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 Washington - During five days in October, 2006, a select team quietly and methodically disposed of the Environmental Protection Agency's working knowledge on the effects of pesticides and chemicals in the specialized, technical Chemical Library in Washington, D.C. The entire collection over at the EPA Headquarters Library in D.C. took ten days to clean out. At the Headquarters Library, more than 800 journals and books were tossed. In the Chemical Library, more than 3,000 journals and books went into the dumpster. A "huge collection" of National Geographic was thrown out, says an anonymous former member of the dispersal crew. All the issues of that journal, published over 120 years, would comprise only one of those 3,000 disposed "titles." Margaret N. Schneider, as Acting Assistant Administrator, Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances (OPPTS), was in charge of the Chemical Library closure operation. President Bush awarded Schneider the Presidential Rank Award of Meritorious Executive.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has had one mission since its beginning in the 1970s: protecting human health and the environment. The agency has a national library network designed to serve the public and to provide critical information for its research scientists and regulatory enforcement specialists to promote environmental awareness, conduct research, enforce environmental laws and make policy decisions. Carol Goldberg, Associate Director of nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, states, "The EPA libraries are not only important to the public but are invaluable tools for the agency's own scientists and specialists." Yet, seven of the system's libraries were suddenly closed at the end of Fiscal Year 2006, based upon President Bush's Proposed FY 2007 budget, which would eliminate 80% of the EPA budget, without waiting for Congress to act. In addition to the HQ and Chemical Libraries, three Regional Libraries in Dallas, Chicago and Kansas City, a technical library in Edison, New Jersey and a laboratory library in Fort Meade, Maryland were closed down. In a June 29, 2006 letter to Congress, the Presidents of 16 Unions representing 10,000 EPA scientists, engineers, environmental protection specialists and support staff protested the budget reduction and EPA's plan to use it to close the technical libraries they depended upon to do their work. Congress imposed a moratorium, stopping disbursement of the collections, and requested a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). That report, February, 2008, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: EPA Needs to Ensure That Best Practices and Procedures Are Followed When Making Further Changes to Its Library Network, found such serious problems that it recommends continuing the moratorium, two years later. The GAO found that EPA can't even be sure of the extent to which the library "reorganization" has degraded library services, much less take corrective actions. While scientists have complained for the last several years that their research findings have been censored and used to support, rather than to inform, administration decisions, misinformation may now have been superceded by no information as administration policy. At the top, Congressman Henry Waxman announced June 13 that the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is considering Contempt of Congress charges against EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson for repeatedly refusing to provide subpoenaed documents about the White House role in EPA ozone standards and EPA's rejection of California motor vehicle emission standards. Within the EPA Library system, this comes from an employee who's been a scientist, risk assessor, regulatory manager and regulation writer at the Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances (OPPTS), the division that operated the Chemical Library: "Look at OMB [White House Office of Management and Budget]. That is a true source of frustration. They truly interfere and want to stamp the White House Agenda over every document that is sent to them for review. Truly few realize the impact that they have. They have hired their own scientists and play the my scientist is better than yours game. EPA has to accept a lot of [expletive] from them to get any documents out." [editorial note: EPA employees contacted for this report have agreed to respond only "off the record," due to a pervasive fear of workplace harassment and retaliation.] The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) surveyed EPA employees in the summer of 2007 and reported the results in Interference at the EPA: Politics and Science at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This is the fifth in a series of studies, following surveys of scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service, National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, Food and Drug Administration and climate scientists who work in seven federal agencies. In the series, 1,301 scientists reported that they fear retaliation for expressing their concerns; 688 scientists reported that they couldn't publish their work unless it agreed with agency policies; 150 federal climate scientists have personally experienced political interference in the last five years and, from this latest report, 889 EPA scientists have personally experienced inappropriate interference in their work over the last five years. In the UCS survey of EPA scientists, 36% said that "Recent changes and closures in the EPA library system have impaired my ability to do my job." In EPA Regions 5, 6 and 7, where libraries were closed, nearly half the scientists agreed. Here are some of the (anonymous) comments on the question, "How could the integrity of scientific work produced by the EPA best be improved?" - Have independent scientific review of agency findings—right now, findings go up through political appointees and meanings may be changed, documents and information withheld or delayed, key information omitted.
