Management issues continue to plague the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has yet to implement fully recommendations made over the last two decades to improve the “uneven quality” of the science that underpins its regulations , according to new testimony from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
“EPA has yet to fully address” a 1992 evaluation reporting “that EPA’s science was of uneven quality and that the agency lacked a coherent science agenda and operational plan to guide scientific efforts throughout the agency,” GAO’s Natural Resources and Environment director, David Trimble, told the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment today.
Trimble also identified weaknesses in EPA leadership that diminish the credibility of the agency’s scientific findings, and, by extension, the regulations it promulgates. “EPA has not appointed a top science official with responsibility and authority for all the research, science, and technical functions of the agency,” Trimble said, “even though one study found that the lack of a top science official was a formula for weak scientific performance in the agency and poor scientific credibility outside the agency.”
The standing EPA practice of using “advisory positions and councils to achieve consensus” have met with only “limited success,” he added.
Full testimony below.
