The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency is the head of
the United States federal government's Environmental Protection Agency,
and is thus responsible for enforcing the nation's Clean Air and Clean
Water Acts, as well as numerous other environmental statutes. The
Administrator is nominated by the President of the United States and
must be confirmed by a vote of the Senate. The office of Administrator
of the Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970 in
legislation that created the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA
Administrator is customarily accorded Cabinet rank by the President and
sits with the President, Vice President, and the 15 Cabinet
Secretaries. Since the late 1980s, there has been a movement to make the
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency a Cabinet
Secretary, thus making the EPA a 16th Cabinet department, dealing with
environmental affairs. The Administrator of the EPA is equivalent to the
position of Minister of the Environment in other countries.
The
current Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency is Gina
McCarthy, who succeeded acting administrator Bob Perciasepe, on July 18,
2013.
Note that Acting Administrators usually assume the office
in the interim period between the resignation of a previous
Administrator and the confirmation of his or her successor, including
during the transition period between two presidential administrations,
before the successor has been nominated and confirmed. Acting
Administrators come from within the EPA and usually hold an office that
is subject to Senate confirmation before becoming the Acting
Administrator. Linda Fisher and Stephen L. Johnson had been served as
Deputy Administrator when they became Acting Administrator. Marianne
Lamont Horinko was an Assistant Administrator at the time. They are not
subject to Senate confirmation to serve as the Acting Administrator,
though to continue to serve as a full-fledged Administrator (as in the
case of Lee M. Thomas or Stephen L. Johnson), they must be confirmed by
the Senate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPA_Admi...
