An attempt by U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) to eliminate the Fish
Passage Center violates constitutional free speech and due process
rights of the Center’s scientists, according to a federal lawsuit filed
today.  This suit seeks an emergency injunction to stop the
scheduled March 17, 2006 closure of the Center, which monitors fish
runs and river operations to protect and enhance salmon, steelhead,
bull trout and other fish moving through the Columbia and lower Snake
rivers.

The complaint by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
and the Portland law firm McKanna, Bishop, Joffe & Sullivan LLP
(MBJS) before the U.S. District Court in Portland, Oregon contends that
Craig and Bonneville Power Administrator Stephen Wright unlawfully
retaliated against Center experts because their data was relied upon by
a federal district court judge in ordering greater water releases from
dams this past summer to aid salmon migration. Angered by the Center’s
data showing a reduced salmon migration during the previous year, Craig
added language to a committee report recommending that the Fish Passage
Center should no longer receive funding from the Bonneville Power
Administration and the functions should be transferred to a private
entity.  Spurred by Craig, BPA has blocked the renewal of the
Center’s contract for the current year.

 “What Senator Craig did was tantamount to tampering with a
witness who testified against him,” stated PEER General Counsel Richard
Condit, who filed the action with MBJS partner Dana Sullivan. 
“This lawsuit is about whether scientists can be summarily separated
from employment if their findings happen to undermine the agenda of
federal politicians,” added Sullivan.  

For the past 24 years, the Fish Passage Center has served as the
authoritative scorekeeper in counting whether native fish stocks are
able to traverse a series of dams to reach their spawning grounds. Many
of the stakeholders on the rivers systems have expressed concern that
cancellation of the Center’s contract will disrupt data collection and
threaten the quality and consistency of the information on which river
management decisions are based.  

PEER is representing Center Director Michele DeHart and five other
specialists in asserting their constitutional rights to speak and
publish their findings without fear of reprisal.  The suit also
argues that even though the Center and its staff received top
evaluations and their contract was recommended for renewal, BPA
intervened in violation of due process by not affording the affected
scientists a chance to rebut Sen. Craig’s charge that their
mathematical compilations data constituted “advocacy science.”

In a supporting affidavit filed with the suit, Rod Sando, the former
Executive Director of Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority, which
oversees the Fish Passage Center, stated:

“This is the first time a decision has been made to eliminate funding
of a mitigation project that was performing its duties as assigned
simply because the analysis results were inconvenient for some of the
Region’s policy makers… This ‘flat earth’ approach to science does not
bode well for the management of fish resources in the Columbia. 
Many of these fish stocks are in serious trouble and the general
welfare of all citizens will not be served by a community of fisheries
scientists and managers who cannot carry out their responsibilities
without fear of retaliation.”
 
In addition to this action, this past January PEER joined the Northwest
Environmental Defense Center and the Northwest Sportfishing Industry
Association in asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to declare
attempts by the BPA to replace the Fish Passage Center in violation of
the provisions of the Northwest Power Act.  That earlier action is
still pending before the appellate court.

###

View the PEER lawsuit complaint
http://www.peer.org/docs/or/06_16_3_complaint.pdf

See the full affidavit of Rod Sando
http://www.peer.org/docs/or/06_16_3_sandoaff.pdf

 Read the affidavit of Fish Passage Center Director Michele DeHart
http://www.peer.org/docs/or/06_16_3_dehart.pdf

Look at the motion to save the Fish Passage Center pending before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals  
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=634

The ability of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to conduct
timely, cutting- edge research is threatened by diversion of money from
a shrinking budget and by failure to defend its science from political
manipulation, according to congressional testimony delivered
today.  After seven straight years of declining research budgets,
President Bush has again proposed further cuts, aggravated by raids on
the remaining research dollars to finance homeland security and public
relations programs.

In addition to money woes, EPA’s research program is plagued by
suppression of findings for non-scientific reasons and lack of
protection for its scientists, according to testimony presented by
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) Executive
Director Jeff Ruch before the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on
Environment, Technology, and Standards.  The hearing examined the
proposed EPA Science and Technology budget for fiscal year 2007.  

“There appears to be a deliberate policy of marginalizing EPA science
on issue after issue, so that the agency is becoming increasingly
irrelevant to emerging environmental threats,” Ruch testified, pointing
to internal surveys showing a growing pessimism by agency scientists
about the direction of EPA. “EPA’s public health research agenda has
been neutered.”

