Michael Regan Rebuilt the EPA, but Did It Deliver for Black Communities?

Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan speaks at a lectern.

When the Environmental Protection Agency dropped a civil rights investigation last year and subsequently weakened the civil rights complaint process, it dealt a blow to the legacy of the first Black man to lead the agency.

This decision underscored the immense challenges the agency’s former head, Michael Regan, faced during his tenure, where the weight of expectations often collided with and buckled under the harsh realities of the job that required him to work with officials who did not take climate and environmental issues seriously. He elevated the issues facing Black communities across the South more often and more directly than anyone in the top spot before. But that also meant his agency faced more concerted attacks than ever seen before from Congress and state legislators.

“It’s not like he shot himself in the foot,” explained Belinda Joyner, an environmental activist in North Carolina, last year. “He tries to do what should be done, but it’s like he has never fully been established to do it.”

After nearly four years running the agency and just weeks after stepping down ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition, it’s clear that Regan’s reign wrestled with questions that have long kept Black leaders up at night – how to balance being a leader for all when it’s obvious that a select few remain with the proverbial short end of the stick. 

As a result, many Black communities across the South could face the same life-threatening environmental problems that existed before his term, like poor access to clean drinking water, extreme flooding, and choking air pollution. Under Trump it’s only expected to get worse, as he has vowed to weaken the nation’s pollution standards. His EPA pick, Lee Zeldin, is a former congressman from New York who routinely voted against climate legislation.


Read More: What Black Communities Should Expect From Trump’s Climate Policies


The EPA is the federal agency responsible for protecting human health and the environment by enforcing laws like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, setting pollution standards, and overseeing environmental research and cleanup efforts. Before taking office, the prior administration under Trump defanged the agency, reducing its staff to record lows and reversing much of its power to clean America’s air, water, and land. But arguably, the most daunting challenge for Regan had little to do with rebuilding the agency. Instead, it focused on breaking new ground: genuinely connecting with the people who looked like him and grew up in communities like his in Goldsboro, North Carolina, overwhelmed by landfills, pollution, and flooding.

He attempted to do this early, embarking on what he called a “Journey to Justice” tour of Black communities across Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, just months after taking office. Black people, by far, are exposed to the most collective environmental issues in America, and as Regan put it in 2021 during the tour, “It’s not lost on me that these people look like me and I look like them.” 

The tour was the first time an EPA leader had made such a trek, spending days with the people who call oil refineries their neighbors. But he knew he had to do more than just talk the talk, and to actually walk the walk, he had to go toe to toe with legislators across the country who did not believe in climate change or the data showing that communities of color were facing the worst challenges. He shied away from making promises about completely cleaning up their homes — he knew that his agency had routinely failed to deliver on such vows — but he pledged that things would be different. 


Read More: Chemical Plants Destroyed These Black Towns. The EPA Hopes New Regulations Will Help


The results were varied. After meeting with residents of Mossville, Louisiana, a town that has lost most of its residents as chemical plants have expanded around them, his EPA instituted new pollution rules for the facilities. But then, his agency dropped the civil rights investigation spurred by residents from another Louisiana parish he met on the tour.

Capital B reached out to Regan for comment, but was unsuccessful.

“We see the push out of billions of dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act given to the EPA for environmental justice, but some of those initiatives at the federal level definitely did not trickle down for some reason,” said Treva Gear, an environmental activist from Georgia, last year. “We needed to include oversight of the state’s with [anti-environmental] legislators to make sure they’re protecting communities.”

EPA Administrator Michael Regan addresses people in Mossville, Louisiana.
After visiting Mossville, Louisiana — a community decimated by chemical plant expansion — EPA Administrator Michael Regan introduced stricter pollution regulations targeting the surrounding industrial facilities. (Courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency)

How court rulings slowed real change

Ultimately, during his term, Regan essentially rebuilt the EPA, presiding over an era of unprecedented climate-policy gains. His agency flexed its muscle with new and improved rules to curb pollution from power plants and vehicles, enacted a landmark ban on “forever chemicals” in drinking water, and funneled billions into projects to transform local energy grids and cut greenhouse gas emissions. 

