FEATURE
Rebuilding EPA Science The agency pursues "sound science" despite falling budgets, stagnant staff levels, and turmoil in the labs. JEFF
JOHNSON
n July 27, 1994, EPA Administrator Carol Browner presented a skeptical House committee with a sweeping plan to overhaul how the agency conducts research. Her vision was to transform the beleaguered Office of Research and Development (ORD), repeatedly criticized as a top-heavy, poorly managed bureaucracy, into a sleek, world-class research institution. The reform of ORD was an answer to years of critical congressional investigations and hearings, General Accounting Office reports, and a plethora of evaluations by outside experts and blue-ribbon panels and commissions (see Notes). Now two years later, ORD is far along in that transformation. EPA laboratories have been reorganized with new names, managers, and responsibilities; a new extramural research grant program is in place; peer review has taken hold throughout the office; headquarters staff have been cut; and the position of ORD assistant administrator has been filled by respected researcher Robert Huggett, who leads the re- ORD Assistant Administrator Robert Huggett pauses before a organization. Although ORD scientists voice wide- gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer while visiting fedspread support for the reorganization's goals, their eral laboratories in Reston, Virginia. morale is low and many say they are severely disappointed with its implementation. in their careers, and worried about their future with Staff describe a chaotic situation in which com- the agency. They say a lack of funds and staff hobbles fortable old supports they have relied upon for years their ability to carry through with the new responsihave been kicked away before a replacement struc- bilities required to create a first-class research instituture has been fashioned. The effect of the reorgani- tion, and they complain that a flood of microzation hits deep, particularly considering the length management protocols is drowning creativity. of time ORD staff members have worked for the fedThe funding complaint is transparently real: The eral government—an average of 17.2 years, at some long-delayed 1996 congressional appropriation cut labs more than 27 years. "Imagine you are living on a ORD to its lowest level in real dollars since the engood federal wage in a small city," one agency staff vironmental budget of the anti-EPA Reagan adminmember said, describing the reorganization's social im- istration in the early 1980s (1). The cuts come at a pact. "You've done the same thing for a long time. You're critical time for ORD as the office tries to build its satisfied and nearing retirement and suddenly all internal science staff, a key component of the reorthese changes occur. This isn't going to sit well." ganization. The reductions may even limit ORD's abilIn interviews, staff said they are frustrated with ity to maintain current research levels. the day-to-day effects of the reforms on their jobs, The 1996 budget continues a 15-plus-year trend confused about how they are expected to advance for ORD: Despite demands from nearly all quarters
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for better long-term environmental science to support a growing U.S. environmental agenda, Congress and the last three administrations have been unwilling to support environmental science even at levels matching EPA's overall slow budget growth. Consequendy, immediate, short-term research, driven by regulations, EPA program office demands, and court orders, takes precedence, and ORD falls behind, leaving itself open to critics who continue to clamor for "sound science." If the trend continues, EPA staff and observers worry that the reorganization may fail. Meanwhile, Huggett has moved ahead with the ambitious reforms and, embracing unusual openness, has placed ORD and the reorganization under several new microscopes. At his request, two committees of the National Research Council (NRC) are examining EPA's emerging research agenda and the reorganization itself. They are expected to release reports in the spring of 1997. He has also created a standing ORD Board of Scientific Counselors made up of 15 scientists who will oversee all ORD research activities. The board held its first meeting in August. But EPA scientists worry that if these review committees call for significant changes, the halfimplemented reorganization will be stalled again, throwing the office into further confusion. The views of EPA staff will probably become apparent to Huggett in December when he meets with 150 ORD scientists, support staff, and managers to discuss the reorganization, its successes, and failures. The meeting follows up on a questionnaire sent out earlier this year to gauge concerns of ORD employees. No labs closed, no staff laid off Browner's 1994 plan drastically reorganized EPA's 12 major laboratories along a risk assessment-risk management model. Labs were combined into four national "megalabs" with research authority for exposure, risk management, health and environmental effects, and environmental assessment. Browner also created a National Center for Environmental Research and Quality Assurance in Washington, D.C., to oversee ORD's new emphasis on external grants and peer review. Browner and Huggett promised that no lab would be shut down and no employee laid off or moved for two years. They have shuffled authority among the labs, however, with the result that scientists separated by hundreds of miles have been put on the same research teams or report to managers in other parts of the country. Browner also committed EPA to increase its emphasis on long-term research and halve its headquarters staff. Perhaps most important, the reorganization was a bold attempt to create a new environment within the labs where scientists who had been saddled with paperwork and rewarded for contract management skills would now return to doing cutting-edge environmental research (2). The move to the laboratory bench, however, required EPA to cut its heavy dependence on contractors, and Browner said some 260 research positions would be converted from contractor status to federal employees. The plan was a direct response to congressional charges that EPA lab managers had
Fifteen years of ORD budget, staff erosion While EPA overall funding and full-time employees (FTEs) have slowly increased, ORD's have remained flat despite new responsibilities and a growing research agenda.
