A group of more than 170 employees of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday published a Declaration of Dissent from policies under the Trump administration.
The employees said the administration’s policies “undermine the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment.”
“Since the Agency’s founding in 1970, EPA has accomplished this mission by leveraging science, funding, and expert staff in service to the American people. Today, we stand together in dissent against the current administration’s focus on harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of previous EPA actions, and disregard for scientific expertise,” the declaration states.
Jeremy Berg, former editor-in-chief of Science magazine and one of the signatories to the letter, said that, in addition to the 170 named scientists and academics, there were roughly 100 others who signed anonymously for fear of retaliation, including 20 Nobel laureates, reported The Guardian.
The letter is a rare rebuke by EPA employees who could face repercussions for criticizing the weakening of federal support and funding for environmental, climate and health science.
“I’m really sad. This agency, that was a superhero for me in my youth, we’re not living up to our ideals under this administration. And I really want us to,” said Amelia Hertzberg, an EPA environmental protection specialist who was put on administrative leave in February, as The Guardian reported.
The administration is working to shut down Hertzberg’s department at the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. The work Hertzberg did for the department was focused on vulnerable groups impacted by pollution, such as young children, the elderly, people living in communities with higher pollution levels, pregnant and nursing people and those with chronic and pre-existing conditions.
“Americans should be able to drink their water and breathe their air without being poisoned. And if they aren’t, then our government is failing,” Hertzberg said.
The EPA responded to the letter with a statement saying the policy decisions “are a result of a process where Administrator (Lee) Zeldin is briefed on the latest research and science by EPA’s career professionals, and the vast majority who are consummate professionals who take pride in the work this agency does day in and day out,” reported The Associated Press.
The statement from the EPA denounced what it said were the Biden administration’s “attempts to shut down American energy and make our citizens more reliant on foreign fossil fuels.”
Berg, who was director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences from 2003 to 2011, said partisan criticism was not the motivation for the employees’ declaration, The Guardian reported. Rather, they hoped their dissent would support the EPA in getting back to its mission, which, Berg said, “only matters if you breathe air and drink water.”
In the declaration, the EPA employees outlined five major concerns: the disregard of scientific consensus with the purpose of benefiting polluters; dismantling the research and development office; reversing EPA progress in the country’s most vulnerable communities; undermining public trust; and “promoting a culture of fear” that forces staff to make a choice between their well-being and livelihoods.
Zeldin’s push to reorganize the agency’s research and development office was part of a broader effort to gut its environmental justice and climate change wings and slash its budget. He is also attempting to repeal pollution rules that were found in an examination by The Associated Press to save approximately 30,000 lives and $275 billion annually.
“Your decisions and actions will reverberate for generations to come,” the authors of the declaration wrote, addressing Zeldin. “EPA under your leadership will not protect communities from hazardous chemicals and unsafe drinking water but instead will increase risks to public health and safety.”
“Administrator Zeldin, we urge you to honor your oath and serve the American people. Going forward, you have the opportunity to correct course. Should you choose to do so, we stand ready to support your efforts to fulfill EPA’s mission.”
Nobel laureate Carol Greider, one of the letter’s signatories who is a professor of molecular and cellular biology at University of California, Santa Cruz, described the heat wave on the East Coast last week as evidence of climate change.
“And if we don’t have scientists at the EPA to understand how what we do that goes into the air affects our health, more people are going to die,” Greider said, as reported by The Guardian.
When asked about fears of retaliation or repercussions, Greider said she was “living the repercussions of everything.”
As labs lose funding, graduate students who Greider meets with on a regular basis said they’re concerned about pursuing careers in science. It becomes a long-term problem if support is taken away from the next generation of scientists, Greider said.
“That’s decades worth of loss,” Greider said.
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