Lisa Jackson, EPA Administrator, announces resignation

Lisa P. Jackson, the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, announced today that she is stepping down from the job, the New York Times reported.

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Jackson, 50, the agency’s first black leader, said she was leaving the agency confident that “the ship is sailing in the right direction,” according to the New York Times.

President Barack Obama thanked Jackson for her service in a statement, the New York Times reported. “Under her leadership,” he said, “the EPA has taken sensible and important steps to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink, including implementing the first national standard for harmful mercury pollution, taking important action to combat climate change under the Clean Air Act and playing a key role in establishing historic fuel economy standards that will save the average American family thousands of dollars at the pump, while also slashing carbon pollution.”

Congressional Republicans and business groups accused Jackson of waging a “war on coal” after she succeed in placing tighter limits on soot, the Washington Post reported.

Jackson doesn’t have another job lined up, but she has been mentioned as a possible candidate for president of Princeton University, where she was an engineering graduate student, the Washington Post reported. She plans to depart soon after President Obama’s State of the Union address in January.