Regan’s NC record on environmental justice won him the top EPA spot

When Michael Regan, head of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), created the Environmental Justice and Equity Board in 2018, it seemed a noble gesture, but unlikely to make a real difference.

But now it has, certainly for Regan and perhaps eventually for many communities that could not keep hazardous industrial plants from becoming their unwanted neighbors.

President-elect Joe Biden has picked Regan to be the next leader of the Environmental Protection Agency, but North Carolina’s top environmental regulator wasn’t the first choice. Biden reportedly wanted California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols, a more experienced and nationally known regulator.

But when progressive activists complained that Nichols had a poor record on environmental justice for poor and minority communities, Biden looked again. And there was Regan, a man who had made environmental justice one of his top priorities in North Carolina.

When Biden formally introduced him on Saturday, Regan, who is Black, stressed the environmental justice issue. He said, “We will be driven by our convictions that every person in our great country has the right to clean air, clean water and a healthier life, no matter how much money they have in their pockets, the color of their skin or the community that they live in.”

Now the 44-year-old Goldsboro native is moving from overseeing a state agency to a federal one 10 times DEQ’s size. But he is scaling up in more than numbers. He’ll also play a key role in helping Biden address an urgent worldwide issue – climate change.

It’s a big leap, but one Regan is well prepared to make. As he has in Raleigh, Regan will work in Washington with a government split between parties. He’ll also take over an agency where much of the staff has been demoralized by agency heads appointed by President Trump who were hostile to the EPA’s mission and dubious about climate change.

Media profiles say Regan, who has worked for the EPA and the Environmental Defense Fund, has a gift for bipartisanship. North Carolina Republicans say he works with those skeptical of regulation by listening and proposing changes that are more practical than ideological. His realistic and forthright approach wins respect for his character even when he loses on the issue.

While Regan impressed Republicans in Raleigh, he left some ardent environmental activists underwhelmed. In a recent article on Regan, Lisa Sorg, the environmental writer for N.C. Policy Watch, described the activists’ assessment this way: “They wanted a fighter; they got a referee.”

Regan, though, is a different kind of referee. He also scores. He got Duke Energy to undertake the largest coal-ash clean up in U.S. history as part of a legal settlement with DEQ. He also pressured the Chemours chemical company to cut back and clean up the dispersal of PFAS, a man-made chemical that does not degrade, into the Cape Fear River. He oversaw an inter-agency council that shaped North Carolina’s response to climate change and focused attention on environmental justice.

Given the dismal records of his immediate predecessors at EPA – Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler – Regan will be an improvement by simply showing up and sitting behind his desk at the EPA. But to really get the agency back on track, he will have to get busy reversing much of the sabotage carried out by Pruitt and Wheeler at the behest of President Trump.

Even if what he does is limited to that undoing, Regan will foster environmental justice not only for the poor, but for all.