Scientists Quit EPA Advisory Board In Protest

WASHINGTON — Two scientists have resigned from an Environmental Protection Agency advisory board to protest agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s removal of their colleagues. Carlos Martín, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, and Peter B. Meyer, president of the E.P. Systems Group, a Pennsylvania-based environmental analysis firm, said in a letter to EPA staff on Friday that it was “with certain regret and concern — and in protest” that they step down from a Board of Scientific Counselors subcommittee on sustainable and healthy communities. Martín posted the resignation letter to Twitter on Friday morning.  Pruitt this week dismissed half of the members of EPA’s 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors, which advises the agency’s Office of Research and Development on scientific research programs. Among those Pruitt booted were subcommittee co-chairs Courtney Flint and Robert Richardson, who Martín and Meyer described as “leading scholars.” Their removal came as a “shock” and “suggests that our collective knowledge is not valued by the current EPA administrators,” Martín and Meyer wrote. “Like so many of our colleagues in the broader research community, we have deep concerns about the leadership at EPA and its continued obfuscation of scientific evide...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news