U-M professor finally confirmed as EPA enforcement chief

University of Michigan Law School professor David Uhlmann finally won confirmation Thursday as chief enforcement officer for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, more than two years after being nominated to the role by President Joe Biden.

The U.S Senate voted 53-46 to approve the nomination of Uhlmann to serve as the EPA's assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance. He was nominated by Biden in June 2021. Three Republican senators — Bill Cassidy, of Louisiana, Susan Collins, of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska — voted in favor. U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., voted against and U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., did not vote.

In the role, Uhlmann will lead the agency's criminal, civil and administrative enforcement of federal environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act.

An internationally known expert on environmental law who also is considered the leading authority on criminal enforcement of U.S. environmental laws, Uhlmann spent 17 years as a federal prosecutor, seven of which he served as the chief of the Environmental Crimes Section at the U.S. Justice Department.

During that time, he was lead prosecutor in a case that led to the longest sentence imposed up to that time for an environmental crime, in which a federal judge sentenced Allan Elias, of Idaho, to 17 years in prison for ordering employees to clean a storage tank containing cyanide without testing for toxicity or providing protective gear. One worker suffered permanent brain damage.

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A hearing on Uhlmann's nomination was held in September 2021 but was not moved out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee until April of this year, despite the committee chairman, U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., saying Uhlmann was "exceptionally qualified to lead EPA’s critical enforcement functions.” The committee deadlocked on his nomination in the previous Congress before the Senate voted to move forward last year but failed to bring his confirmation up for a vote.

Meanwhile, a report late last year from the Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington-based watchdog group, indicated that EPA enforcement actions, which fell during President Donald Trump's term, still lagged under Biden, a situation complicated by the Senate's failure to confirm Uhlmann before now.

"He seems eminently qualified," said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond Law School and an expert on Senate confirmations. "Trump's folks hollowed out the EPA, so there is a desperate need for people like him. ... There's no reason someone as qualified as he is should have had to wait that long."

Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: U-M professor finally confirmed as EPA enforcement chief