Duluth EPA lab employees on leave after signing dissent letter

DULUTH – The Environmental Protection Agency put at least six employees of its Duluth lab on leave recently after they signed a letter of dissent aimed at the Trump administration’s environmental policies.

The letter says the EPA under Administrator Lee Zeldin is “undermining” its own mission and was signed by 620 current and former EPA employees. The names are no longer listed on the website where they were displayed after 139 were placed on leave.

The Duluth News Tribune first reported the news about the employees of the Duluth Great Lakes Toxicology and Ecology Division lab.

The leader of an EPA union said Friday that no work rules or laws were violated in sending the letter.

“These employees exercised their First Amendment rights and their rights to whistleblowing by sending this letter to Lee Zeldin, their boss,” said Nicole Cantello, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 704.

She said employees are on leave pending an investigation, but the union has no information on what’s being investigated, with no communication from the EPA about it.

“We believe this is retaliation,” Cantello said.

An EPA spokesperson said in a statement that the agency has “a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November.”

The employee letter lays out five concerns about the administration, which it says is “recklessly undermining the EPA mission.”

Those concerns are: “Undermining public trust”; “Ignoring scientific consensus to benefit polluters”; “Reversing EPA’s progress in America’s most vulnerable communities”; “Dismantling the Office of Research and Development”; and “Promoting a culture of fear, forcing staff to choose between their livelihood and well-being.”

Several Democrats from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, who oppose the move to place the workers on leave, sent a letter to Zeldin directing the agency head to “stop abusing” his office and return the employees to their roles.

“Taking adverse actions against employees for making a protected disclosure ... in a manner that deters others from coming forward is a textbook violation of the Whistleblower Protection Act,” wrote U.S. Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey and Paul Tonko and Yvette Clarke of New York.

They wrote that they’d ask the EPA’s inspector general to investigate.

No lab layoffs have been announced, Cantello said, but the Supreme Court this week cleared the way for Trump’s plans to downsize the federal workforce despite warnings that critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be out of their jobs.

The closure of the lab, which employs more than 170, would jeopardize critical freshwater fish, recreation and drinking water research, workers have said.

The Trump administration has proposed closing the lab as part of shutting down the EPA Office of Research and Development.

Duluth residents held a large rally in support of the lab in March. A 2018 University of Minnesota Duluth study found the lab’s economic impact to the region then was nearly $24 million annually, considering employee spending.