President Donald Trump this week nominated Katherine Scarlett, who’s been working on overhauling the federal permitting process, to serve as chair of the White House’s environmental office.
Scarlett, who’s currently serving as chief of staff at the Council on Environmental Quality, has been acting as the council’s leader during the administration’s early push to hasten how the government conducts environmental reviews for energy projects under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.
Trump on Monday sent Scarlett’s nomination to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where Scarlett previously served as a staffer to the panel’s top Republican, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.
If confirmed by the full Senate, Scarlett stands to wield more authority leading the office that earlier this year moved to ditch decades’ worth of existing rules governing how agencies conduct reviews under NEPA. Trump allies and industry representatives welcome the overhauls as a way to speed the construction of energy infrastructure; environmentalists say the changes are an assault on the nation’s bedrock environmental law.
