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classify coal ash as a toxin, a situation that hobbled EPA regulators: how could they fine
or punish the TVA if the dangerous pollutants it spilled were not classified as such?
The question was made even murkier by its timing: the Kingston spill took place in
the last days of the Bush White House, and before President Obama had sworn in Lisa
Jackson as the EPA's new administrator.
Jackson, forty-six at the time, and a Princeton-educated chemical engineer, had worked
for sixteen years as an EPA scientist before overseeing enforcement of water and land-
use laws for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP). At her
confirmation hearing in January 2009, a few weeks after the Kingston spill, she said she
intended to review whether coal ash should be treated as hazardous waste. But while the
agency announced proposed new regulations in May 2010, it deferred answering the
key question of whether to treat coal ash as hazardous waste, drawing criticism from
the environmental community.
The Kingston disaster was a trial by fire for Jackson, and her response—well-inten-
tioned rhetoric followed by inaction—became a symbol of the political difficulty of en-
vironmental protection and of what Jackson's critics perceived as her weakness.
While some hailed her as “one of EPA's most progressive administrators,” critics from
both the right and left questioned Jackson's fitness for the EPA's top post. “Under her
watch, New Jersey's environment only got dirtier, incredible as that may seem,” said Jef
Ruch , executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER),
referring to Jackson's previous job at the NJDEP. “If past is prologue, one cannot reason-
ably expect meaningful change if she is appointed to lead EPA,” Ruch wrote to President
Obama.
Jackson had worked as an EPA staff scientist in Washington, DC, and New York City.
In 2002, she moved to the NJDEP and headed several high-profile cases—including
the landmark Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act, which preserved 860,000
acres slated for development and protected freshwater supplies for 5.4 million people.
She proved herself a quick study and was hired by New Jersey's then governor John
Corzine as his chief of staff in December 2008; two weeks later, she was tapped by
Obama for the EPA.
But, according to PEER's reports, Jackson did such a poor job of regulating toxic Su-
perfund sites at the NJDEP that the Bush EPA felt compelled to intervene. In a separate
case, Jackson's unit discovered that a day-care facility housed in a former thermometer
factory was exposing toddlers to mercury pollution, but failed to alert parents for more
than three months. (Jackson did not respond to my requests for an interview.)
In her first months as administrator, Jackson seemed to confirm the suspicions of
critics such as PEER's Jeff Ruch when she stumbled over the charged question of moun-
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