Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency
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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, 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 of the United States 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.
Administrators of the EPA
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. 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), they must be confirmed by the Senate.