With Hollywood, every company and "green" groups cashing in on "climate" control... The EPA is preparing for a new, even larger round of budget cuts for the 2008 fiscal year, according to an internal memo released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). These new cuts are being readied even as Congress is still reviewing administration proposals to reduce EPA spending by a record $100 million in FY 2007.
The June 8 memo from the EPA chief financial officer, Lyons Gray, to agency leadership calls for pinpointing "larger savings" as part of a series of austerities spread over the next 5 years.
Slated for presentation to the President's Office of Management & Budget on September 11, the agency's fiscal reduction package includes:
Closure of laboratories: The plan calls for closing 10% of EPA's network of laboratories and research centers in which much of the agency's basic and applied science concerning pollution monitoring, toxicological effects and other public health issues is conducted. By 2011, the laboratory network, comprised of approximately 2000 scientists, would shrink by 20%.
The memo calls identified reductions "disinvestments" and concedes that they will undoubtedly have "long-term consequences." Agency budget cuts now being debated in Congress for the fiscal year that begins this October 1 have raised concerns that EPA is already losing its ability to maintain coherent scientific, regulatory or enforcement programs.