Among the examples PEER raised before the Subcommittee are that EPA —

•    Has kept its risk assessment for dioxin, a deadly
yet widespread agent, in draft form for more than 12 years.  The
final assessment has still not been released;

•    Diluted its recommended perchlorate safety
standards so that states have been forced to step in and set their own
standards.  Perchlorate is a defense munitions compound that has
been found in drinking water supplies in more than 20 states and is
considered by many the leading Clean Water Act threat of the 21st
century; and

•    Is giving corporate contributors direct influence
over which research projects are undertaken by entering into a record
number of joint ventures.

EPA currently spends $557 million directly on environmental and health
research and another $173 million on environmental technologies. While
the Bush administration is proposing a slight increase in the overall
combined budget for science and technology —

•    The scientific research budget represents a 16%
decline over the past three years when adjusted for inflation. 
Some areas, such as ecological research, would drop by more than
one-fourth;

•    New security programs for water supplies are being
funded wholly out of research funds, as are questionable new public
relations and information technology programs; and

•    EPA contends it cannot afford its $2.5 million network of libraries, which it seeks to slash by 80%.

“The one group not being asked to testify about agency science is the
EPA scientists themselves,” Ruch added.  “Unfortunately, EPA has
forbidden its own specialists from speaking without political
clearance.”

###

Read the PEER testimony
http://www.peer.org/docs/epa/06_16_3_testimony.pdf

View the testimony from the Chair of the EPA Science Advisory Board
http://www.peer.org/docs/epa/06_16_3_epa_testimony.pdf

Look at the growing corporate role in EPA research
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=596

See the diversion of EPA research money for a multi-year public relations campaign
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=555

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is closing its Midwest
Regional Library serving universities, the public and its own staff in
a six-state area, according to an internal email released today by
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). 
The agency is acting without waiting for Congress to approve the
proposed budget cuts that are the basis for dismantling EPA’s entire
library network.

In a March 13, 2006 memo to employees, EPA Midwestern Regional
Administrator Thomas Skinner wrote that “the library will close in the
near future” so as “to allow time for an orderly relocation of our
library collection.”  The affected library located in the Chicago
regional headquarters serves the six-state region of Illinois, Indiana,
Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin.

The memo cites a 90% loss of funding for the regional library in
President Bush’s proposed 2007 budget as the reason for closing the
library, even though the proposal has yet to be voted on by Congress
and the new federal fiscal year does not begin until October 1,
2006.  The Midwest Regional Library is one of 27 libraries across
the country whose budget the administration has proposed to reduce by
80%.

“By putting its research collections into indefinite storage, EPA might
as well start burning books because these works are not likely to see
the light of day again,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch,
noting that the agency has allocated no money for moving collections to
other libraries or digitizing the holdings so that they would be
available online. “The loss of access to this research will remove
potentially key information from the hands of researchers, inspectors
and decision-makers.”  

The plan to slash library funding is among the $300 million in EPA
budget cuts proposed by the Bush administration.  As originally
proposed, the plan would also have de-funded the electronic catalog
maintained by the EPA Headquarters library.  When it was pointed
out that eliminating the electronic catalog would make it impossible to
find any holding within the network, EPA announced last week that it
would restore the $500,000 reduction to its headquarters for the
catalog.  Unfortunately, EPA indicated that it would compensate
for this action by spreading even deeper cuts cut among the other
libraries.

In his email, Regional Administrator Skinner pledged that limited
electronic access to research will remain available to EPA’s own staff
but it is unclear what happens to the tens of thousands of research
reports that are now only available as hard copies. At the same time,
employees in other EPA regions are reporting parallel scrambles to
cutback library services in anticipation of adoption of the agency’s FY
2007 budget.    

“EPA might want to wait for Congress to act before its shutters its
libraries,” Ruch added, noting that EPA spends more than a half-billion
dollars a year on research and the total library network budget is only
$2.5 million.  “EPA’s national research plan is supposed to build
on what we already know; but effectively deploying our existing
knowledge base will be increasingly difficult if decades of research
are locked away in storage.”

###

Read the email announcing the library closure
http://www.peer.org/docs/epa/06_13_03_EPA_Library_email.pdf

Learn more about the Bush plan to close the EPA library network
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=643