A Greene Day in Dallas

Environmental Insider News, March 26, 2003

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has quietly announced the appointment of five-time Arlington (Texas) Mayor Richard E. Greene as the new Administrator for EPA Region 6. Greene, who will be sworn in on March 31, will leave his post as Executive Director of the Arlington Technology Incubator, a joint venture between the Arlington Chamber of Commerce and the University of Texas at Arlington that was created to move products from the laboratory to the marketplace.

EPA Administrator Christie Whitman called Greene "a welcome addition" to the agency's senior management team, citing his "vast experience in urban issues, new technology and scientific research, and creating public/private partnerships." Greene allowed as how he is looking "forward to assisting local government leaders - often the primary service providers of environmental protection to communities - to identify new cost-effective ways of achieving the nation's health-based standards."

Greene is a 1965 graduate of what is now the University of Louisiana at Monroe who in 1968 graduated from The School of Mortgage Banking at Northwestern University in Chicago. His public service began with the Arlington City Council in 1983. After 16 years in city government, Greene became the associate publisher of the Arlington Star-Telegram. From 2002 through 2002, he served as CEO of the North Texas 2012 Olympic Bid Committee. In that job he involved college students in conducting environmental research of 38 sites included in the committee's bid.

Greene says he brings to EPA an interest in the environment that began in the 1980's during his service with the Arlington City Council. As Mayor, Greene oversaw passage of a citywide curbside recycling ordinance 9j 1994 and a landscape and tree preservation ordinance in 1995. He may well have been influenced by his wife Sylvia, a past president of the nonprofit River Legacy Foundation, which helped parlay $500,000 in city park bond funds into the $5 million nature center that opened in 1996. Sylvia Greene was appointed in 1997 by Governor George W. Bush to the Trinity River Authority Board of Directors.

The downside of Greene's appointment, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the potential loss of prestige and funding for the technology incubator, which had already been hit with a raid by the University of Alabama that nabbed UT-Arlington President Robert Witt. The 12.5% state funding cut proposed by Governor Rick Perry may have played a role in getting Greene to leave a job he loved for federal service and the headaches and thanklessness associated with serving as an EPA regional administrator in a region loaded with environmental quagmires.

We would like to think that the White House was so panicked - or otherwise moved - by our own offer (see EI NEWS, March 7) to accept the Region 6 job, but whatever the case, it was well past time that someone was brought in to fill the vacancy left by the departure of Gregg Cooke for the private sector two full years after the election of President Bush. Greene's first challenge may well be a pending decision on the status of Ellis County in the state's ozone nonattainment scheme, according to Peter Altman of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition.