The Republicans promptly moving to shred the integrity policies – which critics say were weak to begin with – demonstrates how party officials are “bending over backwards” to assist Trump in attacking career servants, said Jeff Ruch, a former EPA official now with the Public ...

Kyla Bennett, director of science policy for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said PFAS regulations are popping up in states around the nation. States are bearing the brunt of the cost of PFAS contamination, Bennett said, and she thinks the federal government isn’t ...

Tim Whitehouse discusses with Radio Télévision Suisse the impact of Donald Trump’s election on the federal workforce and what the incoming Trump administration’s agenda for the environment and public health. Read the PEER Story… ...

You don’t need to be a scientist to notice that something is going on at this site near The Paddocks shopping center in Mt. Juliet: The water is fuzzy and orange and it’s been the subject of litigation spanning more than a decade. The developer says it’s done its best to clean up a ...

Peter Jenkins, senior counsel at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, who represented Marin Audubon Society in the case, said he had only expected a few people in the Bay Area to be interested in the court ruling. “The focus of the case, it was not about the CEQ ...

The EPA currently has more than 16,000 employees, adding more than 6,000 during Joe Biden’s administration as the agency sought to rebuild. During Biden’s term, the agency stepped up enforcement of pollution rules, banned toxic pesticides, bolstered chemical safety protections, and ...

PEER Executive Director Tim Whitehouse, a former senior attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency, said agencies have more freedom to relocate members of the career Senior Executive Service, compared to rank-and-file federal employees. “They can move SES employees and their ...

Congress passed the Administrative Leave Act to put tighter restrictions on how long agencies can put their employees on paid administrative or investigative leave. But OPM is more than seven years late in providing guidance to agencies on how to implement the legislation. Public Employees ...

Kyla Bennett, director of science policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, is representing farmers who are suing EPA to force regulation of PFAS in biosolids. Bennett said the “patchwork approach” to regulation employed so far won’t work because the pollution can ...

Still, a breakdown in the relationship between the EPA and its watchdog increases the chances that people and the environment will suffer, said Jeff Ruch, Pacific director of the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Ultimately, the inspector general can’t ...

One water well yielded PFAS levels measured at 268.2 ppt while one of the ponds had over 1,333 ppt of PFAS. The flesh of a stillborn calf tested at 610,000 ppt of PFOS, according to PEER’s analysis of the testing results, which was released in February. Two catfish tested had 74,000 and ...

Former members of the Trump administration say that EPA under his watch laid the groundwork for the Biden administration’s efforts to address PFAS contamination. But health advocates say the Trump administration downplayed the risks of the chemicals, was slow to take action on PFAS and ...

Furthermore, stormwater now must stay onsite for a certain period of time to minimize flooding in a vault or a tank, which will increase the project’s costs. Downie and Farrell explained that the drainage system is under the field. “The only way it’s going to get into the drainage ...

At last count, water systems with levels of PFAS above Environmental Protection Agency standards are serving between 83 and 105 million people throughout the country, according to the EPA. Arizona already has eight projects underway to address this issue. “To continue to allow Americans ...

Jeff Ruch, director of PEER’s Pacific office, said the report pointed to the BIE’s “lack of administrative competence and responsible oversight. So for example, I mean, one of the most attention-grabbing parts of the report was reports of sexual assault on students that was drawing ...

That leaves regulators attempting to protect the public without essential information for some chemicals and in effect creates a “shadow regulatory government” in the EPA, said Tim Whitehouse, a former EPA attorney who is now director of Public Employees for Environmental ...

The EPA’s inspector general office, in a string of partially redacted reports, found managers in the EPA’s New Chemicals Division, part of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, retaliated against employees who raised concerns about chemicals being approved for ...

As the Tyler Morning Telegraph and Longview News-Journal reported last year, some rural East Texas water utilities feared the rule would require the installation of expensive plant upgrades if PFAS contamination was found. “I think the PFAS drinking water standards are one of the first ...

After they were forced to leave their jobs assessing new chemicals, the scientists filed the first of what would be six complaints with the EPA inspector general in June 2021. Their allegations, which detailed industry pressure that continued under the administration of President Joe Biden ...

The problem, the coalition said Monday, is that the plan does not protect infringement on Old Spanish Trail rights of way. The agency failed to incorporate its trail management policies when developing the big plan, according to the group that includes Western Watersheds Project, Public ...