the barbarian approach to science, part #3796

[realthog]

There's a new press release out today from PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) that tells an all too, appallingly too familiar story:

For Immediate Release:  Monday, June 16, 2008
Contact:   Carol Goldberg (202) 265-7337

EPA LIBRARY ON EFFECTS OF NEW CHEMICALS WILL REMAIN CLOSED  
Four Key Committee Chairs Ask GAO to Review EPA Library "Restoration" Plans  

 
Washington, DC - Despite a growing need to understand the impacts of chemicals on our health and environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will not re-open its specialized library for research on the properties and effects of new chemicals, according to documents posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).  As a consequence, one of the world's most comprehensive technical collections on pesticides and other compounds will be permanently lost.

The Office of Prevention, Pollution and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) Library, in EPA's Washington D.C. Headquarters, had provided research services to EPA scientists who review industry requests for the introduction of new chemicals into the market.  Without any public announcement or notice to its staff, EPA shut down the library in October 2006.  Its holdings were dispersed and many journals "recycled."

In December 2007, after nearly a third of agency libraries had been closed, Congress intervened and ordered EPA to re-open closed libraries but left it up to the agency to devise a plan.  The details of EPA's plan are now just becoming known.  Rather than restore the OPPTS Library, EPA will instead -

• Limit a re-opened EPA Headquarters Library (closed since September 2006) to a total of 150 square feet - an area smaller than a one-car garage.  Within that small space, a tiny remnant of the original OPPTS Library holdings will be available as a "special Chemical Collection";
• This entire Chemical Collection will occupy one six-shelf bookcase totaling 18 linear feet.  The rest of the EPA HQs Library will be contained in two bookshelves totaling 36 linear feet; and
• This Chemical Collection will have no librarian assigned to it (though the restored HQ Library will have a single librarian and technician).  By contrast, the OPPTS Library had three librarians and two technical staff.

The OPPTS Library had housed numerous unique toxicological studies on the potential effects of pesticides on children; up-to-date research on genetically engineered and other biotech products; and extensive literature on chemical risk assessments and emergency planning.  Its former space, where EPA scientists used to review monographs, is now filled with cubicles.

"Shuttering its only library dedicated to the study of chemicals speaks profoundly to the perverse priorities of our current Environmental Protection Agency," stated PEER Associate Director Carol Goldberg.  "EPA has chosen to make its scientists far less capable of independently analyzing whatever industry submits."

On May 22, 2008, the chairs of House Committees on Science and Technology, Energy & Commerce and Government Oversight, along with the chair of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, jointly asked the Government Accountability Office to evaluate EPA's "plan for re-opening and resuming service at libraries that were closed over the past two years" and which Congress directed be restored.  On March 26, 2008, GAO issued a scathing report blistering EPA's recent campaign of library closures.

Details of surprisingly narrow EPA restoration plans have been dribbling out in the form of ambiguous, fragmented documents, the latest of which purports to outline a library strategic plan for "2008 and Beyond".  At the same time, EPA has not even begun consultations with its employee unions to resolve an unfair labor practices complaint concerning preemptory removal of libraries and services which have hampered the ability of agency professionals to do their jobs.  Nor has EPA finished receiving public input in response to what it called a "National Dialogue" on environmental information.

"EPA apparently never had any intention of genuinely consulting with its employees, library experts or others who depend on the libraries," Goldberg added.  "There is little prospect of progress until whoever at EPA is responsible for closing these libraries - and keeping them shut - is gone."

For those unfamiliar with the backstory (some of which is contained in my book Corrupted Science, shameless plug shameless plug), the reason the EPA libraries were closed by the Bush Administration was to make it less easy for environmentalist organizations, individual citizens, environmental and climate scientists, etc. -- i.e., everyone who has a right to have access to these important scientific repositories -- to check for disparities between the actual science gathered by the EPA and the pseudoscience spouted by whichever ignoramus, industry lapdog political appointee happens to be frontman at the time for what was once deservedly a highly respected scientific organization dedicated to protecting the public. It's in effect one of the greatest acts of book-burning perpetrated in modern times, and the perpetrators should be -- but of course won't be -- brought to justice for their crime.

Comments

[eglady.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing this. I used to work for our state's DNR and worked closely with regional EPA folks on a lot of projects. I saw first-hand with my EPA colleagues what happens when partisan politics becomes involved in something that should be considered a bi-partisan interest of general welfare. Since my team was also working with Canadians and other state and provincial agencies on a binational task force involving the Great Lakes, I really saw the politics in action and it wasn't a pretty sight.

