Employees of the crucial scientific research arm of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have been left with more questions than answers as the agency moves to officially wind down the office following months of back-and-forth.
On Friday evening, the EPA issued a press release announcing a reduction in force at the Office of Research and Development (ORD), citing the move as part of a larger effort to save a purported $748.8 million. On Monday, some employees at ORD, the largest office in the agency, began receiving emails saying that they’d been assigned new positions within the EPA.
“Please note, this is not an offer, but a notice of reassignment,” says a letter sent to an employee and viewed by WIRED; the employee had previously applied to positions within the agency, as ORD employees were instructed to do in May. “There is no action you need to take to accept the reassignment, and there is no option to decline.”
On a call with ORD administrators and staff held Monday afternoon, audio of which was obtained by WIRED, leadership—including ORD acting administrator Maureen Gwinn—was unable to answer basic questions from employees, including a timeline for when the agency planned to permanently end ORD, how many employees would be transferred to other offices, and how many would lose their jobs. Employees at ORD who spoke with WIRED say that Friday’s public-facing email was the first concrete news they had heard about their organization’s future. One worker told WIRED that employees often learned more from news outlets, including WIRED, “than we do from our management.”
“We wish we had more information for you,” Gwinn told staff on the call. “I'll speak for myself, I wish we weren't at this point today."
An EPA spokesperson, who declined to give their name, wrote in response to a series of questions from WIRED that the agency is currently offering its third voluntary resignation period, known as a DRP, which ends on July 25. “The RIF process entails a number of specific procedures in accordance with OPM regulations,” they said. “The next step in this process is to issue intent to RIF notices to individual employees.” That number “won’t be clear,” they said, until after the DRP process was over.
“This is not an elimination of science and research,” the spokesperson wrote. “We are confident EPA has the resources needed to accomplish the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment, fulfill all statutory obligations, and make the best-informed decisions based on the gold standard of science.”
At the start of the year, ORD was composed of between 1,000 and 2,000 scientists at labs spread across the country as well as in Washington, DC. The branch’s work provides much of the science that underpins the policy formed in the agency, from research on chemicals’ impacts on human health and the environment to air quality and climate change to planning for emergencies and responding to contamination in air, soil, and water. The office contains many groups and initiatives that are crucial to protecting the environment and human health, including a team that studies human health risks from chemicals.