From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

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, or 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 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.