- The inability to fill technical vacancies along with the loss of EPA libraries are bleeding down the EPA's technical knowledge base and our ability to provide or share the skills and knowledge that are critical to overall mission success.
- EPA program offices...use a lot of scientific information. Reduced library access is crippling.
- Taking away library facilities is ludicrous.
- Since [library] closure, some journals are just no longer accessible. Accessing books and documents is a no go area.
- Stop slashing services that made EPA what it was. (Library closings are just one of many; this facility no longer supplies hot water to individual labs to clean glassware.) D.C. has given approval or made decisions directly opposite of what the "experts" (scientists most familiar) in the satellite-regions recommend.
- Give us back our library.
 In the Omnibus Appropriations Bill passed in December, 2007, Congress ordered EPA to restore library services across the country and provided 3 million dollars for this purpose. EPA announced (in an email memo to employee unions) on May 8, 2008 that it will re-open four libraries by September 1. What had been the largest (4,320 square feet) Regional Library will re-open in a 385-square-foot reception area on the 16th floor of a federal building in Chicago. It will serve six states from a space the size of a men's restroom in that same building. All furniture and fixtures of the former library (valued at over $40,000) have already been sold at auction for $350. Most of the collection, according to a former employee, was sent to the Headquarters Library to be "re-catalogued." Materials were also offered, first to other EPA Libraries, then to other federal, military, state and university libraries, and in the case of some duplicate EPA Reports, to special institutions such as law libraries. "Nothing was tossed" in Chicago, according to sources there. Library staff in Chicago wanted to re-open sooner, but were told by EPA's Office of Environmental Information to wait until next September.
The Dallas (five-state) Regional Library will get "2 staff workstations and 1 patron workstation, each with a PC, desk, and chair," per the EPA memo. The Region 7 Library in Kansas City reportedly remains in its previous location, with its collections intact as of June, 2008. The Headquarters Library in Washington, D.C. (with two staff persons left) is being consolidated with the Chemical Library in the former HQ Library space. The former Chemical Library had been converted to office space with cubicles for other government staff, but that organization moved out because, says an EPA employee, "They got sick. One person was hospitalized." The cause of employees' illness in the space was not determined. The former Chemical Library space is now expected to be used as a Depository (storage space) for the HQ Library. In March of 2008, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight held a hearing on the EPA library closures. The expert witnesses seemed to have more questions than answers, such as these, from Francesca T. Grifo, Ph.D. Director of the Scientific Integrity Program for the Union of Concerned Scientists: "Have librarians been lost? Will the general public be allowed access to librarians when the closed libraries reopen? In the interim? If so, how and when? What level of access is currently available for all materials moved to the repositories, including older documents, documents on microfilm and documents generated by EPA contractors? When will full access be restored? Have adequate provisions been taken to ensure access for people with disabilities? What level of access will the public have to materials in the repositories? Will the OPPTS Chemical library be re-opened? Are there plans to digitize the materials from that library and make them available online? Will those materials be available
through the repositories and Interlibrary loans? If so when?" James R. Rettig, President of the American Library Association, testified, "In a plan that was best described as 'convoluted and complicated,' materials from closed EPA libraries have been boxed and sent to other locations where they are slowly being re-cataloged and then sent back to the Headquarters Library here in Washington, DC—a library that is now closed and that has no room to house these resources...Further, the library community is deeply troubled by the 'dispersing' of materials from the closed regional libraries and the pesticide library here in Washington, DC. What this 'disbersement' entails isn't clear at this point. We are concerned about how this information has been handled, causing long-term damage to the EPA’s effectiveness and the ability of the American public to find important environmental and government information. Unfortunately, there continues to be a lot that we don't know: exactly what materials have been shipped around the country, whether there are duplicate materials in other EPA libraries, whether these items have been or will be digitized, and whether a record is being kept of what is being dispersed and what is being discarded. We remain concerned that years of research and studies about the environment may be lost forever...We