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New head of EPA New England wants to engage with 'historically overburdened' communities

New England Public Media | By Nancy Eve Cohen
Published February 28, 2022 at 1:42 PM EST
The Housatonic River in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 2009 after a GE/EPA cleanup.
Nancy Eve Cohen
/
NEPM
The Housatonic River in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 2009 after a GE/EPA cleanup.

The New England office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a new top administrator.

President Joe Biden has appointed David Cash as the administrator of the agency's regional New England office.

Cash recently was the dean of a public policy graduate program at UMass Boston.

He also served in leadership positions in Massachusetts government including in the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, the Department of Public Utilities and the Department of Environmental Protection under Governor Deval Patrick. Cash was director of air, energy and waste policy under Governor Mitt Romney.

Early in his career, Cash taught science in the Amherst public schools.

Cash inherits the EPA's controversial plan to clean up the Housatonic River, which includes a disposal site for low-level PCB waste in Lee. PCBs are considered "probable human carcinogens" by the EPA.

In a statement, Cash said he's eager to engage with "all New England communities, especially those most vulnerable and historically overburdened."
Tags
Regional News ENVIRONMENTWESTERN MASSACHUSETTSGOVERNMENT & POLITICS
Nancy Eve Cohen
Nancy Eve Cohen is a former NEPM senior reporter whose investigative reporting has been recognized with an Edward R. Murrow Regional Award for Hard News, along with awards for features and spot news from the Public Media Journalists Association (PMJA), American Women in Radio & Television and the Society of Professional Journalists.

She has reported on repatriation to Native nations, criminal justice for survivors of child sexual abuse, linguistic and digital barriers to employment, fatal police shootings and efforts to address climate change and protect the environment. She has done extensive reporting on the EPA's Superfund cleanup of the Housatonic River.

Previously, she served as an editor at NPR in Washington D.C., as well as the managing editor of the Northeast Environmental Hub, a collaboration of public radio stations in New York and New England.

Before working in radio, she produced environmental public television documentaries. As part of a camera crew, she also recorded sound for network television news with assignments in Russia, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba and in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia.
See stories by Nancy Eve Cohen
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