The US. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced a new acting head of the Office of Water as the current assistant administrator, Radhika Fox, exits her post at the end of the month.
Bruno Pigott, who currently serves as principal deputy assistant administrator for water, will take the place of Fox, according to a Feb. 21 report in Politico’s E&E News.
Pigott has been with EPA since 2021 and previously worked for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, where he spent more than 20 years, more recently serving as commissioner from 2017 to 2021.
After serving three years at assistant administrator for the Office of Water, Fox announced in January that she would depart the agency at the end of February. Appointed by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2021, Fox spearheaded EPA’s water agenda in recent years. The agency credited her with leading efforts to “protect American communities from water pollution while embedding equity and environmental justice across its Office of Water programs.”
The change comes amid the agency’s plans to finalize major water quality priorities in 2024, including a final rulemaking on a national standard for regulating PFAS in drinking water, as well as finalizing the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements, which aim to remove 100% of lead service lines across the United States in the next 10 years.
