientist, including the federal government’s effort to roll back emission standards, its justification for new water rules, and its push to ease methane regulations, for example.

California won injunctions, policy reversals or other favorable rulings on the vast majority of its major environmental cases.

Mary Nichols, former chair of the California Air Resources Board, was the architect of much of California’s resistance to the Trump administration’s environmental deregulation.

She told KQED that “he was particularly focused on California as the enemy because we have been so out in front, both in terms of pollution regulation over many years, and also because we had taken a strong stand on climate change.”

Nichols noted that Trump’s victory this time is different because it puts numerous new clean-air rules in jeopardy, as the state is still awaiting waivers from federal regulators at the EPA.

“Unfortunately for the Trump agenda, it takes as much work to deregulate as it does to regulate,” she said. “You still have to go through a lot of hoops in order to make that happen. It won’t happen overnight.”

The nomination for EPA administrator will need confirmation from the Senate, where Republicans are poised to hold a majority of seats next term.