The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to eliminate its scientific research division and a majority of the 1,540 positions within it, according to documents reviewed by Democratic staff on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.
The EPA鈥檚 Office of Research and Development, or ORD, has a large presence in Greater Cincinnati. Hundreds of agency scientists
Their research provides the basis for decisions that keep human health and ecosystems safe from environmental pollutants, according to the EPA.
Michael Ottlinger is president of the National Treasury Employees Union, Chapter 279, representing EPA employees in Cincinnati. He says workers are bracing for the effects of the office鈥檚 potential elimination.
鈥淚t would mean a lot of jobs. It would mean the end of a history of EPA in Cincinnati,鈥� Ottlinger said. 鈥淚t would mean a termination of anything that could have been done in the future.鈥�
The letting go of 50% to 75% of ORD employees, according to the documents reviewed by Democratic staff on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.
Some positions that directly support work in other EPA program offices would be retained, and the workers placed elsewhere in the agency to 鈥減rovide increased oversight and align with administration policies.鈥�
The EPA has operated in Cincinnati since the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon created the agency. But, the city has been home to federally supported research, much of it focused on clean water, for more than a century.
Cutting ORD puts 'holes in the foundation,' former employee says
Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta was the principal deputy assistant administrator for science for the EPA's Office of Research and Development from 2017-2021. She started her career in 1981 at Cincinnati鈥檚 EPA facilities researching drinking water.
Orme-Zavaleta says getting rid of the ORD would hurt people.
鈥淎s we learned from Flint, [Michigan] when you have people who are not scientists alter things like the source of water, or the way water is treated, then people get increased exposures to things like lead in their water,鈥� Orme-Zavaleta said. 鈥淧eople get sick, people get harmed, and that's what we run the risk of by moving ORD out of the picture.鈥�
Without ORD, she doesn鈥檛 think the EPA can fulfill its mission to protect human health and the environment.
鈥淪cience is one of the foundations for how EPA accomplishes its mission,鈥� Orme-Zavaleta said. 鈥淭he science helps to inform a regulatory decision, and if you don't have the best available science informing that decision, then there can be all kinds of holes in that foundation that's going to lead those regulatory decisions to be vulnerable and not be able to stand up to challenges or to courts.鈥�
The EPA鈥檚 consideration of eliminating its research office comes after the agency has weathered several earlier changes made by the Trump administration.
Cincinnati鈥檚 offices were impacted by mid-February layoffs of probationary employees, and an EPA facility in Erlanger, Ky., is slated to have its lease terminated as part of Elon Musk's cost cutting measures.
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