Wheeler (EPA) Has Already Hired Chemical, Auto Execs As Advisors Though They're Not Confirmed
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has hired a former chemical industry executive and a former car company executive who are serving as “special counsels” to Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, even though the pair has yet to be confirmed by the Senate to fill high-level positions at the agency. In this key regard, Wheeler is following in the footsteps of former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who surrounded himself with former officials from regulated industries, including a former consultant to the chemical industry who joined the agency before he had completed the Senate confirmation process.
In a July 6 email obtained by E&E News, Wheeler’s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, said Peter Wright and Chad McIntosh were scheduled to begin work on Monday (July 9).
McIntosh, Ford Motor Co.’s former environmental policy chief, was picked to lead the EPA’s international and tribal affairs office. Wright, a former senior attorney at The Dow Chemical Company, now DowDuPont, would lead the office of land and emergency management, which oversees chemical plant safety rules and administers the federal Superfund program, responsible for cleaning up some of the country’s most contaminated industrial sites.
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Wright, who worked on Dow’s Superfund cleanup program, has agreed to recuse himself from working on any Superfund sites that DowDuPont may be responsible for contaminating for at least two years. For DowDupont sites that he personally worked on, Wright agreed to a permanent recusal. Dow and DuPont merged in August 2017. Together, they are responsible for the cleanup of nearly 200 Superfund sites, The Intercept reported in March.
Ed. - Who better to handle Superfund sites than a guy who automatically can't work on nearly 200 of them? 
EDIT
https://thinkprogress.org/former-industry-officials-are-advising-new-epa-head-before-theyre-confirmed-553d8959ff33/
