It’s not just “science-based” that’s banned, but also scientists
This
article is a collaboration with The New York Times.
More
than 700 people have left the Environmental Protection Agency since President
Donald Trump took office, a wave of departures that puts the administration
nearly a quarter of the way toward its goal of shrinking the agency to levels
last seen during the Reagan administration.
Of
the employees who have quit, retired or taken a buyout package since the
beginning of the year, more than 200 are scientists. An additional 96 are
environmental protection specialists, a broad category that includes scientists
as well as others experienced in investigating and analyzing pollution levels.
Nine department directors have departed the agency as well as dozens of
attorneys and program managers. Most of the employees who have left are not
being replaced.
The
departures reflect poor morale and a sense of grievance at the agency, which
has been criticized by Trump and top Republicans in Congress as bloated and
guilty of regulatory overreach.
That
unease is likely to deepen following revelations that Republican campaign
operatives were using the Freedom of Information Act to request copies of
emails from EPA officials suspected of opposing Trump and his agenda.
 |
| Departures vs. Hires at EPA (January - September 2017) |
The
cuts deepen a downward trend at the agency that began under the Obama
administration in response to Republican-led budget constraints that left the
agency with about 15,000 employees at the end of his term.
The
reductions have accelerated under Trump, who campaigned on a promise to dramatically scale back the EPA, leaving only what he
called “little tidbits” in place. Current and former employees
say unlike during the Obama years, the agency has no plans to replace workers,
and they expect deeper cuts to come.
“The
reason EPA went down to 15,000 employees under Obama is because of pressure
from Republicans. This is the effort of the Republicans under the Obama
administration on steroids,” said John O’Grady, president of American Federation of
Government Employees Council 238, a union representing EPA employees.
ProPublica
and The New York Times analyzed the comings and goings from the EPA through the
end of September, the latest data that has been compiled, obtained under the
Freedom of Information Act.
The
figures and interviews with current and former EPA officials show the
administration is well on its way to achieving its goal of cutting 3,200
positions from the EPA, about 20 percent of the agency’s work force.
Jahan
Wilcox, a spokesman for the EPA, said the agency was running more efficiently.
“With only 10 months on the job, Administrator Pruitt is unequivocally doing
more with less to hold polluters accountable and to protect our environment,”
he said.
Within
the agency, science in particular is taking a hard hit. More than 27 percent of
those who left this year were scientists, including 34 biologists and
microbiologists; 19 chemists; 81 environmental engineers and environmental
scientists; and more than a dozen toxicologists, life scientists and
geologists.
Employees
say the exodus has left the agency depleted of decades of knowledge about
protecting the nation’s air and water. Many also said they saw the departures
as part of a more worrisome trend of muting government scientists, cutting research budgets
and making it more difficult for academic scientists to serve on advisory boards.
“Research
has been on a starvation budget for years,” said Robert Kavlock, who served as acting assistant
administrator for the Office of Research and Development before retiring in
November. Under earlier buyouts, Kavlock said, the agency later hired nearly
100 postdoctoral candidates to help continue critical agency work.
“There
wasn’t a reinvestment this time around,” he said. “There’s a hard freeze.”
Hardest Hit Departments
These
EPA departments had the highest departure-to-hire ratios from January to
September 2017. (Lucas Waldron/ProPublica)
Scientists,
for the most part, are also not being replaced. Of the 129 people hired this
year at the EPA, just seven are scientists. Another 15 are student trainee
scientists. Political appointees, however, are on the rise. The office of Scott
Pruitt, the agency administrator, is the only unit that saw more hires than
departures this year.
In
addition to losing scientists themselves, the offices at the EPA that deal most
directly with science were drained of other workers this year.
The
Office of Research and Development — which has three national laboratories and
four national centers with expertise on science and technology issues — lost 69
people, while hiring three.
At
the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, responsible for
regulating toxic chemicals and pesticides, 54 people left and seven were hired.
