----------------------
*Editorial: EPA invites doubts with library closings*

Most Americans, even most American scientists, will never have cause 
to visit one of the regional technical libraries maintained by the 
Environmental Protection Agency. But to environmental scientists in 
Minnesota or any of 14 other states, working inside or outside EPA, 
the pending shutdown of these repositories will be a serious blow.

The general public, too, should be concerned about what this means for
EPA accountability, which has come under repeated challenge in recent 
years -- most notably over unduly rosy postdisaster assessments in 
lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks, and in New Orleans after last 
year's hurricanes.

And perhaps every taxpaying citizen should be offended by the way in 
which this action was taken -- essentially, by EPA officials 
anticipating a $2 million budget cut for fiscal 2007 that has been 
proposed by the White House but not yet considered by Congress, which 
alone has the authority to appropriate or withhold federal funds.
Certainly the relevant congressional committees should object.

Minnesota is served by the regional library in Chicago, scheduled to 
close at the end of September along with those in Kansas City and 
Dallas; general-public access may be ended sooner. Researchers are 
welcome to travel to other EPA libraries, but operating schedules are 
being reduced.

Or they can try looking up what they need on the Internet, although of
course the EPA is behind in digitizing its collections; lots of 
documents are going into boxes for processing, and the official 
estimate is that they may be available again in six to nine months.
Assuming no more budget cuts, one supposes.

The changes in library operations have been challenged by EPA 
scientists and also by EPA librarians, whose union has called the 
closures "Orwellian." That would seem to suggest that a sinister 
interest in information control is at least as much a motivation as 
budget factors for these closures.

But for now this seems to be just another exercise in arrogance by an 
agency in an executive branch that seems too often to relish it.

Certainly EPA invites skepticism by choosing, in a period when its 
performance is under scrutiny and its credibility shakier than usual, 
to make public resources more cumbersome to use -- and its own record 
more difficult to review.

>>=======From http://www.startribune.com/561/story/675376.html

Linda Scarth
[log in to unmask]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
To view the Sierra Club List Terms & Conditions, see:
 http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/terms.asp