Nothing worse can happen for the environment than for its protection to be a part of the political wing. When my state office was independent from the executive branch, overseen by a secretary who was hired by a board appointed to staggered terms, we were a young, vibrant group of people who were on the cutting edge of environmental protection/restoration and enforcement. Some of the rules we promulgated became models for the rest of the country. We had cleanup and restoration efforts that were novel in their successes, joint agreements and model pollutant reduction efforts. Then the republican Legislature, responding to citizen complaints (big dischargers) began complaining that the department had become bloated and rogue and that it was driving business from the state (not true, but repeated often enough and with great enough disdain it becomes accepted dogma). The Legislature pressured the department to reorganize and then decided to make the head of the department a governor appointee, not someone selected by the board. The republican governor at the time (Tommy Thompson, now a former Bush cabinet appointee and presidential aspirant himself) didn't like all the pesky air and water quality rules and now also held the key to the secretary's golden handcuffs. There were no more impromptu meetings in the aisles to talk about new science and to brainstorm solutions. That wasn't the goal of the agency. Efficiency was: granting permits quickly, not collecting a backlog because we needed to send field staff out to test, measure and record actual pollutant levels. The young people left for the private sector or grad school, or became old and jaded. The power to use science was hamstrung by the need for concensus with stakeholders (not bad on its face, but diabolical in its implementation). "New ideas" were those brought in from dischargers and they started having more say in the rules reviews, with more weight than other citizens. Instead of public meetings in town halls in the affected communities in the evenings when locals could attend, they were held in state offices on weekday mornings when only lawyers could attend. Their "science" became the standard by which new rules were written, legal haranguing over language and the watering down of quantitative measures. I left that agency almost 10 year ago and not long ago was asked to contract edit the same document I was doing way back then. It becomes a stagnant pool no one can crawl out of and last I heard the regulation I edited had gone back to committee because now that it was readable and understandable, there were objections from "stakeholders" that it would be too hard on polluters.

The louder and more frequently the lies are put forward, the more power they have. Our agency wasn't bad and in need of reorganization and a new leadership structure. It was because we were effective that we had to be curbed by convincing the citizens that we were working against their interests.

EPA has been on this road a very long time and as long as its leaders serve at the mercy of whomsoever is in office, rather than by principles of science and public welfare, it will simply be another prop for the dark side. When the public and the media can no longer be troubled to become educated, or even interested, in the science of environmental protection, there is no counter balance to hold such government agencies accountable to anyone but the dischargers writing their own permits.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

And then, when everything has been polluted, and the air and water are foul, the same people will complain 'Why did nobody do anything?' or will say 'Leave it to the market!' so that they can sell clean air and water to those who can afford them.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Yes, the "leave it to the market" approach really falls apart in areas like this, doesn't it? It's surprising the libertarian diehards don't concede the point.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

They can't, otherwise their entire ideological system collapses.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"They can't, otherwise their entire ideological system collapses."

No, that's not fair to them. They could make an arguable case that laissez-faire is the best policy for almost everything but that there are a few exceptions.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

The ones I've argued with have tended to be True Believers in the One True Market.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this long comment. I very much wish I had known you'd been through this when I was working on my book Corrupted Science: I'd have been begging to e-interview you!

When the public and the media can no longer be troubled to become educated, or even interested, in the science of environmental protection

And that's the nub of it, isn't it? The more people become convinced that The Good Life is watching tv and the rest can be left to the treehuggers, the worse off we'll all be -- and very soon.

[plattcave.livejournal.com]

I want to write some long, passionate essay about this travesty, but all I can come up with is "Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....."

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I want to write some long, passionate essay about this travesty, but all I can come up with is "Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....."

I know the feeling.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Rotten b*stards.

Love, C.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Rotten b*stards."

And that's the polite way of putting it.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

The EPA brands people who report governmental pollution violations as "whistle-blowers and trouble-makers" and reports them to "other" branches of the government, who in turn report back to the party or parties responsible for dumping the toxins. It's very difficult to find an attorney who will go up against government contractors, too. There is one fellow in Reno, NV, who represented Ralph Nader and the Green Party a few years back. But even he is afraid of the "big machinery", which is run by psychopaths.

A government contractor mined the Spokane Reservation for urnanium several years ago, and when the contracting company eventually vacated the leased reservation land it left open uranium pits and contaminated ponds everywhere on the leased land. The EPA then turned around and cited the Spokane people for pollution violations. The cancer rate on the reservation is astronomical.

There are chemical-contaminated ponds up on the Nevada Test site from careless dumping of deadly materials by the Air Force and government contractors, and these ponds are in turn poisoning and killing our wild mustangs, burros, and other wildlife, not to mention leaching into the water table. But try to report the mishandling of toxic materials to the EPA and it and the contractors the government hires will crush you for doing so.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Many thanks for this information, J. Again, as with eglady's long comment above, I wish I'd known some of this while writing Corrupted Science. Hm. On the other hand, it's a longish book anyway, so I don't know how I could have fitted any more stuff in. *sigh* Maybe there'll be a volume two, or a Revised 'n' Expanded Edn, somewhere down the line.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

I meant to mention here that I'm reading your CORRUPTED SCIENCE, Paul: Yours is an amazing and enlightening book that should be read by everyone. I am now viewing socio-political issues, "scientific research", and public information in a new and informed light -- albeit even more jaded than ever.

Thanks for writing such eye-opening book!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Many thanks for the kind words!