And in the office that ensures safe drinking water, one person was hired, while
26 departed.
By
contrast, Pruitt’s office hired 73 people to replace the 53 who left.
“I
think it’s important to focus on what the agency is all about, and what it
means to lose expertise, particularly on the science and public health side,”
said Thomas Burke, who served as the agency’s science
adviser under Obama. “The mission of the agency is the protection of public
health. Clearly there’s been a departure in the mission.”
Wilcox
disputed that assessment and said the agency remained an attractive workplace
for scientists. “People from across EPA were eligible to retire early with full
benefits,” he said in an emailed statement. “We currently have over 1,600
scientists at EPA and less than 200 chose to retire with full benefits.”
The
impact of losing so many scientists may not be felt for months or years. But
science permeates every part of the agency’s work, from assessing the health
risks of chemical explosions like the one in Houston during
Hurricane Harvey to determining when groundwater is safe to drink after a
spill.
Several employees said they feared the departures with few replacements
in sight would put critical duties like responding to disasters and testing
water for toxic chemicals in jeopardy.
As
of Dec. 6, there were 14,188 full-time employees at the EPA By comparison,
there were 17,558 workers at the end of the first year of the George W. Bush
administration and 17,049 by the end of the first year of President Obama’s
term.
The EPA offered two major buyouts during the Obama administration, losing
900 employees in 2013 and an additional 465 the following year. Hundreds of
other workers left through attrition and were not replaced.
EPA Workforce Over Time
According
to the agency’s fiscal year 2018 budget, the EPA is projected to hit its lowest
level of employment since 1984. (Lucas Waldron/ProPublica)
Pruitt’s
office has described the current buyout process as a continuation of Obama
administration efforts to ensure that payroll expenses do not overtake funding
for environmental programs.
Agency
staff said they believed the Trump administration was purposely draining the
EPA of expertise and morale.
Ronnie Levin spent 37 years at the EPA
researching policies to address lead exposure from paint, gasoline and drinking
water, most recently working as a lead inspector at the agency’s regional
office overseeing New England.
She retired in November after what she described
as months of low morale at the agency. And with the lead enforcement office
targeted for elimination as part of Trump’s proposed budget, she said, “It was
hard to get your enthusiasm up” for the job.
“This
is exactly what they wanted, which is my biggest misgiving about leaving,”
Levin said. “They want the people there to be more docile and nervous and less
invested in the agency.”
Lynda
Deschambault, a chemist and physical scientist who left the EPA at the end of
August after 26 years, said her office in Region 9, based in San Francisco, had
been hollowed out. The office saw 21 departures this year and no hires. “The
office was a morgue,” she said.
Conservatives
who helped lead the Trump administration’s transition and prepared for
eliminating vast parts of the agency said scientists’ worries were misplaced.
The
fate of a rule more than a decade in the making is a microcosm of larger changes
afoot.
“To
me it’s not necessarily a sign of catastrophe,” said David
Kreutzer, a senior researcher at the Heritage Foundation who advised
Trump on the EPA during the transition. He said the agency under President
Obama was engaged in “phenomenal overreach” and that the Trump administration’s
efforts were aimed at correcting that.
In
proposing this year to slash the EPA’s budget by 31 percent, Mick Mulvaney,
director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, called the effort
part of Trump’s plan to eliminate entrenched government workers. “You can’t
drain the swamp and leave all the people in it,” Mulvaney said. “So, I guess
the first place that comes to mind will be the Environmental Protection
Agency.”
Jan
Nation, who works in EPA’s Region 3, based in Philadelphia, where 46 people
either retired or took a buyout this year, lamented the administration’s
approach to federal workers.
“We are not the swamp. The swamp are all the
people who don’t have a specific function to make our government work,” Nation
said. “If you have a swamp to drain, I know people in the Army Corps of
Engineers who can do it.”
Talia
Buford and Lisa Song contributed reporting to this article.
Marina
Affo is an editorial
assistant at ProPublica.
