California regulator might become Biden’s EPA chief. Why some environmentalists oppose her

Mary Nichols’ work as California’s top air-pollution and climate-change regulator has vaulted her onto the shortlist of candidates for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in President-elect Joe Biden’s administration.

But now an unlikely group of critics — from the environmental community — are calling on Biden to reject Nichols and pick someone else.

More than 70 groups, including such organizations as the California Environmental Justice Alliance, the John Muir Project and Greenpeace USA, sent Biden a letter Thursday opposing Nichols as EPA chief.

Nichols is retiring this month as chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, considered one of the world’s leading agencies on air pollution and climate change. She has spent much of her time tangling with corporate America over pollution regulations, and led California’s fight against the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back aggressive rules governing greenhouse gas emissions from cars.

But the critics say Nichols has done a poor job on environmental justice, which focuses on how pollution affects poor communities.

Among other things, the groups are opposed to California’s pioneering role in developing a cap-and-trade program that forces industrial polluters to pay a price for carbon emissions.

Critics of cap-and-trade say the system, developed in 2012, enables these companies to continue polluting so long as they’re willing to pay the price. Much of the harm falls on disadvantaged communities where oil refineries and other smokestack industries tend to be located, the critics say.

“As warned by environmental justice advocates, cap and trade has increased pollution hotspots for communities of color in California, exacerbating pollution health and safety harms,” the coalition said in its letter to Biden. “Under Ms. Nichols’ leadership, the CARB has failed to be responsive to the needs and petitions of environmental justice communities.”

A spokesman for Nichols wasn’t immediately available for comment.

This story was originally published December 3, 2020 at 11:25 AM.