New EPA Chicago Boss Envisions Expansive Interagency Efforts

The new head of EPA’s Great Lakes region wants to create vast demonstration projects—perhaps as big as a city block—that knit together various agencies’ work to address climate change, promote resiliency, and protect environmental justice and public health.

The work is still in the early stages, but Debra Shore, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 5, says the buildouts will serve as proof that the federal government’s various arms can unite to solve multiple problems at once.

“In the past, when groups have gone into, say, affordable housing units to do energy efficiency projects, they ...