Gov. Phil Scott has tapped Peter Walke to take over as commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation.
The appointment, announced on Monday, follows the sudden resignation of DEC Commissioner Emily Boedecker on Friday.
Walke has served as deputy secretary of ANR since January 2017. He was formerly chief of staff for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation.
The governor has not yet appointed someone to fill Walke’s post at ANR.
“Peter has been instrumental in developing and implementing strong, common-sense environmental policy,” said Julie Moore, secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, in a statement announcing the appointment on Monday. “His ability to lead bipartisan efforts across the state and region has been invaluable.”
Walke will now be in charge of the DEC’s staff of 300. He plans to continue to lead the agency’s efforts on climate change, including the regional Transportation and Climate Initiative negotiations. Walke declined to provide specifics about his new role beyond moving ahead with ongoing agency priorities like waterway cleanup efforts and PFAS sampling.
“Thankfully, I’m not coming into this whole thing fresh having been working on these issues for the last three years, but I’m really looking forward to taking on new challenges as commissioner,” he said.
Walke said that a big obstacle facing the department is the same budget constraints as the rest of state government due to the state’s “changing demographics.”
“As we add more goals and environmental objectives to achieve, while still working on the ones that we had previously on the books, this becomes a significant challenge,” he said.
He added that the department will have to make some “priority decisions” about what environmental outcomes to achieve.
“This is not a … tomorrow discussion,” he stressed. “As we work toward our long-term future, we have to think about the sustainability of our organization and where our priorities lie.”
Brian Shupe, executive director of the Vermont Natural Resources Council, said he thought Walke has “shown leadership” on dealing with PFAS contamination and done a “solid job” on climate policy. “We think it’s a good choice,” he said of Walke’s appointment.
Shupe added that DEC has been “perennially underfunded.”
“DEC really hasn’t kept up,” with cost of living increases, he said. “So I think that’s going to be a big challenge for him.
In an email to staff on Friday announcing her resignation, Boedecker said that she was leaving with “immense gratitude” for the contribution DEC staff make to Vermont. Moore said Boedecker was leaving “to pursue other opportunities” without further explanation.
“It is thanks to you that development occurs in compliance with the value we have placed on our natural resources, that businesses operate with care for the quality of our air, that every glass of water we draw in Vermont is worthy of the Green Mountain State, and that slowly by slowly we are bringing back into our communities former abandoned and contaminated sites,” she wrote.
