WASHINGTON — Members of President-Elect Barack Obama’s transition team are being briefed by officials in the outgoing Bush administration, and a December 3 Washington Post article gave a glimpse of that process at work at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In visits with EPA senior staff, Obama people have “focused on drinking-water standards, asking about how to reduce children’s and mothers’ exposure to perchlorate, a chemical in rocket fuel that is leaching  into groundwater near military bases,” Post reporters Shailagh Murray and Carol D. Leonnig wrote.

Among Obama’s emissaries to the EPA are likely candidates for top jobs there, the article said. They include Lisa Jackson, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, who is among front-runners for the post of Obama’s EPA administrator; and Robert Sussman, a former Clinton administration official and now a lawyer and fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, who is a potential pick as a top EPA deputy.

Because the EPA is the principal regulator of US water quality standards and overseer of many water infrastructure programs, Obama’s approach to running the agency will be watched closely by all water-related industries.

Jackson and Sussman are among Obama transition-team members who, wearing yellow badges and adhering to ground rules agreed upon by Obama and President Bush, are now meeting with senior Bush officials in many agencies, asking “pointed questions” and “dissecting agency initiatives, poring over budgets and unearthing documents that may prove crucial as a new Democratic president assumes control,” the article said.

The goal is to allow new agency administrators to “hit the ground running” as soon as Obama is inaugurated on January 20. The transition process is similar in its basics to transitions involving some past administrations, according to the article.

In addition to perchlorate and other drinking-water standards issues, a top concern of Obama representatives in the EPA briefings has been climate change. “They are also asking how much money the enforcement divisions need to go after polluters,” the article said. The Obama team hopes to interview as many as 100 EPA staffers before filing a report that will guide the new administration.

In a related matter, reporter Kent Garber wrote in a December 1 U.S. News & World Report article that the incoming Obama administration and Congress are being urged by many academics, environmentalists and lawmakers to address the nation’s water issues.

“At the top of their priority list: reviving federal laws — particularly the Clean Water Act — that have been weakened or narrowly interpreted in recent years; boosting funding for the nation's faltering and aging water infrastructure; and strengthening the Environmental Protection Agency's regulation of water pollution from industry and power plants,” the U.S. News article said. The article added, “Another concern is the condition of the nation’s sewage systems and water treatment facilities.”   

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To read the full U.S. News & World Report article, click here.

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