Meet the New (Bay) Boss

Bay Journal, EPA names new Bay Program director

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has selected a career employee with two decades of experience at the agency as the new head of its Chesapeake Bay Program Office in Annapolis. In an email to Bay Program participants, the agency said that Dan Coogan is scheduled to begin Oct. 6.

He currently is the agency’s deputy assistant administrator for Infrastructure and Extramural Resources and oversees the Office of Mission Support in Washington, DC, which is responsible for acquisitions, grants and facility operations.

Coogan will take over as the state-federal partnership is preparing to put the finishing touches on an updated Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement that will guide restoration and cleanup activities beyond 2025. He will be the Bay Program’s seventh director, or acting director, in six years.

Much of his experience is in programs managing grants and budgets. That could be useful because about two-thirds of the Chesapeake Bay Program’s annual budget of about $90 million goes toward grants to states, local governments, universities and nonprofits. In the Office of Mission Support, he oversaw an annual budget of $900 million and 1,400 full-time equivalent employees who provided services and programs to support the rest of the agency.

In past roles over the years, Coogan has overseen a wide range of actions to streamline and improve agency operations, ranging from reducing the number of overdue Freedom of Information Act responses to helping lead implementation of massive grant programs under the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, both of which distributed record amounts of agency funding for environmental initiatives.

Coogan joined the EPA in 2004 and holds a bachelor’s degree in government and politics from the University of Maryland, a master’s degree in public policy, and a doctorate in public policy from George Washington University.

He resides in College Park, MD, with his family and enjoys running, cycling, gardening and coaching youth sports.

Coogan will take over for Lee McDonnell, who has served as the acting Bay Program Director since December 2024 and helped guide the partnership through efforts to revise its watershed agreement and develop a new governance structure for the partnership.

I can't find a damn thing about his politics, which is probably a good thing. Hopefully we won't get fooled again.