Term: 2022-2025
Monitoring and Assessment Team Assignment: Water Resources
STAC Member Since: August 2022
Title: Environmental Advisor
Departments: Retired from US Environmental Protection Agency
Education: Certificate of Executive Qualifications upon completion of Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program, US Office of Personal Management 2004. MS Urban and Policy Sciences (energy planning concentration), Stony Brook University, New York 1981. BA Economics, Stony Brook University, New York 1981
Primary Focus Area: Water quality
Secondary Focus Area: Blue carbon
Career Experiences: Paul Cough is an environmental analyst who advises governments and nonprofit organizations on water quality, carbon accounting, and habitat conservation. He is the former Director of the EPA’s Oceans and Coastal Protection Division, where he supervised the National Estuary Program, the National Coastal Condition Assessment, the Ocean Dumping Program, and programs on vessel discharges, plastic pollution and climate resilience, and served on EPA’s emergency response teams for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Hurricane Katrina. In previous positions, he directed the EPA’s Office of International Environmental Policy and worked in the private sector as an energy systems analyst.