Source: EPA Science Advisory Board Report: Review of MITRE Corp. Draft Report, May 1994.
mismanaged contracts, awarded grants and signed cooperative agreements with institutional friends, and conducted poor science. The criticisms predate Browner's administration by as much as a decade, but she was the first to make changes in how ORD did business. Waiting in the wings as Browner made the announcement in 1994 was Huggett, chair of the Department of Environmental Sciences, Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences at the College of William and Mary, who had been nominated to head ORD but had not been confirmed. For nearly three years before Huggett took the helm, ORD drifted under acting assistant administrator Gary Foley, a well-known EPA career scientist who lacked political clout within the Bush administration EPA. Melding the plan into a program fell to Huggett, who, as a former member of the EPA Science Advisory Board and several National Academy of Science committees, was no stranger to EPA or Washington. Today he is grappling with a huge transformation in an era of diminished resources. In a recent interview, he called his job "terribly exciting with incredible highs and lows." The highs, he said, are helping EPA scientists do high-quality research, the lows are "having all these plans and then watching your budget be cut by 20%." Huggett sees the reorganization at a critical point, with the potential to move forward or to plummet back. Success, he says, will determine which option prevails. Without the reorganization, however, he believes ORD would have been eliminated by Congress and most of its research shifted to some variation of the proposed National Institute for the Environment. In the late 1980s, Huggett supported creation of such an institute that would combine EPA's research with other federal environmental research, but today he opposes that concept. Asked to identify the reforms of which he is most proud, Huggett without hesitation singles out ORD's VOL. 30, NO. 11, 1996 /ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS » 4 9 3 A
extramural grants program and itsfirststrategic plan, a blueprint for guiding EPA's research agenda, which was released in final form in May. Quadrupling extramural research grants During his short tenure at ORD, extramural research grants to universities and other nonprofit research institutions have grown from about $20 million to $83 million this year. Huggett's and Browner's goal is $100 million by 1997 to be parceled out in $200,000 to $500,000 (yearly) two- and three-year grants. Huggett is also proud of a new graduate fellowship program that he hopes will help infuse EPA's aging research staff with a new generation of scientists. His target is 300 yearly $34,000 fellowships by 1997. It is a popular program: 2468 graduate students applied for the 100 fellowships that were given in 1995, its first year. The entire program has been labeled STAR—Science to Achieve Results. The extramural research grant program also has widespread support, especially outside the agency. Huggett estimates that EPA received 3000 proposals for the 1996 program. Because Congress gave EPA its 1996 budget six months late and then EPA spent several months preparing details of its allocation, this year's grants were still be—ORD laboratory ing reviewed in August. Some 1200 scistaff member entists are taking part in peer reviewing the proposals. Huggett estimates that a few hundred will be awarded, a 5-10% success rate. "When I came in, our investigator-initiated competitive grants program was, frankly, an embarrassment to the agency," said Huggett. "We are supposed to be the leader in environmental research work, and to have only $22 million for academics to help us get the job done was pathetic. Health research we can draw from other agencies, but for environmental research, we are it." Two-thirds of ORD's budget goes outside the agency as grants, cooperative agreements, and contracts. It was the bidding process and oversight of these funds that helped get the agency into trouble. Investigations by EPA's Office of Inspector General and the General Accounting Office and congressional hearings, stretching back to the mid-1980s, led to charges of misuse of federal funds, particularly for contracts and cooperative agreements (see Notes). "The law states that a government employee cannot manage or supervise a contractor," Huggett said. "A contract is for a specific thing, like buying nails from a hardware store. If I am an EPA scientist and you are a technician working under a contract, I cannot directly manage you, and some of our people were actually directing contractors. That is against the law."
"ORD managers are being told to return to the bench. That's not realistic without patience and a lot of retraining money."
