WP: Budget Cut Would Shutter EPA Libraries

Budget Cut Would Shutter EPA Libraries
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 15, 2006; Page A15

Proposed budget cuts could cripple a nationwide system of Environmental Protection Agency libraries that government researchers and others depend on for hard-to-find technical information, library advocates say.

The $2 million cut sought by the White House would reduce the 35-year-old EPA Library Network's budget by 80 percent and force many of its 10 regional libraries to close, according to the advocates and internal agency documents.

That, in turn, would dramatically reduce access to certain EPA reports, guidance and technical documents that are used by the agency's scientific and enforcement staff as well as private businesses and citizens, they say.

"They are moving ahead very quickly on very substantive cuts to their library program," said Patrice McDermott, deputy director of the American Library Association's Office of Government Relations. "They really don't have a good plan for continuing to provide access for the public, and even their own researchers and scientists, to the information."

EPA spokeswoman Jennifer Wood said it was "premature" to talk of mass closings among the regional libraries, although the one in Chicago already is shutting down. Wood said that 15 other EPA libraries, many of them attached to federal laboratories, will not be affected by the budget cuts....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/14/AR2006051400772.html

Starve libraries so that information they don't want the public to have access to for "terror" reasons (and I'm sure many, many others) remains out of reach.

Edit: Hmm, seems it won't be just the public, but also much of the government itself. Cute...

bad for people, animals, and plants.

"used by the agency's scientific and enforcement staff as well as private businesses and citizens"

Another casualty in the Republican war on science.