The president's budget proposal, which was released earlier this month, slashes the EPA Library Network's budget by a whopping 80 percent from 2006 funding levels, dropping the library budget from $2.5 million to $500,000. These funding cuts are part of a larger package of EPA budget cuts that would slash $300 million, or 5 percent, from the agency's 2006 funding levels.
EPA's Headquarter and Regional libraries handle more than 134,000 research requests from EPA scientific and enforcement staff each year, according to a report by an EPA Workgroup that analyzes how the agency might cope with the proposed library budget cuts. These services, according to the report, "are extremely important, perhaps essential, in helping EPA staff perform the Agency's mission."
According to EPA library staff, the cuts would eliminate the irreplaceable service of the Online Library System (OLS) electronic catalogue, which is operated out of EPA's headquarters library. The OLS serves as the EPA library network's card catalogue, without which EPA's libraries would not be able to locate any of their individual holdings. EPA staff and the public would thus be left without useful access to the agency's vast storehouse of information, as well as 50,000 documents not available anywhere else.
Cuts to EPA's regional libraries could affect citizen access to Offsite Consequence Analysis (OCA) Reading Rooms. OCA Reading Rooms provide the only public access to information on what could go wrong in "worst-case" chemical accidents at thousands of facilities around the country that store large quantities of ultra-hazardous chemicals. Public access to this information has helped spur improvements in industrial process and reduce risks faced by fence-line communities.
The president's proposed budget will be eventually parsed out into several appropriation bills, which will be debated by the appropriate congressional committees. The Interior Subcommittees of the Appropriations Committees, in the House and Senate, have jurisdiction over EPA's budget items. The subcommittees will likely debate EPA's budget items sometime in May or June. It is at this point that legislators can make changes and amendments to the budget proposals. OMB Watch budget policy analyst Adam Hughes predicts that Congress will make many changes to the president's budget, calling it "overall, unrealistic." However, if the president's proposed EPA cuts make it through the budget process unchanged, EPA staff and the public will likely have much less access to EPA's library materials and the public health and safety information they contain.