EPA’s Top Cop Finally Cleared for Job as Senate Confirms Uhlmann

David Uhlmann, the White House’s pick to lead the EPA’s enforcement office, will finally ascend to the job after the Senate voted 53-46 Thursday to confirm him following an odyssey lasting more than two years.

Uhlmann takes the leadership of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, which the Biden administration wants to get tough on polluters and other violators of federal air, water, land, and chemicals laws.

“There has not been a Senate-confirmed official leading EPA’s enforcement efforts for far too long,” Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in floor remarks Thursday. “Mr. Uhlmann is exceptionally qualified to do this job. He brings to this position a long career that includes 17 years with the Department of Justice, serving in both Democratic and Republican administrations.”

In his 2021 confirmation hearing, Uhlmann said that he would “highlight the efforts of companies that promote ethics, integrity, and environmental stewardship, while holding accountable companies who break the law and expose our communities to harm.”

To beef up the EPA’s efforts, Uhlmann has said he wants to increase the ranks of the enforcement office, which has seen a 30% budget cut over the last decade.

Uhlmann also pledged to enforce EPA regulations without prejudice, saying, “in enforcement, there’s no role for politics. It’s about the law, the facts, following both, and delivering results for the American people.”

Senate Republicans have repeatedly assailed Uhlmann as representing an overzealous attitude toward regulation.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said earlier this month that he opposed Uhlmann’s nomination because the Biden administration “is hellbent on regulating the dependable power our country relies on out of business and ignoring and manipulating the laws of the land, including the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to advance a radical climate agenda that puts both our energy and economic security at risk.”

Long Path to Confirmation

Uhlmann has traveled a long road to confirmation, waiting more than two years since he was nominated in June 2021. Since then, he has overcome a deadlocked Senate committee vote, a discharge motion to unjam his passage, renomination, a cloture vote to overcome multiple holds on EPA nominees, and repeated harsh criticism from Republican lawmakers.

His confirmation took 758 days, significantly longer than the 163.4-day average under Biden. Uhlmann’s delay is the fourth longest of any Biden nominee, according to the Partnership for Public Service.

Those delays—which lasted only 79.8 days as recently as the George W. Bush administration—have grown progressively longer over time.

Maya Kornberg, a research fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice who has researched presidential nominations, said Judiciary Committee staff have confirmed that there has been “a lot more objections to nominations than there once were, because of the increasing partisan rancor in the committee. As a result, the process moves less smoothly than it once did.”

“The fact that it has taken over two years for the Senate to take a final confirmation vote is extraordinary and shows how broken the Senate confirmation process has become,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

Valerie Smith Boyd, director of the Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service, said she finds it “very concerning to see this process taking longer and longer, because it discourages talented people from putting their names in for consideration and leaves gaps at agencies where, yes, there are talented career and political appointees who may serve in acting roles, but it’s understood they’re not the formal leadership team, and that can create challenges for long-term planning.”

The lack of a confirmed head also harms congressional oversight, Boyd said, because lawmakers can’t peer into agencies as thoroughly as they could with a confirmed presidential leader in place.

Track Record

Uhlmann brings a long track record to the job, having served for 17 years as a federal prosecutor—including seven as head of the Justice Department’s environmental crimes section.

During his confirmation hearing, Uhlmann said he was lead prosecutor in the first environmental justice criminal trial in the US, involving residents of West Memphis, Ark., who lived next to a hazardous waste site for more than a decade.

He also spoke of a “knowing” endangerment case he tried in Idaho, involving a 20-year-old worker who suffered severe brain damage because his employer forced him to illegally dispose of cyanide waste “without even the most basic safety equipment.”

Most recently Uhlmann served as director of the University of Michigan Law School’s Environmental Law and Policy Program.