Story highlights Pruitt did not mention climate change in his remarks

At one point, he suggested that his image would soften as he escaped the glare of the media

Washington (CNN) Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt tried his best Tuesday to fuse his humbler vision of his new agency with his stated respect for its long-serving, ambitious regulators in his maiden speech to EPA employees.

In a politically difficult pitch to career employees who may sharply disagree with his vision of a more restrained EPA, Pruitt offered something of a homily to the civil service, saluting those with decades of service and proclaiming them symbols of the agency's value. But Pruitt has promised a drastic overhaul of that agency they serve, a re-do that likely escaped few of the roughly 75 employees gathered in a tall, mahogany meeting room.

"It needs to be tethered to the statute," Pruitt said of their work. "We need to respect that. We need to follow that. Because when we do, guess what happens? We avoid litigation, we avoid the uncertainty of litigation and we reach better ends and outcomes at the end of day."

Pruitt knows something about that -- as Oklahoma attorney general, he made his name suing the Obama-era EPA as overzealous regulators without due concern for their effect on job creation.

He has vowed to curtail what critics say is the agency's zest for rulemaking and to offer a more balanced way to promote hiring while still protecting the environment. He did not mention the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act, two of the EPA's most prominent enforcement tasks, nor the threat of climate change, in his speech.

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