President Obama’s “green team” is nearly complete, as the Senate on Thursday confirmed Lisa Jackson to run the Environmental Protection Agency and Nancy Sutley to head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Senators also approved Ray LaHood as Secretary of Transportation. All three officials were confirmed by voice vote.
Jackson’s appointment had been in limbo, as reports suggested that a Republican senator, John Barrasso of Wyoming, was blocking it until he received some clarity about Carol Browner‘s role as Obama’s top adviser on climate and energy issues. Barrasso later consented to allowing the confirmation to proceed after talking to Browner, according to a spokesperson for the Environment and Public Works Committee, which was managing the confirmation. (Barrasso told TPM the same thing).
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate panel, issued a statement immediately after the confirmation praising her colleagues for approving Sutley and Jackson. “I am really pleased that the Senate has taken the first steps toward restoring the EPA and CEQ to their proper role as organizations that fight to protect the health of our families and the safety of our air, our water and our planet,” said Boxer. “Lisa Jackson and Nancy Sutley are well qualified to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality, and they respect and understand that their organizations’ mission is to protect public health and the environment.”
The Senate has not yet acted on Obama’s nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) to run the Department of Labor. Solis has said she will use her post to champion the creation of “green jobs.”
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Comments
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tmullins Posted 9:43 am
23 Jan 2009
Hannity shut the fuck up !
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pmaier Posted 5:04 am
25 Jan 2009
All this sounds good, but if it ever will happen, EPA first has to admit that it screwed up, when it implemented the Clean Water Act (CWA), by using an essential pollution test incorrectly and consequently ignored all the pollution caused by nitrogenous (urine and protein) waste in municipal sewage and allowing open waters still to be used as giant urinals.www.petermaier.net
If the Obama administration is going to act like the Clinton Administration, I would not hold my breath to wait for any real change in environmental policies. EPA Administrator Carol Browner in 1995 rejected a petition to include nitrogenous waste in EPA's definition of the required secondary treatment (this automatically would have corrected this essential test) in the CWA, but in stead used her administration's and the Justice Department's legal powers to defend her rejection of the petition in federal court. EPA's basic argument (during the oral arguments) was that Congress solely intended to `treat' organic matter in sewage and that organic matter solely consists out of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms. When molecules also have nitrogen atoms (like Protein, DNA, urea, just to name a few) they are not organic and therefore are not required to be treated under the CWA. Two of the three judges agreed with the EPA, while the dissenting judge stated that EPA never even had implemented the CWA. As the local media was not interested, EPA and Justice Lawyers got away solely with a feeling of guilt.
Statements by politicians sadly do not mean anything, as long as the media is not holding them accountable.
If fish only could talk!
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