But, at the same time, the EPA faced a string of rulings in federal courts that seriously limited its effectiveness and signaled a return to the department of the past. The EPA’s power only comes from its working relationships with other agencies, state governments, and communities to ensure nationwide compliance with environmental regulations while also being subject to political oversight and funding from Congress.

“Quite frankly, it just seems to me that anything we do, no matter what it is, is going to be criticized,” Regan said last year. “And so with that in mind, it only makes me more emboldened, more strident, but also cautious in terms of the actions that we take.” 

His attempts to elevate environmental justice even threatened his own life. U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, for example, said that Regan “should be arrested the next time he sets foot in Louisiana” after announcing stricter pollution rules for the oil and gas industry. Higgins, in a racist dog whistle, said Regan should be sent to Angola prison, a former slave plantation where mostly Black incarcerated people are still forced to pick cotton for as little as 2 cents per hour. 


Read More: Inside the Angola Prison Rodeo and America’s Mass Incarceration Crisis


Michael Regan conducted listening tours, like this one in Los Angeles, throughout his term. (Courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency)

As a result of the attacks, Regan’s record on environmental justice was ultimately a lot more uneven than he may have initially hoped for. While the EPA touted his environmental justice victories, including billions doled out for projects like removing lead pipes, cleaning up toxic landfills, and funds directed toward Black-led environmental organizations, Regan navigated difficult, albeit clumsy, policy withdrawals. Some data estimates show that despite the federal government’s concerted efforts to make sure Black communities are no longer exposed to more pollution than everyone else, pollution may be decreasing at a faster rate for white communities than Black ones.


Read More: The Court Ruling That Guarantees a Future of Environmental Racism


In the most prominent instance, he instructed his agency to end its investigation into environmental racism in a majority-Black Louisiana community that has the nation’s highest cancer risk from air pollution because the state’s Republican legislators threatened a long-winded legal battle. The decision reverberated across the South, leaving other community leaders hesitant to bring such fights to the EPA, activists have told Capital B. They said it felt like he was essentially sacrificing some Black communities to protect policies for everyone, a give and take that has long defined Black life. 

“We can no longer rely on our state or even our country,” said Jo Banner, one of the residents who brought the complaint to the EPA, after Regan’s decision. 

A better record than his predecessors

It can’t be understated, however, that Regan’s leadership was monumental for many communities, like those dealing with a deadly sewage crisis in Cahokia Heights, Illinois. The small Illinois town has been dealing with major flooding issues since the 1980s, but Yvette Lyles, a resident of Cahokia Heights, told Capital B last month that the EPA’s attention to the problem has been the strongest ever since Regan took control.

Regan, pictured in New Orleans this past October, said he will be leaving the EPA to “return to [his] home state of North Carolina with sincere appreciation and a profound sense of accomplishment.” (Courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency)

While leading North Carolina’s environmental department before taking the helm at the EPA, Regan took a similar tack as he did at the federal level. He opened his office’s doors to activists in an unprecedented way, while also showing deference to polluting industries that were connected to community health struggles but strong economic drivers. So, for some environmental advocates, his leadership at the EPA ultimately followed the path he has always journeyed. His career has been defined by giving Black communities their first seat at the table and gradually improving the environmental outlook for everyone as a whole, while ceding consequential power to industry and anti-environment actors. 

Regan’s EPA will finish with a better record than the ones before him, but its long-term successes will be determined over the next few years as the Trump administration attempts to reverse most of its rules and enforcements. 

For the Black activists that preceded Regan’s rule, the work will continue. 
“We have to continue our fight here,” said Robert Taylor, a renowned Southern environmental activist, in a video created by the EPA to highlight Regan’s environmental justice work. “I’m going to continue to fight to protect our people.”

The post Michael Regan Rebuilt the EPA, but Did It Deliver for Black Communities? appeared first on Capital B News.

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