Trump Nominates Dow Chemical Official to Lead Emergency Response to Toxic Spills

March 05, 2018

By Mark Hand –

President Donald Trump nominated a top official with Dow Chemical Co. to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) unit that oversees chemical spills from Superfund sites. Dow Chemical is linked to more than a hundred of these 1,340 toxic clean-up sites across the nation.

If confirmed by the Senate, Peter Wright, an attorney for Dow Chemical, would serve as assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Land and Emergency Management (OLEM). At Dow Chemical, Wright currently works as managing counsel for environmental health and safety. Earlier in his career, Wright had jobs at several law firms as well as the agriculture giant Monsanto.

Wright has provided legal support for Superfund and other remediation sites in his tenure at Dow Chemical. “He has the expertise and experience necessary to implement our ambitious goals for cleaning up the nation’s contaminated lands quickly and thoroughly,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said Friday in a statement.

Pruitt has made the Superfund program one of his top priorities as head of the EPA. But the program’s budget has come under attack by the Trump administration.

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