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EPA staff had confused contracts with cooperative agreements, in which EPA staff can work directly alongside private-sector personnel, Huggett said. In one lab, EPA tried to draw attention to the difference by having contractors wear special lab coats, he noted. Huggett and several EPA observers believe much of the blame for poor management does not rest with EPA staff, however. They point to Congress, die Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in several administrations, as well as EPA's leadership, for creating the circumstances that led scientists to become contract managers. The Reagan administration OMBfirstplaced a decreasing cap on EPA's hiring of full-time employees (FTEs), and although the decline of FTEs at the agency ended in 1983 with the departure of Administrator Anne Gorsuch, ORD was not so lucky: Its number of FTEs remained flat for the next decade despite a growth in environmental statutes, regulations, and research requirements. EPA's most recent workforce analysis shows that in the fall of 1990 there were 3837 intramural and extramural staff, almost evenly split between federal and extramural employees (3). "Work had to be done by somebody, so we went to contractors," Huggett said. "And EPA scientists started being evaluated on how they handled contract work. This was how they got their grades. They were taken off the bench and made to do tilings they didn't go to school to learn to do. They are not business majors." Some scientists liked it, Huggett acknowledged. "When you've got a couple of million dollars, you'd be amazed at how many friends you've got. It gives a real sense of power." Through the reorganization, this mix of contracts, cooperative agreements, and grants for specific extramural research has changed. Huggett is slowly decreasing contracts and cooperative agreements and increasing funds for extramural research grants. He has also shifted control of grants from the labs to the new National Center for Environmental Research and Quality Assurance at EPA headquarters. For contracts, a more formal structure has been established at the lab level, which may assure legal contract management but has greatly complicated research, many ORD scientists say. Struggle to add staff positions Huggett also hoped to increase the number of FTEs as part of the reorganization; some in the agency had talked about converting as many as 900 contract positions to FTEs. But members of Congress objected, especially Virginia's Sen. John Warner (R) and Rep. James P. Moran (D), whose districts hold many federal contract firms. They blocked the first "contractor conversion" when it began in late 1994. ORD had converted 230 positions before being pressed to end the plan. At contractors' urging, language was added to EPA's 1996 appropriation to block further contractor layoffs, according to congressional staff. It is very unlikely ORD will get more FTEs; in fact, Huggett predicts a decline. ORD has 1890 FTEs and authorization for another 252. However, his current appropriation will allow only 30 more positions, which comes after Browner initiated a one-year hiring freeze. Huggett knows some of the labs are hurt-
The reorganized EPA Office of Research and Development
Source: EPA.
ing. "We've reduced the number of contractors and with no new hires, we don't even have secretaries for some of the divisions. The situation has become dire." His long-range strategy is to "backfill" by hiring new staff as older ones retire, phase out dependence on contractors at the lab level, use cooperative agreements selectively, and control grant making through a peer review process that is run by the center, not the labs. The net effect, he says, will be to give lab scientists more time to do science in what he calls the "best facilities in the world." But the change from being managers to being scientists will be a slow one. Lab scientists and critics have noted that for a decade EPA staff have been encouraged to be managers. In fact, Huggett reports that in some labs, investigators found that fewer than 25% of scientists spent more than half their time doing research. The rest of the time they managed contracts. Frustration at the labs "ORD employees feel battered on all sides," said a 20-year EPA veteran scientist and lab manager, who like most agency staff interviewed for this article insisted on anonymity. Most of the criticisms center on lack of control and confusion over what lies ahead
for agency researchers. The staff member described general anger in ORD over the cut in cooperative agreements and contracts, the hiring freeze, and the shift in grant programs from local control to peer review panels in Washington. Meanwhile no new resources are being added to fill the void from the reorganization. "In the 1980s and early 1990s, contracts, cooperative agreements, and grants were controlled by lab managers," the staff member continued. "If I had a cooperative agreement with a university, for instance, I initiated the request for proposals, I evaluated the response, I reviewed it and had it peer reviewed by an external panel, I wrote the decision memorandum, and I funded it from my budget. All labs used them for working relationships with universities. Now this is being shifted to Huggett's new grant program. And he is using a granting process like the National Institute of Health's. The result is the lab officials in the field are totally cut off from the process." Other ORD staff complain that the cuts have hurt basic workplace needs. For instance, they say funding cuts have limited subscriptions to scientific publications and provide less travel money for scientific meetings, which may seem relatively minor but VOL. 30, NO. 11, 1996/ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS • 4 9 5 A
ORD budget, full-time employee (FTE) history ORD's FTEs and budget were at a 15-year peak in 1980; resources are shown in constant 1987 dollars.
