The head of EPA’s Midwest branch can now help small-town Ohio recover from an environmental catastrophe that once gripped the nation.
East Palestine, Ohio, population roughly 4,700, was rocked over three years ago when a freight train derailed and spilled its cargo of toxic chemicals within the town’s boundaries. Anne Vogel, then the Ohio EPA’s director, was on the scene to help East Palestine clean up from the disaster as Republican officials blasted the Biden administration’s response.
Vogel joined the Trump administration last year as EPA Region 5 administrator, overseeing the agency’s operations in Great Lakes states, including Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. She stepped back from a variety of environmental issues she worked on at her state agency, including the East Palestine recovery effort.
But now Vogel has been granted authorization she sought from EPA to return to the cleanup, just under two months before her cooling-off period with the Ohio EPA ends, according to a review of ethics documents by POLITICO’s E&E News.
