The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has extended the administrative leave of 160 employees as part of its investigation into workers who used their official titles and positions last month in signing a petition objecting to the agency’s policies, Inside Climate News has confirmed.
The employees were scheduled to return to work July 18, but the new date is Aug. 4, a worker on administrative leave said. The worker asked not to be named because they are concerned about further retaliation.
In an email dated July 16, the EPA required the affected employees to complete an online survey by 5 p.m. the next day. The survey asks whether they signed the petition, “a declaration of dissent,” on EPA time and whether they did so using government-issued equipment, according to screenshots of agency emails shared with Inside Climate News.
“Failure to comply with this instruction and participate in this investigation and/or any lack of candor in your responses may result in discipline up to and including removal from federal service,” one email says.
The EPA also announced July 16 that it plans to close its scientific arm, the Office of Research and Development. There are several ORD facilities throughout the U.S., including Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, where scientists study a range of environmental issues: the public health effects of chemical exposure, the atmospheric conditions that transport chemicals through the air and national security responses to environmental emergencies and their cleanup.
Such a move had already been proposed, and it was among the concerns listed in the petition that EPA employees signed. Transferring ORD scientists to regulatory program offices “will make EPA science more vulnerable to political interference,” the petition reads, and “the gutting of staff and science” underway at the agency “will threaten the health of all Americans.”
The EPA employee who talked to Inside Climate News said they signed the declaration of dissent at home and on their personal device. “I was sitting on my couch at night, and I read the letter,” the employee said. “I thought, ‘This is really well-written. I agree with all the points.’”
The employee said they take ethics training every year, “so I feel like I know what I’m allowed to do and not allowed to do. I signed it because I thought it was really important.”
Holly Wilson, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 3347, based in Durham, N.C., said the union opposes the survey because it bypasses the employees’ rights to have legal union representation present during an investigation.
“They’re being put on administrative leave for investigatory purposes,” Wilson said. “The survey was an investigatory tool.”
The EPA also sent an email to affected employees instructing them to turn on their laptops if they had them at home. The email did not provide a reason for the directive. However, turning on the laptops could allow the agency to access them remotely, the EPA employee said.
More than 200 EPA workers, including some retirees, and environmental advocates signed the petition, addressed to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and members of Congress. The document criticized the administration’s policies for “undermining the public trust” by issuing misleading statements in press releases, such as referring to EPA grants as “green slush funds” and praising “clean coal as beautiful.”
The petition also accuses the administration of “ignoring scientific consensus to benefit polluters,” most notably regarding mercury and greenhouse gases.
The EPA is among several federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health in early June and more recently NASA, whose employees have filed letters of dissent to their respective administrators.
The EPA originally reported that it had placed 139 employees on leave. In some cases, employees signed the petition using only their initials.
However, Wilson said the agency placed additional workers on leave as recently as last week. Yet in some instances, the EPA has placed people on leave who did not sign the petition, Wilson said, because they had initials or partial names that were similar or matched someone who did.
“It’s purposely disruptive,” Wilson said.
An agency spokesperson did not explain the increase or answer direct questions about the extension. Instead, the spokesperson issued a statement: “The EPA has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats using their agency position and title to unlawfully undermine, sabotage, and undercut the will of the American public that was clearly expressed at the ballot box last November.”
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Lisa Sorg is the North Carolina reporter for Inside Climate News. A journalist for 30 years, Sorg covers energy, climate environment and agriculture, as well as the social justice impacts of pollution and corporate malfeasance.
She has won dozens of awards for her news, public service and investigative reporting. In 2022, she received the Stokes Award from the National Press Foundation for her two-part story about the environmental damage from a former missile plant on a Black and Latinx neighborhood in Burlington. Sorg was previously an environmental investigative reporter at NC Newsline, a nonprofit media outlet based in Raleigh. She has also worked at alt-weeklies, dailies and magazines. Originally from rural Indiana, she lives in Durham, N.C.
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