President Obama’s pick for EPA Administrator is receiving praise from a range of groups including state governments, environmentalists, and industry representatives.

Gina McCarthy, President Obama’s choice to be Administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after the resignation of former Administrator Lisa Jackson, is expected to face a tough confirmation hearing in the coming days.

But those who worked with her in her past careers throughout New England are praising her as a strong leader and for her ability to find common ground on contentious issues.

An environmental policy veteran who got her start in the public health offices of Stoughton and Canton is on her way to taking the nation’s top environmental post.
 
Regina McCarthy, 58, was nominated by President Barack Obama on Monday to head the Environmental Protection Agency, where she has served as an assistant administrator and head of the Office of Air and Radiation since 2009. She is expected to face a tough confirmation in Congress, even though she made it through a confirmation vote for her current position four years ago.
 

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote Thursday on a measure to urge the Transportation Conference Committee to strip the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the ability to designate toxic coal ash as a hazardous waste. This spring, the House approved H.R. 4348, the Surface and Transportation Extension Act of 2012.  In this bill the House included an amendment by West Virginia Republican Representative David McKinley, that would prohibit the EPA from ever setting federally enforceable safeguards for the disposal of toxic coal ash. Now McKinley and the coal lobby are fighting to keep his amendment from being stripped out during House-Senate conference committee negotiations.