Brain Drain At the EPA

By Lisa Friedman, The New York Times, and Marina Affo and Derek Kravitz, ProPublica

This article is a collaboration with The New York Times.

More than 700 people have left the Environmental Protection Agency since President Donald Trump took office, a wave of departures that puts the administration nearly a quarter of the way toward its goal of shrinking the agency to levels last seen during the Reagan administration.

Of the employees who have quit, retired or taken a buyout package since the beginning of the year, more than 200 are scientists. An additional 96 are environmental protection specialists, a broad category that includes scientists as well as others experienced in investigating and analyzing pollution levels. Nine department directors have departed the agency as well as dozens of attorneys and program managers. Most of the employees who have left are not being replaced.

ProPublica and The New York Times analyzed the comings and goings from the EPA through the end of September, the latest data that has been compiled, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The figures and interviews with current and former EPA officials show the administration is well on its way to achieving its goal of cutting 3,200 positions from the EPA, about 20 percent of the agency’s work force.

Jahan Wilcox, a spokesman for the EPA, said the agency was running more efficiently. “With only 10 months on the job, Administrator Pruitt is unequivocally doing more with less to hold polluters accountable and to protect our environment,” he said.

“There wasn’t a reinvestment this time around,” he said. “There’s a hard freeze.”

Hardest Hit Departments

These EPA departments had the highest departure-to-hire ratios from January to September 2017. (Lucas Waldron/ProPublica)
Scientists, for the most part, are also not being replaced. Of the 129 people hired this year at the EPA, just seven are scientists. Another 15 are student trainee scientists. Political appointees, however, are on the rise. The office of Scott Pruitt, the agency administrator, is the only unit that saw more hires than departures this year.

In addition to losing scientists themselves, the offices at the EPA that deal most directly with science were drained of other workers this year. The Office of Research and Development — which has three national laboratories and four national centers with expertise on science and technology issues — lost 69 people, while hiring three. At the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, responsible for regulating toxic chemicals and pesticides, 54 people left and seven were hired. And in the office that ensures safe drinking water, one person was hired, while 26 departed.

By contrast, Pruitt’s office hired 73 people to replace the 53 who left.

Wilcox disputed that assessment and said the agency remained an attractive workplace for scientists. “People from across EPA were eligible to retire early with full benefits,” he said in an emailed statement. “We currently have over 1,600 scientists at EPA and less than 200 chose to retire with full benefits.”

As of Dec. 6, there were 14,188 full-time employees at the EPA By comparison, there were 17,558 workers at the end of the first year of the George W. Bush administration and 17,049 by the end of the first year of President Obama’s term. The EPA offered two major buyouts during the Obama administration, losing 900 employees in 2013 and an additional 465 the following year. Hundreds of other workers left through attrition and were not replaced.

Pruitt’s office has described the current buyout process as a continuation of Obama administration efforts to ensure that payroll expenses do not overtake funding for environmental programs.

Agency staff said they believed the Trump administration was purposely draining the EPA of expertise and morale.

“This is exactly what they wanted, which is my biggest misgiving about leaving,” Levin said. “They want the people there to be more docile and nervous and less invested in the agency.”

Lynda Deschambault, a chemist and physical scientist who left the EPA at the end of August after 26 years, said her office in Region 9, based in San Francisco, had been hollowed out. The office saw 21 departures this year and no hires. “The office was a morgue,” she said.

Conservatives who helped lead the Trump administration’s transition and prepared for eliminating vast parts of the agency said scientists’ worries were misplaced.

In proposing this year to slash the EPA’s budget by 31 percent, Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, called the effort part of Trump’s plan to eliminate entrenched government workers. “You can’t drain the swamp and leave all the people in it,” Mulvaney said. “So, I guess the first place that comes to mind will be the Environmental Protection Agency.”

Jan Nation, who works in EPA’s Region 3, based in Philadelphia, where 46 people either retired or took a buyout this year, lamented the administration’s approach to federal workers. “We are not the swamp. The swamp are all the people who don’t have a specific function to make our government work,” Nation said. “If you have a swamp to drain, I know people in the Army Corps of Engineers who can do it.”

Talia Buford and Lisa Song contributed reporting to this article.

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