Lee Zeldin has been confirmed as administrator of the U.S. EPA. The Senate confirmed the appointment 56-42 on Wednesday.
Zeldin, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2013 to 2023, will take the helm of an agency that the Trump administration has vowed to take in a different direction than the Biden administration.
“We will take great strides to defend every American’s access to clean air, clean water, and clean land,” Zeldin said in a statement issued after his confirmation. “We will maintain and expand the gold standard of environmental stewardship and conservation that President Trump set forth in his first administration while also prioritizing economic prosperity.”
Zeldin’s supporters see him as the right fit for prioritizing economic growth while still protecting the environment. Democrats who opposed the nomination say Zeldin is too aligned with oil and gas company interests that could exacerbate climate change.
Zeldin takes the helm “a critical time for EPA, which in recent years has targeted the power sector with unlawful and unachievable regulations,” National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Jim Matheson said in a statement. “Administrator Zeldin now has the opportunity to reconsider these rules and replace them with commonsense policies.”
Matheson said repealing and replacing EPA’s power plant greenhouse gas rule “is a top priority for electric cooperatives.”
During a confirmation hearing Jan. 16, Zeldin said he would work with longtime EPA staff, as well as Republicans and Democrats, to familiarize himself with important environmental issues, especially as they impact the U.S. economy. He said he would prioritize compliance and help the agency “be better stewards of tax dollars.”
“We can, and we must, protect our precious environment without suffocating the economy,” he said. “A big part of this will require building private sector collaboration to promote common sense, smart regulation that will allow American innovation to continue to lead the world.”
In the immediate days after Zeldin’s appointment, the agency will need to sort through new and shifting priorities, including those related to numerous executive orders Trump issued in his first week of office that could have implications for the waste and recycling industry, including ending a greenhouse gas emissions working group and withdrawing a pending rule for setting discharge limits on certain PFAS. The EPA will also need to review numerous federal actions related to greenhouse gas emissions monitoring and climate change policies, among other topics.
The EPA under Zeldin is also expected to reverse course on a previous goal of centering environmental justice, which was a major priority of the agency under the previous administrator, Michael Regan. The White House’s environmental justice information page has since been taken down.
Zeldin’s confirmation comes the same day the White House rescinded an order to freeze all federal grants and loans. The original freeze order, announced on Monday, had created confusion over how the order might affect numerous funding programs from the EPA and other federal agencies. It’s unclear whether a separate executive order to pause programs funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is still in effect.
Trump’s executive orders have raised questions about the fate of grant funding programs related to waste and recycling initiatives such as the agency’s Solid Waste Management Assistant Grants, known as SWIFR, as well as recycling education grants, community change grants, pollution prevention grants and others, according to a funding database reported by the news site Puck.
The Trump administration has also hit the ground running with naming other EPA political appointees, many of whom are former oil and chemical industry lobbyists. Aaron Szabo, who helped write the EPA chapter in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint, is expected to lead the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation.
Other Trump administration veterans are also expected to return. Last week, E&E News reported Steven Cook, who was previously deputy assistant administrator for EPA’s waste office, has appeared in the agency’s personnel directory. Cook previously spent more than two decades at plastics and chemicals company LyondellBasell, and joined law firm Bracewell in 2022.
Nancy Beck is also reportedly returning to the agency as a senior adviser on chemical safety and pollution. During the first Trump administration, her actions demanding revisions to the science on cancer risk slowed the EPA’s ability to rule on PFOA risk standards, according to the New York Times. Beck was previously a senior director with the American Chemistry Council.
The Trump administration has chosen David Fotouhi as the EPA’s deputy administrator. He previously served as the agency’s acting general counsel during Trump’s first term.
The administration has not yet named an assistant administrator nominee for the EPA’s Office of Land and Emergency Management, a role that is closely related to federal waste and recycling industry policy. That includes managing grant funding for recycling projects and overseeing certain Superfund, Resource Conservation and Recovery and other land remediation matters. The Biden administration did not name an official assistant administrator for that OLEM position after the previous nominee, Carlton Waterhouse, announced he would leave the agency.
Both the deputy administrator and the OLEM roles require Senate confirmation.