We cannot talk about many of the best things we do at PEER. Working behind the scenes, we have saved the careers of hundreds of conscientious public servants, often by talking them out of publicly blowing the whistle and convincing them to work through PEER to expose a problem.
Here are ten things we can share from the past year as PEER worked directly with our clients and supporters to protect public employees and our environment by –
- Removing toxic forever chemicals (PFAS) from our food chain. We are working on several fronts, most notably litigating to halt sewage-sludge-based fertilizers from contaminating crops and killing livestock. We are also in court fighting to end the use of millions of shipping containers which leach PFAS into their contents.
- Exposing improper approvals of new chemicals carrying unreasonable risks for consumers and workers. Our representation of EPA scientists has triggered an unprecedented role for the agency’s Office of Inspector General, generating a series of reports pushing us toward more protective chemical regulation.
- Suing to end widespread reliance upon involuntary administrative leave, imposed without any time limits or appeal – tactics often used to silence whistleblowers. Our effort to enforce limits enacted eight years ago by Congress are also designed to prevent a future Trump administration from castigating hundreds of perceived enemies into bureaucratic limbo.
2024 Annual Report
- Prosecuting a precedent-setting lawsuit to curb continuing degradation of America’s vast rangelands due to overgrazing. In so doing, we underlined that growing areas fail to meet the Bureau of Land Management’s own minimum landscape health standards for water, soil, and vegetation quality, leaving lands unable to support wildlife.
- Helping EPA’s largest employee union to win scientific integrity protections in its collective bargaining agreement to make up for the utter breakdown in the agency’s official scientific integrity program. We are also closely monitoring the Biden-directed revision of agency scientific integrity policies and leading the drive to curb enactment of disturbing restrictions on scientists discussing the policy implications of their research.
- Protecting America’s national parks by –
- Defending a new ban on noisy tourist helicopter flights across Mount Rushmore and the Badlands and substantial reduction in the incessant overflights across Hawaiʻi Volcanoes and Haleakalā national parks. These curbs resulted from our previous successful litigation to resuscitate the moribund National Park Air Tour Management Act of 2000;
- Highlighting the severe shrinkage in the ranks of park law enforcement rangers despite increased visitation, rescues, and crimes; and
- Itemizing the large, illegal subsidies cattle ranches on Point Reyes National Seashore are still receiving and pressing for recovery of full market value in all any future leases.
- Documenting the dangers of artificial turf both to human health and the environment. Our new study shows that PFAS coating from artificial turf “grass blades” ends up on the skin of players. In addition, PEER’s research is being used in community efforts across the country to block installation of new turf fields.
- Exposing abuses, including sexual assaults, at our nation’s only National Indian University, prompting a scathing joint oversight hearing by two congressional committees. PEER also assisted whistleblowers in pressing for more rigorous enforcement of the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act.
- Pressing NOAA to adopt safeguards to prevent needless deaths of highly endangered North Atlantic right whales by underlining true mortality caused by entanglements with fishing lines while continuing to push for adoption of our comprehensive strategy for averting whale ship strikes.
- Fighting to tighten EPA’s woefully lax regulation of pesticides which allow damaging amounts of toxic forever chemicals to be spread across American croplands, forests, and parks. A key component of this effort is debunking inaccurate EPA justifications for not acting against this clear and present danger.
Besides these achievements, we continued to render direct assistance to scores of confidential whistleblowers and internal activists. We robustly used Freedom of Information Act litigation as part of a wide-ranging transparency program guided by insider sources. Through these and other methods, we help public servants exercise their Free Speech rights to communicate concerns to their true employers – you, the public.
