President nominates Susan Hedman ’78 to lead EPA Region 5

On May 22, President Obama announced his intention to nominate Susan Hedman ’78 as Commissioner for the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission.
She currently serves as the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 5 Administrator for the Great Lakes region, a position to which Obama appointed her on Earth Day in 2010. “A clean environment is essential to our health and our economy,” Hedman says. “At U.S. EPA, our job is to make sure that our water is safe to drink, our air is safe to breath and our communities are free from environmental hazards that pose health risks. We also help to clean up contaminated sites and to respond to environmental emergencies like chemical spills and oil spills.”

Hedman directs the EPA’s operations in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota and serves as EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Manager, where she oversees restoration and protection of the largest fresh surface water system in the world.
She also works with 35 federally recognized tribal governments to address regional environmental issues. She leads a team of more than 1,000 scientists, engineers,
lawyers, environmental specialists and administrative staff in EPA’s Chicago office.

“We are making unprecedented progress by cleaning up contaminated sites along the Great Lakes shoreline, by reducing runoff that contributes to harmful algal blooms and by installing green infrastructure to improve water quality throughout the Great Lakes basin,” Hedman says.

Climate change is our biggest environmental challenge, Hedman says. “U.S. EPA is playing a major role in the implementation of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan by helping communities to adapt to climate impacts that are already occurring, and by working with states to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.”