Presidents of 17 Local Unions representing more than 10,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency employees wrote to Senate appropriators on June 29 to protest deep cuts to EPA funding that would close the agency's libraries. The letter urges Congress to reinstate full funding to EPA libraries and explains how the cuts will impede EPA's ability to respond to public health, enforcement and homeland security emergencies and restrict public access to vital health and safety information.

President Bush's budget proposal released in early February included a whopping 80 percent slash in EPA's library budget from 2006 funding levels, dropping it from $2.5 million to only $500,000. In response to the cuts, EPA appears to be developing a plan to close the agency's Headquarters library and discontinue the Online Library System, an electronic catalogue, without which regional libraries will be unable to locate individual holdings. The EPA materials obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) also consider the closing of other regional libraries or significantly reducing services.

EPA officials have repeatedly stated that the agency has made no decisions about the library budget situation. But according to the June 29 letter, the proposed cuts have already affected EPA library services in as many as 19 states. The unions maintain that "the dismantling of EPA libraries is already underway, without a coherent plan in place."

Proponents of the $2 million budget cut claim that library closures will promote efficiency, and that electronic access to the same information that the libraries provide will be maintained. However, in their letter, EPA staff claim that "nothing could be further form the truth," noting that EPA's repository of electronic documents, called the National Environmental Publications Information System, only holds about 13,000 documents, while the Agency has about 80,000 documents that should be retained. The EPA has not announced any plans to convert the nearly 67,000 paper only documents to an electronic format.

The letter also notes that contrary to claims that the budget cut is a necessary cost saving measure, a Nov. 2005 cost-benefit analysis done by the agency concludes that shutting libraries will actually lead to a much larger financial burden for EPA. Business Case for Information Services: EPA Regional Libraries and Centers found that EPA's library network saved more that 214,000 hours of EPA staff time, at a cost savings of approximately $7.5 million.

The library budget cuts will only become final if the Senate passes its Interior appropriations bill, which allocates funding for the EPA, with the library budget cut. If Congress chooses to it may alter President Bush's budget proposal and more fully fund the agency's libraries, which is what the EPA union letter called on Senate Appropriations Committee staff to do. After the House passed the Interior appropriations bill with the President's library funding cut on May 18, the Senate became the last resort for preserving the EPA's library resources.

The Senate Interior Appropriation Committee passed the Interior Appropriation Bill out of committee without reinstating the library budget. However, the bill may still be modified on the floor when the full Senate votes on the legislation. If the Senate did increase the library funding, such a provision would also need to make it past the conference process, by which differences between House and Senate bills are resolved.