Environmental Protection Agency Nomination of Douglas M. Costie To Be Administrator and Barbara Blum To Be Deputy Administrator

The President today announced that he will nominate Douglas M. Costle and Barbara Blum to be Administrator and Deputy Administrator, respectively, of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Costle is presently assistant director of the Congressional Budget Office, responsible for directing the Natural Resources and Commerce Division.

He was born in Long Beach, Calif., on July 27, 1939. He received an A.B. from Harvard University in 1961 and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1964.

From 1964 to 1965, Costie was a trial attorney for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He worked as an attorney for the Economic Development Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce from 1965 to 1967, and served as deputy director of a $23 million pilot project designed to reduce unemployment in Oakland, Calif., through capital investment.

In 1967 he was an associate attorney for the firm of Kelso, Cotton, Seligman and Ray, and from 1968 to 1969, he was a senior associate at the urban policy planning firm of Marshall Kaplan, Cans and Kahn in San Francisco.

From December 1969 to December 1970, Costle was senior staff associate, environmental and natural resources, for the President's Advisory Council on Executive Organization. In that capacity, he directed the Council's evaluation of Federal environmental programs, which led to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency.

In 1971 Costle was a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution. From 1972 to 1973, he was deputy commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, and from 1973 to 1975 he was commissioner of that department.

Costle served as a consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency from March 1975 to July 1975, working on evaluation of EPA land use policies. In July 1975, he became assistant director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Costle is married to the former Elizabeth Rowe. They have a daughter and a son and reside in Virginia.

Barbara Blum was a deputy campaign director for the Carter-Mondale Presidential campaign in 1976.

She was born July 6, 1939. She received a B.S. degree in 1958 and an M.S.W. degree in 1959 from Florida State University.

From 1960 to 1962, Blum was on the faculty of the Pediatric Psychiatry Clinic at the University of Kansas Medical Center. She was acting administrator of the Suffolk County Mental Health Clinic in Huntington, Long Island, in 1963 and 1964. In 1964 she was a founder of the Mid-Suffolk Center for Psychotherapy in Hauppage, Long Island, and she served as a partner and center administrator there until 1966.

From 1966 to 1974, Blum was vice president of Restaurant Associates of Georgia, Inc., an Atlanta management and purchasing company for a wholly owned chain of restaurants and a restaurant equipment company founded by Blum and her husband.

Blum has been a member of the Federal Reserve Board National Consumer Advisory Council since 1976; chairman of the Georgia Heritage Trust Commission since 1976; and vice-chairman of the Fulton County Planning Commission since 1974.

She was a member of Leadership Atlanta (appointed by the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce) from 1974 to 1976 and on the Advisory Board of the Atlanta-Macon Corridor Study (appointed by the Georgia Department of Transportation) from 1973 to 1975. In 1973-74 Blum served on the Georgia Vital Areas Council, and from 1972 to 1974 she was a member of the Health and Social Services Advisory Board and Governmental Services Advisory Board of the Atlanta Regional Commission.

Since 1972 she has been chief lobbyist in the Georgia General Assembly and in Washington, D.C., for SAVE (Save America's Vital Environment) and from 1973 to 1976, was president of that organization. She was on the board of the National Committee for an Effective Congress in 1976 and has been a trustee of the Georgia Conservancy since 1973.

She is married to Donald W. Blum. They have four children and live in Atlanta.