People and Wildlife Need the EPA Office of Research and Development

All across the federal government, agencies are experiencing disruptions, layoffs, funding recissions, and budget cuts. But few programs are as important for the health of people and wildlife as the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research & Development (ORD). As the independent scientific arm of the EPA, the ORD conducts the research that provides the foundation of credible decision-making to safeguard human health and ecosystems.

This work focuses on toxins in our air and water, chemical safety, cleaning up contaminated sites, detecting new pollutants like PFAS and microplastics, and human, ecosystem, and community health assessments.

These science topics are the basis of making good decisions that ensure a safe and healthy environment for everyone. And yet, on July 25 the EPA announced that it will eliminate the ORD. The EPA had already dismissed the scientists serving on ORD’s external advisory bodies, the Board of Scientific Counselors and the Science Advisory Board.

In March, members of Congress received documents showing the EPA was considering closing ORD. In response, we released a statement warning that such a closure would greatly undermine environmental protection.

But the EPA has moved forward with its plan to shutter the nation’s centers of excellence of environmental health research, which include four national centers and ten regional laboratories, as well as funding programs for independent research.

Because we don’t know how long the ORD’s website will be publicly available, we will list their FY 2023-2026 priorities here: Air, Climate, and Energy; Chemical Safety for Sustainability; Health and Environmental Risk Assessment; Homeland Security; Safe and Sustainable Water Resources; and Sustainable and Healthy Communities. 

Why are these programs so critically important?

A foundational pillar of environmental protection

The ORD has been part of the EPA since its founding in 1970. ORD scientists were central to the success of America’s most impactful environmental laws: The Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.

By grounding the implementation of these laws in an independent science arm of the EPA, the public could be assured that America’s air and water supplies were rigorously tested, measured with widely accepted methods, and continually evaluated according to the latest and best science. To maintain public trust, ORD’s policies and priorities were determined by outside scientific panels, as well as regional offices and the local communities they serve.  

Since this time, we’ve learned a lot about how the system can fail without strong science that is independent of politics and corporate interests, and that is informed by communities. When residents of Flint, Michigan, complained about water quality and health problems after the city switched their water supply in 2014, independent scientists reported high levels of lead in both blood samples and in the water. Scientists, including students, at Virginia Tech demonstrated how water from the Flint river corroded aging pipes and fittings.

However, due to dwindling resources for environmental protection, they struggled to fund their research. In 2016, a federal emergency was declared. Since this failure in protecting community health, the ORD has built much more community engagement, community science, and environmental justice research priorities into its work. This is the very work that is now under attack and being actively dismantled.

The case of Flint, Michigan, shows that to protect public health, we need more, not less, investment in sound environmental science that is free of political interference and available for everyone.

The Environmental Protection Agency and wildlife conservation

ORD research also supports wildlife conservation in other ways. More than a third of species listed under the Endangered Species Act are imperiled by pollution. For these species and many others, habitat protections alone will not eliminate the threat of extinction.

ORD’s Safe and Sustainable Water Resources program develops tools to ensure the health of aquatic and wetland habitat. Their chemical and pesticide impact assessments provide critical information about exposure risk to support the enforcement of the Endangered Species Act and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.

The ORD studies the ecological impacts of pollution and climate change, in addition to providing tools for habitat restoration, land reuse, and nature-based infrastructure projects. Its ecosystem research group provides the public with an ecosystem services portal so that residents can make good decisions about maximizing the benefits and limiting harms in their own backyards.

This is only a small sample of the extensive research contributions of the EPA ORD in the areas of ecosystem, habitat, and wildlife health.

If it’s not broken, don’t fix it

So why has the ORD been discontinued? The EPA claims it will achieve $748.8 million in savings by reducing its workforce from 16,155 to 12,448 employees. They have already shuttered their Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, a move that the National Wildlife Federation strongly opposed because it puts communities directly at risk.

With the dismantling of ORD, the EPA is going even further to prevent the public from learning about the risks to their own health and wellbeing. Instead, the EPA proposes to create a new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions that will be embedded in the regulatory agency, without acting independently and in line with the best available science. What this almost inevitably means, is that from now on EPA science can be dictated by politics rather than the scientific method, putting scientific integrity at serious risk.

In essence, this is a move to eliminate key safeguards that have been protecting air, water, habitat, and public health from the ever-changing will of politicians and their appointees.

The community of Flint, Michigan, is still coping with the fallout of the failures to safeguard their water supply. What about your community? Where will you get reliable information about air and water quality without an independent ORD? Do you think that decisions about public and environmental health should be grounded in science or special interests?

There is still time to act. Before the expertise and public data of ORD scientists is totally lost, contact Congress and urge them to fully fund, staff, and restore the ORD and its independent science advisory boards with our Action Alert.