EPA, Interior face changes

WASHINGTON – Few federal agencies are expected to undergo as radical a transformation under President-elect Barack Obama as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department, which have been at the epicenter of many of the Bush administration’s most intense scientific and environmental controversies.

The agencies have different mandates – the EPA holds sway over air and water pollution, while Interior administers the nation’s vast federal land holdings as well as the Endangered Species Act – but both deal with some of the country’s most pressing environmental concerns, such as climate change. And over the past eight years, many career employees and rank-and-file scientists have clashed with Bush appointees over a number of those of issues, including whether the federal government should allow California to regulate tailpipe emissions from automobiles and how best to prevent imperiled species from disappearing altogether.

In June 2007, Obama told reporters in Reno, Nev., that he would not hesitate to reverse many of the environmental policies Bush has enacted by executive order. “I think the slow chipping away against clean air and clean water has been deeply disturbing,” Obama added. “Much of it hasn’t gone through Congress. It was done by fiat. That is something that can be changed by an administration, in part by reinvigorating the EPA, which has been demoralized.”

Global warming policies are expected to mark one of the sharpest breaks between the Obama and the Bush administrations.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson overruled his advisers in deciding to deny California authority to control tailpipe emissions and rejecting their conclusion that global warming poses a threat to public welfare, and Obama is likely to reverse both of those policies shortly after taking office. This month, the president-elect told delegates to the Governors’ Global Climate Summit that he would push for a federal cap-and-trade system designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and then to cut them an additional 80 percent by 2050, targets Bush has never embraced.

Jamie Rappaport Clark, executive vice president of the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife, said that together, the two agencies will help shape the government’s response to climate change.

“EPA will play the lead role in crafting a regulatory response,” Clark said. “Interior has a huge role to play in adaptation” – the effort to cope with climate changes that are already happening, such as drought and more frequent wildfires.

With escalating responsibilities, both agencies will need more resources after years when their budgets shrank, relatively speaking. The EPA received $7.5 billion from Congress in 2008, down from $7.8 billion in 2001. Interior has fared slightly better, getting $11.1 billion compared with $10.4 billion in 2001, but that represents more than a 10 percent cut in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who as chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has feuded with Johnson and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne over global warming and other issues, said she has high expectations of their replacements. “I’m expecting President-elect Obama to select people who really care about the issues they’re in charge of, someone who believes in their mission and not someone who’s going to undermine their mission,” she said. “That’s a sea change.”