EPA Librarians Union Calls Closures "Orwellian.

Minnesota Star-Trinbune Editorial: EPA invites doubts with library closings. Agency makes its data, and performance, difficult to review.

---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 postdisaster 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....
Just another exercise in arrogance by an agency in an executive branch that seems too often to relish it.

10,000 EPA SCIENTISTS PROTEST LIBRARY CLOSURES — Loss of Access to Collections Will Hamper Emergency Response and Research.

See EPA Librarian Union letter at Library Juice.