Early February 2006: Bush Administration Plans to Close EPA Research Libraries

The Bush administration’s budget request for fiscal year 2007 proposes an 80 percent cut to the EPA’s library budget. The White House wants to trim it down from $2.5 million to half a million dollars. To meet this lean budget, the EPA intends to eliminate its electronic catalog, which tracks some 50,000 documents and studies that are available nowhere else, and shut down its headquarters library and several of its regional libraries. The EPA manages a network of 28 libraries from its Washington headquarters and has 10 regional offices nationwide. The libraries are used primarily by EPA scientists, regulators, and attorneys to enforce existing environmental regulations, develop new regulations, track the business histories of regulated industries, and research the safety of chemicals and the potential environmental effects of new technologies. [PEER, 2/10/2006] Though the EPA insists the closures are necessary to trim costs, internal studies have reportedly shown that providing full library access to its researchers saves an estimated 214,000 hours in professional staff time worth some $7.5 million annually. [PEER, 6/29/2006] Patrice McDermott, deputy director of the Office of Government Relations, says the proposed cuts would put “at risk important environmental information and the public’s ability to access the information they need to protect their health and safety.” [Federal Computer Week, 3/13/2006]