Source: EPA.
ORD's extramural funding mix changes Under the reorganization and Huggett's leadership, funding for contracts and cooperative agreements has dropped but allocations for extramural research grants are on the rise.
Source: EPA and the National Research Council.
will be destructive in the long run. They complain that "cautious administrative staff" with little science experience now have veto power over their dayto-day budget decisions. But most ORD staff say they understand why these changes were necessary. One researcher emphasized, "I'm not saying these changes are bad or good. I am saying the impact on the labs is huge." This staffer said EPA was far too dependent on cooperative agreements and contractors, who supplied everything from "dishwashers to high-level statisticians." And the old grant program, he said, was "a truly miserably managed program" in which "people never even received a postcard showing their proposal was received, and even two years later would still not have a response." However, Huggett's new $100 million grants program, "is seen as taking money out of the hides of ORD people." Huggett acknowledged the problem, but he said the perception will change as the extramural grant program eventually becomes an integral part of the agency's national research agenda, filling a gap when 4 9 6 A • VOL. 30, NO. 11, 1996 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS
research cannot be done inside EPA. He also believes that the EPA program will be strengthened by steps he has taken to develop a coordinated federal environmental research grant program. Starting in 1995, EPA began soliciting grants together with the National Science Foundation, and in its first year, Huggett said, NSF and EPA agreed on the same proposals 80% of the time. In 1996 Huggett extended the approach to the Department of Energy and is laying plans for joint solicitation with the Departments of Defense and Interior as well as other federal agencies. He is also exploring the potential of combining research with industry, when appropriate. Again, Huggett stressed that his overall goal is to free up research time for EPA scientists, who had been forced to become "hunters and gatherers out foraging for resources to run their labs. We are moving our people into positions to be scientists and engineers, what they were trained to do. At the same time, we are engaging the outside scientific community in a competitive manner."
Need for retraining staff However, a scientist in the ecological program of the newly created National Exposure Research Laboratory said that some former managers are lost with nothing to manage. "They are being told to return to the bench where they were 10 or 15 years ago. This may not be realistic without providing lots of patience and lots of money for retraining. I strongly support the need for a $100 million grants program," the researcher added, "but not at the expense of our internal work and support for our scientists." To fill the training void, the staffer said the ecological program is exploring a program with the Characterization Research Division in Las Vegas to bring in well-known professors for one-week training programs every few months. "This kind of program will be good for staff and provide professors with insights into what is happening in the labs," the staff member added. Training will be a big topic at the ORD staff meeting in December, according to Huggett. "When we forced these people to stop being chemists and toxicologists and to manage contracts, it took time away from them and they lost their edge. We've got to get that back. I'm willing to consider anything they can suggest. I can't send them all back to college, but maybe I can make the college come to them through video tapes and traveling faculty. We are losing contract support, and we've got to retrain staff." But he emphasizes that the days when scientists were promoted simply because they controlled money and people are over. The past is being replaced with what he calls a "dual ladder." "You can still get promoted for good management, and we appreciate that, but you can also get promoted for good science and engineering. What we are trying to do is shift the organization to allow scientists to focus on science." Several EPA scientists also say that Huggett's reforms to ensure mat staff do not direcdy control contractors has hobbled research. "We can't sit down and design research projects [with contractors] anymore or directly talk to them about adjustments in research design," the scientist said. "It's not impos-
sible to work like this, but it is real, real slow." The answer, one scientist said, is for Congress to either modify federal statutes to provide enough flexibility to allow federal scientists to interact with contractors or to lift the cap on federal FTEs. This staffer and several others applauded the FTE conversions, but said they were not fairly distributed throughout ORD. Most, they said, went to biology and toxicology research in the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory. Others have disagreements with the new structure itself, particularly the separation between exposure and effects, arguing that examining exposure means little without considering its effects. And several said having labs report to other labs in different parts of the country greatly complicates research, adding that an EPA organization chart now looks like an "airline map." Others said the shift is consistent with the move toward decentralization, something scientists at the lab level have long demanded. Most, however, said these differences could be worked out a n d physical location has less i m p a c t in this day of electronic mail and fax machines. Despite their complaints about the effect of the reorganization, most EPA scientists appear resigned to the need for it. And as one put it, "Maybe the big problem is that it is new, and we simply haven't made it work yet. I believe if we are left alone, we can. Sometimes I think we are starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel, and this time we're pretty sure it's not a train coming the other way." Facing an uncertain future, ORD staff say their nightmare would be a replay of the past decade's events in which outside committees analyzing the reorganization recommend structural changes, but the recommendations go unheeded. And a few years down the line, about the time ORD staff have tailored the new structure to their needs, Congress jumps in and demands another round of ORD reforms, setting off a new wave of turmoil in the longrunning saga of improving science at EPA labs.
