KC Becker, a Boulder resident and former Colorado House speaker, resigned from her position as the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 8 administrator on Jan. 20, the day President Donald Trump took office.
Her departure was expected, as she was a political appointee under former President Joe Biden. But it reflects a broader shift at the EPA as the Trump administration moves aggressively to reshape the agency. Region 8 oversees air and water quality issues critical to Boulder-area residents, including efforts to reduce toxic ground-level ozone caused by emissions from oil and gas operations and automobiles, as well as addressing groundwater contamination from Xcel Energy’s coal ash landfill at the Valmont Power Station.
The Trump administration has moved swiftly to roll back environmental protections, appoint industry insiders to top EPA positions and prioritize fossil fuel projects. Trump has signed orders withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, declaring an “energy emergency” to expedite oil and gas development, and ending programs focused on environmental justice. Becker’s replacement at the EPA has not been announced.
“Trump is sending some really strong signals about moving away from a clean energy economy and moving away from considering climate or environmental justice in decision-making,” Becker told Boulder Reporting Lab last week. “And those are things that we very specifically were doing.”
Becker’s legacy at the EPA
In her final months, Becker said she worked to cement policies that would be harder for the administration to reverse. She finalized an agreement with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to give the public more influence over air pollution permits. She helped enact a scientific integrity policy in part aimed at shielding EPA decisions from political interference and ensuring the independence of career scientists and engineers. Becker said she also prioritized distributing grants for solar projects, emissions reductions in buildings and zero-emission school buses.
Becker, an environmental lawyer, served on the Boulder City Council from 2009 to 2013. She then served four terms in the Colorado House, including a term as speaker. She sponsored bills giving local governments more control over oil and gas drilling and setting statewide greenhouse gas reduction targets.
In 2021, at the end of her term in the legislature, Becker was appointed to lead EPA Region 8, which spans six western states and 28 tribal nations. She described the role as an “all hands on deck” effort to tackle climate change and repair aging water infrastructure, according to a news release.
Much of Becker’s work at the EPA focused on Suncor, Colorado’s only oil refinery, located in a heavily Latino neighborhood in north Denver. Her office rejected several state-issued air pollution permits for the refinery and launched an investigation into whether Colorado’s air pollution regulations discriminated against racial and ethnic minorities. That investigation, launched in 2022, resulted in a recent agreement with the state to make it easier for the public to weigh in on permitting decisions.
Enforcement was another priority for Becker. In 2024, the EPA reached a $241 million settlement with Marathon Oil Company over alleged air quality violations at its operations on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Federal officials called it the largest civil penalty ever under the Clean Air Act.
Beyond enforcement, Becker said she focused on directing resources to communities disproportionately affected by pollution. She highlighted her work in Commerce City, near the Suncor plant, and her decision to revisit a waiver that had long exempted International Paper from cleanup responsibilities at a Montana Superfund site. She said the EPA also took steps to increase transparency by making many of its inspection reports available online.
“When I came on to EPA, I didn’t think that a lot of the work of the agency was very transparent, and that they were not really connected to the communities that we ultimately serve,” Becker said. “And so a big part of what I tried to do was just constantly remind folks that we have to pay attention to what’s happening to actual communities.”
Becker acknowledged that many of these efforts could be paused or undone under the Trump administration. She specifically pointed to Trump’s declaration of an energy emergency, which she said could allow oil and gas projects to bypass critical environmental reviews.
“It’s pretty stunning that Trump declares that we have a national energy emergency when what we really have is a climate emergency,” Becker said. “It’s going to require the public to be much more diligent in their engagement” on permitting decisions.
More broadly, she worries the Biden administration’s progress toward building a renewable energy economy could be undermined.
“Ultimately, that’s what I’m most nervous about,” Becker said.
Becker has not announced what she plans to do next.
“I’m trying to figure that out. It’s nice to get a little bit of a break,” she said.
Thank you so much, KC!