The National Park Service Voices Report, launched in late 2017 with interviews with Park Service employees to uncover the extent of harassment across the agency, was completed two years later. Then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called for the investigation after a survey showing that ...
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) has filed a complaint against the US EPA for allowing onto the market a new substance whose synthesis entails an environmentally beneficial but cancer-causing solvent – a decision the organisation says exemplifies the agency’s ...
But in a November letter to Sams, a group called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility accused the park service of burying the report and encouraged Sams to take action and remove toxic employees from the service. Sams said the park service has been doing work in the past three ...
Another issue Sams inherits is reports of harassment and discrimination within the service’s rank and file. A 2017 survey revealed 40% of park service staff reported experiencing harassment during the past year, according to High Country News. The service commissioned a follow-up report ...
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is asking EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) to investigate what it says is the TSCA new chemicals office’s policy of refusing to consider new toxicity data on existing substances — and argues the agency used that ...
Key EPA programs are facing a steep staffing shortage that some employees worry will imperil critical chemicals work and certain Biden administration priorities, even as advocates say the agency has no real plan for fixing the problem. Parts of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution ...
These scientists were dealing in facts, which could hardly be tossed aside as “scare tactics” that Donahue accuses the Field Fund of dealing in. But what they said was, indeed, scary. When you’re bringing up toxins such as asbestos and dioxin in the same breath as PFAS, that should ...
Yet one official, who holds a senior leadership role in the agency, felt that the dangers of PCBTF should not be mentioned in the assessment. In a December 18, 2019, email she described the chemical as “just a solvent there as a part of making it,” according to screenshots of the email ...
“To our knowledge, we have not seen any cases in Florida, zero cases in which the DEP has stepped in and taken court action to require these facilities, these agricultural concerns to obtain a permit,” Phillips said. Phillips has spent years reviewing the agency’s enforcement as ...
“Lax enforcement and compliance for both point and nonpoint sources suggests that the current TMDLs are ineffective at controlling nutrients into the Indian River Lagoon. EPA must therefore reinitiate consultation to consider this new information suggesting that the current TMDLs are not ...
Existing regulations allow for up to 90 days each year of discharges from wastewater treatment plants during heavy rainfall, of up to several million gallons per day, but these are “poorly reported,” Earthjustice says. Meanwhile, the state has cut back on both the number of ...
The allegations date back to at least 2019, but disclosures relating to them are ongoing, according to Kyla Bennett, director of science policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a whistleblower protection organization representing the scientists. “We had hoped that ...
Nearing the end of its first year, the Biden administration is starting down the same path as the Trump administration by letting unconfirmed lower officials manage key bureaus in the Interior Department. As under Trump, actions by these quasi-acting agency heads are now potentially ...
Kyla Bennett, director of science policy for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an ecologist and attorney, said she was not making a paid appearance at the hearing, nor were the other scientists present. “We are here because we care about human health and the environment ...
Kyla Bennett, director of science policy for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said about EPA and Defense, “They are consistently butting heads.” “It is going to cost billions of dollars for the Department of Defense to clean up the communities around ...
A group supporting public employees is challenging the firing of an environmental analyst who said the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s approval of a Delaware-sized oilfield in Converse County failed to protect migratory birds as required. Public Employees for Environmental ...
Despite making demonstrably false statements about PFAS, Green continues to consult on issues related to multimillion-dollar artificial turf fields at multiple towns in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility Executive Director Tim ...
The activists allege that the state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control, which is overseeing the long-planned cleanup, allowed the energy department to “dynamite” the two buildings without proper dust control to prevent the spread of contamination. “This was an ...
The Current reported in October the damage caused by livestock in Nevada is largely unknown because the BLM has reviewed less than half of the land allotted to ranchers in the state, according to BLM data obtained through a public information request by Public Employees for Environmental ...
The EPA will also consider designating certain PFAS as hazardous substances and require polluters to pay for clean-up efforts under the Superfund law. But some environmental and health advocates say the EPA’s plan is too little, too late. The Public Employees for Environmental ...