By KATHLEEN RONAYNE | Related Press
Jared Blumenfeld (CalEPA picture)
SACRAMENTO — Jared Blumenfeld, California’s prime environmental regulator and a key local weather adviser to Gov. Gavin Newsom, will depart the administration on the finish of the month, Newsom introduced Friday.
Newsom, a Democrat, appointed Blumenfeld as secretary of the California Environmental Safety Company on his first day in workplace in 2019. Blumenfeld will grow to be the president of the Waverley Avenue Basis, a $3 billion local weather initiative funded by Laurene Powell Jobs.
As head of the state’s environmental company, he was chargeable for departments that regulate air air pollution, water use, recycling, poisonous substances, pesticides, environmental well being hazards like excessive warmth.
Yana Garcia, particular assistant legal professional basic targeted on environmental points within the California Division of Justice, will take over as head of the California EPA subsequent month. Blumenfeld mentioned the company now rivals the U.S. Environmental Safety Company in its workers and funds.
Blumenfeld was probably the most public-facing members of Newsom’s administration, representing the state at worldwide conferences and public hearings. He was personally named in a lawsuit by the Trump administration difficult California’s skill to hyperlink its emissions buying and selling program with an analogous one in Canada.
In an interview with The Related Press Friday, Blumenfeld mentioned he made a guidelines when he took the job of issues he needed to perform, together with much less headline-grabbing gadgets like reforming the state’s damaged Division of Poisonous Substances Management and cleansing up contaminated consuming water.
The primary 12 months of Blumenfeld’s tenure was largely spent defending California’s local weather insurance policies towards threats from the Trump administration, together with an effort to revoke California’s skill to set its personal car emissions guidelines. The state has since received that energy again underneath the Biden administration.
He additionally oversaw the water board because it responded to California’s newest drought and the air board because it put collectively a highway map to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045.
Trying to the long run, he mentioned California must make it simpler and sooner to launch clear power tasks.
“We’ve got to hurry up the method of getting the infrastructure within the floor to make it possible for we are able to translate our imaginative and prescient into actuality and in the intervening time there’s method an excessive amount of pink tape,” he mentioned.
Blumenfeld beforehand labored as regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Safety Company in the course of the Obama administration. After he left, he launched his personal agency advising clear tech shoppers, in accordance with his state bio.
The job pays $232,000.