EPA Floats Eliminating Scientific Office, Laying Off Most Workers

The agency says it is entering the next phase of improvements.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin speaks on a visit to East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 3, 2025. Rebecca Droke/Pool/AFP

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is planning to eliminate a national office and fire up to 75 percent of its employees, according to newly reviewed documents.

An EPA reduction-in-force plan proposes the elimination of the Office of Research and Development as a national office, according to Democratic staff members on the U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee who reviewed the documents.

The agency plans to assess which employees are needed to carry out its responsibilities, the documents said, according to the staffers.

“Currently, the Office of Research and Development has 1,540 positions ... of which we anticipate a majority (50–75 percent) will not be retained,” the documents stated.

Some of the positions that are at present within the office would, if the office is eliminated, be moved to other parts of the EPA.

The EPA said in the documents that it will request from the Office of Personnel Management an exception to the typical 60 days’ notice given to workers being fired as part of mass layoffs.

When asked about the plan, an EPA spokesperson told The Epoch Times in a March 19 email that it is taking new steps as it enters the next phase of improvements.

“We are committed to enhancing our ability to deliver clean air, water, and land for all Americans,” Molly Vaseliou, the spokesperson, said. “While no decisions have been made yet, we are actively listening to employees at all levels to gather ideas on how to better fulfill agency statutory obligations, increase efficiency, and ensure the EPA is as up to date and effective as ever.”

The EPA has already fired 419 workers who were on probationary status, or newer hires, according to a sworn declaration filed with a federal court this week. Those workers are being reinstated after a judge found that the government likely violated rules such as the advance notice requirement.

The EPA has been working with the Department of Government Efficiency, according to agency leaders. President Donald Trump tasked the department with helping agencies identify waste.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said previously that the agency would be “cutting 65 or so percent of the people from environmental,” a quote the White House said was referring to the EPA’s budget rather than the workforce.

The EPA’s Office of Research and Development is the agency’s scientific research arm, according to the EPA’s website. The site describes the office as carrying out “leading-edge research” that “informs agency decisions and supports the emerging needs of EPA stakeholders, including the agency’s state, tribal, and community partners.”

The office has 11 facilities across 10 states and Washington, including two in Oregon and one in North Carolina.

Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-N.C.) said in a statement that the office is “vital to understanding and addressing environmental risks, and gutting its workforce hinders our ability to properly address and react to these risks.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Science Committee, decried the proposal.

“EPA’s Office of Research and Development is in statute. Eliminating it is illegal,” Lofgren said. “Every decision EPA makes must be in furtherance of protecting human health and the environment, and that just can’t happen if you gut EPA science.”