Douglas M. Costle
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Douglas Michael Costle was born July 27, 1939 in Long Beach, California. Costle was one of the architects of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and he served President Jimmy Carter as EPA Administrator from 1977 to 1981.
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[edit] Early Professional Career
From 1964 to 1965, Costle was a trial attorney for the Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice, and from 1965 to 1967, he was an attorney for the Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. In 1967, he was associate attorney for the law firm of Kelso, Cotton, Seligman and Ray in San Francisco, and from 1968 to 1969 was a senior associate at the San Francisco law firm Marshall, Kaplan, Gans and Kahn. In 1971, Costle was a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. From 1972 to 1975 he was Deputy Commissioner, then Commissioner, of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection. From 1975 to 1977, he was Assistant Director for Natural Resources and Commerce at the Congressional Budget Office.
[edit] Environmental Protection Agency
Prior to the creation of the EPA in 1970, Costle headed the study which recommended its creation when he served as Senior Staff Associate, Environmental and Natural Resources, for the President's Advisory Council on Executive Organization. In 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter appointed Costle as EPA Administrator, a position in which he served until 1981. As EPA administrator, Costle chaired the U.S. Regulatory Council and was President Carter's representative to NATO's Committee on the Challenges to a Modern Society and the United States chair of the U.S./U.S.S.R. Joint Committee on Cooperation in the Field of Environmental Protection. He also served as the chair of the U.S./People's Republic of China Environmental Protection Protocol.
[edit] Later Professional Career
Costle served as dean of the Vermont Law School from 1987 to 1991. With Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin, he helped to found the Institute for Sustainable Communities in 1991, a non-profit organization that builds environmental, economic and social infrastructure in existing and emerging democracies around the world. Costle vied for Vermont's Democratic Party nomination to the United States Senate in 1994, losing in a primary to Jan Backus.
[edit] Education
Costle received an B.A. from Harvard University in 1961, and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1964.
