New regional EPA head Kevin McOmber talks priorities and superfunds in Atlanta's Westside

Lead

March 28th, 2025

Lindsay Street Park, located in the English Avenue neighborhood of Atlanta, is photographed in 2016. (Candace Wheeler/WABE)

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between WABE and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

In February, the Trump administration appointed Kevin McOmber, a civil engineer and former Suwanee city council member, as the Southeast’s new Environmental Protection Agency leader.

Established in the 1970s under the Nixon administration, the agency is mandated to protect clean air, land and water. However, it’s now in the midst of a sharp turn, transitioning from pursuing the Biden Administration’s environmental ambitions to the Trump Administration’s priorities. These include streamlining business permitting, boosting energy production and supporting artificial intelligence.

McOmber says that his goal is to follow that federal agenda.

“We get our direction from headquarters, and our administrator, Lee Zeldin, has made a pretty clear set of goals for us,” he tells WABE.

Kevin McOmber is now the regional administrator for the EPA’s Region 4, which includes Georgia. (Courtesy EPA)

There’s currently uncertainty in both Georgia and Washington — employees were fired en masse, but a judge later ordered the EPA and other agencies to reinstate fired employees.

McOmber said some Southeast staff have taken retirement offers, and some are on administrative leave. But he said it’s not clear yet how else the cuts have affected the region.

“What we’re hearing from headquarters is that there will be a plan that gets rolled out very soon to address that question,” he said. “We don’t have any specifics on it at the moment, but I do believe we will have direction very soon on that topic.”

The regional leader said one project that has not been affected is the cleanup of a superfund site on Atlanta’s west side. Testing found high lead levels in the ground in English Avenue and Vine City, and EPA has been removing the polluted soil. McOmber says the agency is on track to finish the work in about three years.

“It’s a slow process, and it’s not cheap,” he said. “It takes time and money to do that.”