Top environmental group names new chief

The Natural Resources Defense Council has named a top Interior Department official as its new president. Rhea Suh, Interior's assistant secretary of policy, management and budget, will take over for outgoing president Frances Beinecke in January. “It has been an unparalleled privilege to work for the president and Interior Secretaries Ken Salazar and Sally Jewell,” Suh said. “Now, I’m honored to join NRDC, our nation’s intrepid defender of clean air, safe water, and wild places." Suh was at the center of a highly politicized confirmation process in the spring, when President Obama nominated her to head Interior's fish, wildlife and parks efforts. Senate Republicans slammed her connections to the environmental community and worried her positions would too heavily favor conservation efforts, in effect stymieing energy production. She cleared the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee by a 12-10 party-line vote in March, but her nomination was never brought to the Senate floor. Now, she will head an environmental organization that Republicans say, citing a New York Times story, exercised outsized influence in the crafting of the Obama administration's proposed power plant emissions rule. The Environmental Protection Agency has refuted those claims, saying many groups had input on the proposed rule, which aims to cut electricity emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Conservatives and industry groups are fighting the proposed rule. Some in the coal industry, along with states, have already filed lawsuits against the EPA...more