Rick Karlin is reporting for the Times Union news emerged Tue., Dec. 15, that state Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos is on a short list of those being considered by President-elect Joe Biden to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The New York Times this week reported that Seggos was under consideration as another candidate, Mary Nichols was faltering amid criticism by groups pursuing environmental justice goals. Seventy organizations said she put together a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program in California that allegedly allows industries to emit too much pollution in poor neighborhoods if they are willing to buy pollution credits. Other candidates to lead the EPA include Michael Regan, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality; New York University law Professor Richard Revesz, an expert in climate change laws; Collin O'Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, Heather McTeer Toney, senior director with Moms Clean Air Force as well as former EPA head in the Obama administration, Gina McCarthy. Seggos joined the Andrew Cuomo administration in 2012 and was a top environmental adviser to Cuomo when the governor banned hydrofracking in New York. Cuomo later appointed Seggos DEC commissioner. His supporters say Seggos offers the complete package: administrative and on-the-ground experience, willingness to support ambitious decarbonization efforts and an understanding of the growing environmental justice movement. Seggos is credited with moving the state’s greenhouse gas initiatives forward while working to bring in a variety of viewpoints. He has also shown a willingness to take on the federal government, as evidenced by his fight to get the Trump Administration’s EPA to keep cleaning the Hudson River of PCBs, a job the federal agency basically said was completed. Read the full story in the Times Union.