by John Fialka, March 7, 2005 President Bush’s choice of Stephen L. Johnson, who spent 24 years climbing the ladder at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to head the EPA was greeted with a rare burst of applause from environmental groups and Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.
On Friday, in a break with tradition, President Bush named Mr. Johnson, an expert in regulating pesticides and toxic substances, to be the EPA’s new administrator. In a brief White House ceremony, the president noted that Mr. Johnson, 54 years old, was the first career employee and the first professional scientist to head the agency.
The appointment marked the second time Mr. Bush has picked a career official to head a regulatory agency. Last month, he chose the Food and Drug Administration’s acting commissioner, Lester Crawford, to be the agency’s permanent head.
Mr. Johnson’s first assignment will give him a taste of what some environmental groups call the worst job in Washington. President Bush asked him to work with Congress to pass the Clear Skies bill, which appears stuck in the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. Clear Skies would impose sharp cuts in power-plant emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury. Democrats, who have created a 9-9 deadlock over the measure, also want to regulate man-made emissions of carbon dioxide.
Both sides of the impasse stopped their political maneuvering long enough to laud Mr. Johnson. Sen. James Inhofe (R., Okla.) praised him for “his hard work in public service.” Sen. Jim Jeffords, a Vermont independent and the ranking minority member on the panel, called Mr. Johnson a “solid choice to lead the agency.”
“This is an extraordinarily good appointment from the standpoint of fairness and balance and rigor,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, an organization that specializes in issues involving pesticides and that has been harshly critical of the Bush administration.
“The obvious concern we have,” Mr. Cook added, “is whether he is going to have the freedom to do his job without interference from the ideologues and industry interests that are found elsewhere in the administration.”
Most business groups were cautiously supportive of the Johnson appointment. “This act places a capable leader at the helm of an important agency,” said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, which represents some coal-fired electric utilities. Mr. Johnson’s nomination is expected to clear the Senate easily.
The first Bush EPA appointee, former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, was surprised early in her tenure when the White House reversed a campaign pledge by President Bush to regulate carbon dioxide. After that, the Bush administration backed out of the Kyoto Protocol to curb climate change, which scientists believe is caused, in part, by accumulations of man-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
In the next few weeks, the EPA is expected to announce two major new air-pollution regulations, one reducing power-plant emissions of mercury and a second measure designed to curb emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide that drift from west to east over the Eastern half of the U.S.
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