The next phase of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s plan to reorganize the agency is officially underway, supercharging questions among current and former agency staffers, unions and watchdogs about the fate of independent research, federal labs and more.
EPA leaders on Monday in meetings with staff unveiled the makeup of a new research office — the Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions, or OASES — which will operate under the Office of the Administrator instead of as its own separate research branch, according to slides obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News.
OASES will house approximately 500 staffers, according to one EPA staffer who attended the briefing and was granted anonymity as they were not authorized to speak with the media. Many of those staffers will be pulled from the Office of Research and Development, the agency’s scientific research arm independent from regulatory program offices, the employee said.
Trump administration officials announced two months ago that ORD would be eliminated and restructured and its scientists either reassigned to other program offices or laid off.