continue to hear allegations from former and current EPA staff, who do not wish to be identified, that hundreds of valuable journals and books may have been destroyed. These staff members are concerned that materials which are unique to EPA (and in some cases exist nowhere else in the world) are no longer available." Brad Miller, Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee, says, "The most generous possible explanation is that EPA managers were stunningly incompetent. But it is possible that the explanation is more sinister. The EPA ignored their own careful plans and abruptly closed libraries, limited access to the public and EPA employees, and just threw away documents that may be irreplaceable. The EPA’s ability to protect the environment and public health is badly compromised as a result." Molly A. O’Neill, EPA Assistant Administrator for Environmental Information and Chief Information Officer, stated in March, "EPA is currently working on a Report to Congress pertaining to EPA libraries [as] requested in the report language on the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008. The report language directs EPA 'to restore the Network of EPA libraries recently closed or consolidated …' and 'to submit a report to the Committees on Appropriations regarding actions it will take to restore publicly available libraries to provide environmental information and data to each EPA region within 90 days of enactment of this Act.' EPA’s report will describe the Agency’s plans to ensure on-site support in each EPA Region, the EPA Headquarters Library, and the [OPPTS] Chemical Library." In contrast to the 60-page GAO Report, the EPA National Library Network Report to Congress (March 26, 2008) totals six pages. The EPA Library System plan hinges upon digitizing the collections, although only 10% of the material is free of encumbrances (such as copyright). A two-page letter dated April 28, 2008 is signed (on 6 pages) by 94 university law professors across the country, writing "to express our profound disappointment" with EPA's report, noting that it's "entirely devoid of a needed commitment to restore EPA's shuttered libraries to the levels of service provided to the public and EPA's staff prior to their closure." The law professors also "note with concern the Report's failure to define key terms, including the 'core reference materials' to be available in EPA libraries that will be reopened..." A "core collection" list provided by an EPA National Library Network staff member has this heading: A small, targeted core collection of current print reference materials for local use to supplement the virtual resources available through the EPA Desktop Library and other online tools. This list includes 104 publications, ranging from World Almanac to Tiller's Guide to Indian Country, plus a line item for "Key Region—or Lab-Specific—Materials." Molly O'Neill was appointed by President Bush in 2006 to govern all EPA library operations. She has the overall responsibility for the management of the EPA National Library Network, including setting policy and supporting procedures, standards and guidance. An undated draft document issued by Chief Information Officer O'Neill, EPA LIBRARY MATERIALS DISPERSAL PROCEDURES establishes, "These procedures supersede the EPA Library Systems Manual 2130, dated January 1977." O'Neill's new Dispersal Criteria states that each EPA library will need to make its own decisions about the materials in their physical collections, including the choice to recycle items. It states, "Choices will be largely based on a particular location's capacity to store and maintain a paper document collection; this capacity will vary significantly from library to library." Significantly, the plan to re-open the EPA Headquarters Library allows a total capacity of 150 square feet. Library materials are considered non-accountable property under the Agency's policy threshold of $5,000 value per item. Disposal under O'Neill's policy "is an option when transfer, donation, or sale has been found to be impracticable or not cost effective." On May 22, 2008, Congress once again requested the U.S. Government Accountability Office to further review the EPA Library system and its plans to digitize library holdings. The request, signed by Senator Boxer and Representatives Gordon, Dingell and Waxman, also requests an assessment of EPA's efforts to communicate: "Earlier this year, an Arbitrator found that EPA failed to negotiate with the EPA employee union regarding the library reorganization. GAO's March 2008 report found that EPA did not adequately take user needs into account when it implemented the library reorganization. In testimony before the Committee on Science and Technology, Ms. O'Neill claimed that EPA was or would engage in ongoing communication with EPA's own workforce and outside stakeholders. EPA union representatives and stakeholder groups at the hearing all denied that any meaningful communications had taken place." Further action by Congress now awaits the next GAO review of the EPA Library system. Environmental Protection Agency libraries remain closed to scientists, staff and the public.
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