Sept. 15, 2006
 
EDITORIAL: EPA Invites Doubts with Library Closings
 
Minneapolis – St. Paul Star Tribune
 
Most Americans, even most American scientists, will never have cause to visit one of the regional technical libraries maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency. But to environmental scientists in Minnesota or any of 14 other states, working inside or outside EPA, the pending shutdown of these repositories will be a serious blow.
 
The general public, too, should be concerned about what this means for EPA accountability, which has come under repeated challenge in recent years -- most notably over unduly rosy post-disaster assessments in lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks, and in New Orleans after last year's hurricanes. And perhaps every taxpaying citizen should be offended by the way in which this action was taken -- essentially, by EPA officials anticipating a $2 million budget cut for fiscal 2007 that has been proposed by the White House but not yet considered by Congress, which alone has the authority to appropriate or withhold federal funds. Certainly the relevant congressional committees should object.
 
EPA regional libraries in Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City are scheduled to close at the end of September; general-public access may be ended sooner. Researchers are welcome to travel to other EPA libraries, but operating schedules are being reduced.
 
Or they can try looking up what they need on the Internet, although of course the EPA is behind in digitizing its collections; lots of documents are going into boxes for processing, and the official estimate is that they may be available again in six to nine months. Assuming no more budget cuts, one supposes.
 
The changes in library operations have been challenged by EPA scientists and also by EPA librarians, whose union has called the closures "Orwellian."
 
That would seem to suggest that a sinister interest in information control is at least as much a motivation as budget factors for these closures. But for now this seems to be just another exercise in arrogance by an agency in an executive branch that seems too often to relish it.
 
Certainly EPA invites skepticism by choosing, in a period when its performance is under scrutiny and its credibility shakier than usual, to make public resources more cumbersome to use -- and its own record more difficult to review.
 
Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.