Notes
ORD reorganization debate goes public In a commentary published this year in Nature, David Lewis, a scientist in the Ecosystem Research Division with long EPA experience, openly criticized EPA science and management, as well as the effect of the reorganization {Nature, 1996, 381, 731-32). The article generated much interest inside the agency, as well as spinoff articles in the popular press. Lewis charged that EPA's Office of Research and Development (ORD) has one-third fewer scientists today than when he joined EPA 25 years ago, and their time is largely consumed by administrative red tape, not scientific research. Lewis predicted that the reorganization will continue this trend and the creation of the "megalabs" will further push EPA along the "big bureaucracy path forged by Washington headquarters and the regional offices." Although he said he supports the growing use of peer review within EPA and the increase in extramural research grants, he noted that the grants have come at the expense of cooperative agreements. The cooperative agreements, he said, had the advantage of allowing EPA scientists to work directly with their counterparts outside EPA. The demise, he added, will further isolate ORD scientists. Among general criticisms, Lewis warned that ORD research in the biological sciences is poorly funded and decreasing in importance, which will weaken environmental protection and regulations. As a partial solution to these problems, Lewis called for creation of a cabinet-level Department of Environment that includes environmental research arms of other federal government agencies and urged that the new department be run by a leading environmental scientist. In response to Lewis' article, Bernard Goldstein, director of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute and a former ORD head, praised reforms by ORD Assistant Administrator Robert Huggett {Nature, 1996, 382, 391). In particular, Goldstein endorsed steps toward greater dependence on peer review, quality assurance, and development of the new extramural grant program at ORD, as well as Huggett's new strategic planning process. He predicted that changes now under way will increase the ratio of scientists to administrators and trim the bureaucracy. Goldstein charged that Lewis's commentary was "misleading as to the direction of changes in recent years." —JEFF JOHNSON
mittee on Research Opportunities and Priorities for EPA, National Research Council, March 1996. Investigations into EPA's contracting policies of ORD, Superfund, and other programs include "The Environmental Protection Agency Should Better Manage Its Use of Contractors," GAO/RCED-85-12, Jan. 4, 1985; "EPA: Contract Management," Hearings before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, March 4,19, and July 8,1992, Serial No. 102-138; "The EPA Laboratory Structure," Hearing before the House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Technology, Environment, and Aviation, June 23, 1994; and "Getting the Job Done, The Use of Intramural and Extramural Resources at the U.S. EPA," National Academy of Public Administration, November 1994.
ORD evaluations include Future Risk: Research Strategies for the 1990s, U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board, 1988; Reducing Risks: Setting Priorities and Strategies for Environmental Protection, U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board, 1990; Safeguarding the Future: Credible Science, Credible Decisions, Report of the Expert Panel on the Role of Science at EPA, EPA, 1992; Environmental Research and Development: Strengthen the Federal Infrastructure, Carnegie Commission, 1992; Research to Protect, Restore, and Manage the Environment, National Research Council, 1993; Assessment of the Scientific and Technical Laboratories and Facilities of the U.S. EPA, MITRE Corp., May 1994; An SAB Report: Review of the MITRE Corp. Draft Report on the EPA Laboratory Study, U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board, Research Strategy Advisory Council, May 1994; A Review, Evaluation and Critique of a Study of EPA Laboratories by the References MITRE Corporation and Additional Commentary on EPA Sci- (1) Johnson, J. Environ Set Technol. 1996, 30, 282A. ence and Technology Programs, National Academy of Pub- (2) Newman, A. Environ Sci. Technol. 1995, 29, 126A-129A. lic Administration, June 1994; Setting Priorities, Getting Re- (3) Office of Research and Development Workforce '91 .U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Washington, DC, 1991. sults: A New Direction for EPA, National Academy of Public Administration, April 1995; Interim Report of the Committee on Research and Peer Review in EPA, National ReJeff Johnson is an associate editor on the Washington search Council, March 1995; and Interim Report of the Comstaff of ES&T. VOL. 30, NO. 11, 1996/ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS • 4 9 7 A
