For weeks, California regulator Mary Nichols was seen as the top contender for the job, but environmental justice groups argued that she had not worked aggressively enough to address systemic pollution problems in communities of color and low-income areas.
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), a key Biden ally, and Congressional Black Caucus members backed Regan, urging Biden to choose a southerner to lead EPA for the first time.
Regan, who started his career as a staffer in EPA’s air office before leading climate and clean energy work at the Environmental Defense Fund, has received accolades from environmental groups for his work atop North Carolina’s environmental agency.
His department crafted a clean energy plan aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the state’s power sector by 70 percent by 2030 and reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.
Earlier this year, Regan notched a victory when he negotiated a multibillion-dollar deal with Duke Energy to clean up coal ash, a toxic byproduct of burning coal for electricity, at six power plants in the state. The ash is often stored in pits or ponds near waterways, which has drawn complaints of leaching toxins as well as outright spills like the 2014 Dan River incident.
Environmentalists cheered this summer when Regan blocked a water quality permit for the 75-mile Southgate extension of the Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline, which has faced multiple legal setbacks on permitting and construction of its 300-mile main line from West Virginia to Virginia. Citing uncertainty about whether the main MVP line would be completed, Regan called the Southgate extension “an unnecessary project that poses unnecessary risks to our environment.”
And he spearheaded the state’s efforts to deal with toxic PFAS chemicals that were dumped directly into the Cape Fear River upstream from drinking water sources for 200,000 people and emitted into the air by Chemours Co. at its manufacturing facility in Fayetteville.
Thom Kay, a senior legislative representative with Appalachian Voices, praised Regan’s track record in North Carolina.
“He’s sensitive to environmental justice issues, and it’s showed in his work on coal ash cleanup and MVP Southgate,” he said.
However, environmentalists have at times clashed with Regan, such as in 2018 when he approved permits for the Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline — though the developers this summer pulled the project after legal challenges and other setbacks put it years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
Environmentalists are also pushing back against the Trump EPA’s approval earlier this year of North Carolina’s air quality rules that they say pose a major environmental justice threat.
EPA earlier this year approved the state’s rules allowing the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to excuse power plants, compressor stations and other major pollution sources from punishment over excess emissions when starting up, shutting down or during malfunctions. Pollution can spike during such periods, quickly exceeding normal limits and often putting the health threats from those emissions on communities of color or low-income areas that are likely to be near the source.
Under Regan, NCDEQ has gotten involved in legal challenges brought by environmental groups to help defend the Trump administration’s approval, arguing that its exemption policy has “proven successful” over the years.
Regan chairs the environmental justice subcommittee of a state task force focused on racial inequality. That panel issued a report issued earlier this month that recommended several policy changes to address environmental justice issues in North Carolina, including creating environmental justice positions at key state agencies; increasing funding to repair and clean up asbestos, radon, mold and other threats in crumbling schools, senior centers, public housing and other community buildings in poor communities; and establishing legislation to create an environmental justice review process for major projects.
North Carolina is widely considered the birthplace of the environmental justice movement, which emphasizes addressing historic and systemic pollution problems in communities of color and other at-risk populations.
In 1982, the residents of a Black community in Warren County and other activists organized by the NAACP protested state pans to dump contaminated soil in a hazardous waste landfill there. Some 500 people were arrested, including Walter Fauntroy, who was at the time the District of Columbia’s nonvoting delegate in the House of Representatives, in the ultimately unsuccessful protests.
Regan started his career at EPA with a decade in various nonpolitical jobs in the agency’s air office. He left in 2008 for the Environmental Defense Fund, where he ultimately served as associate vice president for U.S. climate and energy and as the Southeast regional director. Four years ago, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper placed Regan in charge of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality.
A Goldsboro native, Regan earned his undergraduate degree from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, a historically Black university, and a master’s in public administration from George Washington University.
Annie Snider contributed to this report.
