EPA Inspector General's Office Lists 13 Problems In September Report; Former Staff Report "Incapacitating" Staffing Cuts
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Inspectors general serve as watchdogs over government agencies. Yet within a week of returning to office, President Donald Trump fired inspectors general from 18 federal agencies, including EPA’s inspector general, Sean O’Donnell. Nonetheless, in September, staff at the agency’s OIG released a memo outlining 15 issues it had uncovered that remain unresolved. Among them was a failure to develop “clear reporting procedures for scientific concerns involving political appointees” to ensure scientific integrity.
The memo followed a charge of “blatant political interference” in the 2021 toxicity assessment of a PFAS “forever chemical” by Trump appointees in the final days of the president’s first term. The next year, O’Donnell charged the agency with undermining its scientific credibility by running roughshod over standard protocols in 2019, also during Trump’s first term. The OIG ruled that EPA had ignored its own scientists’ assessments to minimize the cancer risk of a lucrative fumigant, 1,3-dichloropropene, or 1,3-D, relying on an unsupported theory presented by Dow, its manufacturer, over the objections of agency scientists. The OIG urged EPA to secure an independent review to restore its scientific integrity. More than three years later, the agency still has not secured that review.
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As EPA’s top officials implement what former staffer Peter Murchie called “an almost incapacitating” reduction in the agency’s workforce through reorganizations, coerced voluntary resignations and terminations, they’re reconstituting their scientific advisory boards. They’re nominating candidates for political leadership positions who are “either highly unqualified or conflicted or both,” said Murchie, who resigned from EPA in April after working there for most of his career. He now leads public affairs and policy initiatives at EPN, an organization of more than 700 former EPA staff and appointees founded to defend science during the first Trump administration.
“A good example of that is former chemical industry lobbyists now in critical decision-making positions over the approval of toxic chemicals,” Murchie said, referring to top administrators in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention who worked for DuPont and the industry’s trade group, the American Chemistry Council. “In addition, they’re getting rid of advisory bodies, or if they’re keeping those, working to replace objective scientists and experts with industry advocates,” he said.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11102025/epas-comeback-a-sham-authoritarian-power-grab/