Nobody has run the Environmental Safety Company fairly like Michael Regan has. Since his appointment by President Biden in 2021, Regan has overseen what has at occasions been an aggressive, local weather justice-minded company that has undertaken quite a lot of high-profile civil-rights investigations.
Even when the investigations have largely stopped since Louisiana’s former lawyer normal and now Governor, Jeff Landry, sued the company, Regan’s EPA continues to make important progress by way of its position as a regulator. Simply final week, the company introduced the strictest attainable requirements for PFASs in consuming water (zero allowed) and new limits on chemical pollution that can pressure a manufacturing facility within the coronary heart of Most cancers Alley into drastic modifications.
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All of this apart, Regan additionally occurs to be the primary Black particular person to go the company.
{That a} Black EPA administrator is making an attempt to guard Black Individuals from each air pollution and local weather change in a means that the federal authorities arguably by no means has earlier than is a strong picture — and it’s additionally one which has made Regan a goal for racist assaults.
The most recent got here final week, when Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, posted on X, previously generally known as Twitter that Regan must be charged with extortion over the brand new chemical plant rules. Higgins represents the largely rural southwest nook of the state, the place the huge new LNG export terminal was slated to open earlier than the Biden Administration put it on maintain. About half of the 200 amenities affected by the EPA’s new chemical emissions guidelines are positioned in Texas and Louisiana, together with Higgins’ district.
“Ship that conceited prick to Angola for a couple of many years,” Higgins wrote.
Whereas Angola is the state penitentiary in Louisiana, the reference to the previous plantation turned notorious jail farm seems like greater than a canine whistle when it’s coming from Higgins.
In spite of everything, in 2020, the Congressman as soon as posted a picture of an armed Black protester on Fb, writing, “I’d drop any 10 of you the place you stand.” The publish was shortly eliminated by moderators. So Higgins has form of misplaced the good thing about the doubt.
Extra not too long ago, in a 2022 listening to, Rep. Higgins was extremely combative with Raya Salter, an environmental lawyer who’s Black. He requested Salter repeatedly — at one level addressing her as “boo” — what she would do about all the assorted merchandise on the planet which have come to be made out of petrochemicals like plastic—all the things from garments to telephones to the chair she was sitting in. “You haven’t any reply for these items,” he mentioned.
And whereas she did have a solution — that we have to transfer away from fossil fuels and shut down petrochemical amenities like the various in Louisiana — Salter had a query for Higgins, too. “Search your coronary heart and ask your God what you’re doing to the Black and poor folks in Louisiana,” she mentioned. And he had no reply.
