Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

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The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency is the head of the United States federal government's Environmental Protection Agency, and is thus responsible for enforcing the nation's Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, as well as numerous other environmental statutes. The Administrator is nominated by the President of the United States and must be confirmed by a vote of the Senate. The office of Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970 in legislation that created the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA Administrator is customarily accorded Cabinet rank by the President and sits with the President, Vice President, and the 15 Cabinet Secretaries. Since the late 1980s, there has been a movement to make the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency a Cabinet Secretary, thus making the EPA a 16th Cabinet department, dealing with environmental affairs.

[edit] List of Administrators

Administrator	Term of Office	President(s) served under
William D. Ruckelshaus	December 4, 1970 – April 30, 1973	Richard Nixon
Robert Fri (Acting)	April 30, 1973 – September 12, 1973
Russell E. Train	September 12, 1973 – January 20, 1977	Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford
John Quarles, Jr. (Acting)	January 21, 1977 – March 6, 1977	Jimmy Carter
Douglas M. Costle	March 7, 1977 – January 20, 1981
Steve Jellinek (Acting)	January 21, 1981 – January 25, 1981	Ronald Reagan
Walter Barber, Jr. (Acting)	January 25, 1981 – May 19, 1981
Anne M. Burford (née Gorsuch)	May 20, 1981 – March 9, 1983
William D. Ruckelshaus	May 18, 1983 – January 4, 1985
Lee M. Thomas	February 8, 1985 – January 20, 1989
William K. Reilly	February 6, 1989 – January 20, 1993	George H.W. Bush
Carol M. Browner	January 22, 1993 – January 19, 2001	Bill Clinton
Christine Todd Whitman	January 31, 2001 – June 27, 2003	George W. Bush
Marianne Lamont Horinko (Acting)	July 14, 2003 – November 5, 2003
Michael Leavitt	November 6, 2003 – January 26, 2005
Stephen L. Johnson	April 29, 2005 – present

[edit] Acting Administrators

Note that Acting Administrators usually assume the office in the interim period between the resignation of a previous Administrator and the confirmation of his or her successor, or during the transition period between two Presidential administrations, before the successor has been nominated and confirmed. Acting Administrators come from within the EPA and usually hold an office that is subject to Senate confirmation before becoming the Acting Administrator. Linda Fisher and Stephen L. Johnson had been served as Deputy Administrator when they became Acting Administrator. Marianne Lamont Horinko was an Assistant Administrator at the time. They are not subject to Senate confirmation to serve as the Acting Administrator, though to continue to serve as a full-fledged Administrator (as in the case of Lee M. Thomas or Stephen L. Johnson), they must be confirmed by the Senate.