10,000 EPA SCIENTISTS PROTEST LIBRARY CLOSURES

[Guest guest]

From Center for Science in the Public Interest Newsletter

Week of 7/3/06

10,000 EPA SCIENTISTS PROTEST LIBRARY CLOSURES — Loss of Access to

Collections Will Hamper Emergency Response and Research

Washington, DC — In an extraordinary letter of protest, representatives for

10,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists are asking Congress to

stop the Bush administration from closing the agency’s network of technical

research libraries. The EPA scientists, representing more than half of the

total agency workforce, contend thousands of scientific studies are being put

out of reach, hindering emergency preparedness, anti-pollution enforcement and

long-term research, according to the letter released today by Public

Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

In his proposed budget for FY 2007, President Bush deleted $2 million of

support for EPA’s libraries, amounting to 80% of the agency’s total budget

for

libraries. Without waiting for Congress to act, EPA has begun shuttering

libraries, closing access to collections and reassigning staff. The letter notes

that “EPA library services are [now] greatly reduced or no longer available to

the general public†in agency regional offices serving 19 states.

The letter signed by presidents of 17 locals of four unions (the American

Federation of Federal Employees, the National Treasury Employees Union, the

National Association of Government Employees and the Engineers and Scientists of

California) representing more than 10,000 EPA scientists, engineers and other

technical specialists was sent to Congressional appropriators this morning

and states:

* “The ability of EPA to respond to emergencies will be reduced†due

to a diminishing access to “the latest research on cutting-edge homeland

security and public health†topics;

* Approximately 50,000 original research documents will become

completely unavailable because they are not available electronically and the

agency

has no budget for digitizing them; and

* The public and academic researchers may lose any access to EPA

library materials as services to the public are being axed and there are no

plans

to maintain “the inter-library loan process.â€

“Eliminating library access is an absolutely awful way to run an agency

devoted to public and environmental health,†stated PEER Executive Director

Jeff

Ruch. “For example, important research on the Chesapeake Bay is locked away in

boxes since EPA closed its Ft. Meade library this February, yet EPA still

maintains that restoring the Chesapeake is a top priority.â€

The dogged insistence by the Bush administration on a $2 million cut in an

overall EPA budget of nearly $8 billion is particularly curious. EPA internal

studies show that providing full library access saves an estimated 214,000

hours in professional staff time worth some $7.5 million annually, an amount

far

larger than the total agency library budget of $2.5 million.

“The Bush administration apparently decided that it was politically easier to

close the libraries than to burn the books, although the end result will be

the same,†Ruch added, noting that the EPA Administrator brushed aside an

earlier request by the scientist unions to bargain about the library shutdowns

internally.

In their letter, the EPA scientists cite library closures as “one more

example of the Bush administration’s effort to suppress information on

environmental and public health-related topics.†At the same time, other

outside

observers, such as the Chair of EPA’s own Science Advisory Board, are

expressing

growing concerns over the viability and coherence of EPA’s research program.

###

_Read the letter of protest from EPA scientists_

(http://www.peer.org/docs/epa/06_29_6_union_library_ltr.pdf)

_Look at the Bush administration plan to shut EPA libraries_

(http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=643)

_See how EPA is shutting libraries without waiting for Congress to act_

(http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=660)

_View the Science Advisory Board Chair’s testimony on EPA’s deteriorating

research program_ (http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=661)

(http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=706#top)