Tribal Nations
Soaring to New Heights

Ted Owens is the Acting Director of the EPA Criminal Investigation Division. Ted started his career with EPA CID in 2002 as a Special Agent in Utah, where nine years of environmental crimes investigations yielded successful criminal prosecutions under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. For his outstanding work investigating Pacific States Cast Iron Pipe, which consistently emitted pollution far above legal limits and adversely affected local citizens, Ted was awarded an EPA Gold Medal. His work on the Bugman case, in which a tragic misapplication of a pesticide resulted in the deaths of two children, resulted in convictions of both applicator and company. In 2011, Ted moved to Washington DC where he served three-and-a-half years as International Desk Officer and member of the Deepwater Horizon Task Force, for which he was awarded a second EPA Gold Medal. From 2015-2020, he served as the Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge of CID’s Seattle Area Office, where he facilitated CID’s tremendous work in the Pacific Northwest. In 2020, Ted moved to Washington DC as CID’s Deputy Director. He earned a B.S. in Fisheries and Wildlife and a Master of Public Administration degree. Before working for CID, he spent six years as an endangered species biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.