EPA’s political leaders have hedged on reorganization plans for its stand-alone research office, but the office’s managers are already warning staff of halting lab research and reassigning key duties.
In an email sent Thursday morning to all staff in the Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment, one of the Office of Research and Development’s four research centers, center Director Wayne Cascio and deputy Kay Holt wrote, “Lab research will wind down over the next few weeks as we will no longer have the capability to acquire supplies and materials.”
“ORD is shutting down their laboratory activities,” the email continues. “We are unsure if these laboratory activities will continue post-reorganization. Time and funding would be needed to reconstitute activities.”
The research office’s executives are already planning a future without ORD as a stand-alone office.
Senior-level Office of Research and Development staffers were informed that management is considering moving up the date of a scheduled quarterly meeting from June 9 to the week of May 19 to discuss an “orderly transfer of ORD’s functions,” according to a source granted anonymity who is familiar with reorganization plans.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin last Friday announced reorganization plans for four offices that include new positions under the agency’s chemicals, air, water and administrator offices.
Zeldin has said the organizational shake-up is to get staff levels closer to those seen in the Reagan administration and to better align the agency’s priorities with statutory mandates from Congress, such as reviewing new chemicals or permitting activities in the pursuit of “energy dominance.”
EPA spokesperson Mike Bastasch said “that email is factually inaccurate.”
When asked to specify what was inaccurate, agency spokesperson Molly Vaseliou said “no ORD funding requests to OMS [Office of Mission Support] have been denied,” and she pointed to “numerous contracts for ongoing ORD research dating back to January” that have been approved.
“At ORD and throughout the agency, EPA is continuing research and labs to advance the mission of protecting human health and the environment,” Vaseliou continued.
Cascio and Holt’s email said the shuttering of research activities is because certain “forms for ORD acquisitions were cancelled by OMS,” and “we are also no longer allowed to submit acquisitions unless they are related to health and safety needs.”
Vaseliou said that statement was also incorrect.
Research office staffers in a town hall Friday afternoon were encouraged to apply to the new positions available in other agency programs and told that plans for the future of ORD have yet to be finalized.
Cascio and Holt in their email to CPHEA staff said, “Given all these recent events, the Talent Hub opportunities should not be viewed as an opportunity to continue your current research.”
CPHEA oversees multiple research divisions, from climate science to pollutant assessments. One of its divisions is the embattled Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, which conducts chemical risk assessments that industry lobbyists have for years challenged for overstating the dangers of certain substances.
Similar functions are the mission of the newly established Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions, under the Office of the Administrator. The new office’s mission statement is the “development of efficient and effective environmental solutions through the data, methods and tools to inform Agency risk assessments and risk management actions,” according to an image of the office’s organizational structure shared with POLITICO’s E&E News.
EPA’s plan to dissolve ORD has been expected by staffers for months, after draft plans to reassign or fire the research office’s approximately 1,500 staffers leaked to the press.
No employees have been laid off, Vaseliou said earlier this week.
“While Kay and I, along with many of you, are grieving the loss of the Center that you built, and its research, we are also laser focused on mitigating impacts on our federal staff,” Cascio and Holt wrote in the email.
Reach this reporter on Signal at eborst.64.
