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Science board frustrated by US EPA's lack of communication

During the first meeting of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Science Advisory Board under Administrator Scott Pruitt, scientists repeatedly asked the agency to respond to their requests for information to aid their review of the science underpinning regulatory actions.

Many of the scientists attending the initial day of the two-day Science Advisory Board, or SAB, meeting that began May 31 expressed frustration that the EPA has not responded to requests for information on a number of key policies. They also said the lack of communication is not a new phenomenon and has been experienced across administrations.

Alison Cullen, an SAB member and professor with the University of Washington who led a working group analyzing the EPA's recent regulatory agenda, said her group asked the EPA for information regarding the science behind a proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan before it was released. Cullen said the group received no response even though the EPA forwarded the proposal to the White House's Office of Management and Budget for review.

The proposal was issued in October 2017, and a final version is slated to be released in December, according to the EPA's regulatory agenda released in May.

Cullen said the working group found that the EPA's proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan lacked information, but given the directional change the repeal takes from the agency's previous assumptions about power plants, the group assumed the EPA must be relying on new science. Specifically, Cullen said the repeal document suggested the EPA has "novel" science regarding available control measures for carbon pollution from power plants. The board assumed the same about an EPA plan to review greenhouse gas emissions measures for new, modified and reconstructed power plants, a sister rule to the Clean Power Plan.

SAB Chair Michael Honeycutt, director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's Toxicology Division, said the EPA's failure to provide key information is a common theme and asked an agency representative to speak to the lack of communication.

Kevin Culligan, an associate division director in the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation who worked on the Clean Power Plan and related regulations, insisted that new science was not used for either agency action, and much of the information in the EPA's regulatory proposals is strictly policy and therefore outside the purview of the science advisory boards.

Cullen also urged the EPA to describe the agency's regulations properly when proposing them to ensure the SAB has all the information it needs to determine if the regulations need be reviewed in the first place. She specifically requested that the EPA include the details of any peer reviews and note if a regulatory action was based on any new science.

The board then debated if it should defer deciding whether to review the Clean Power Plan and sister rule repeal proposals until after the EPA provides the requested information. After much discussion, a solid majority voted in favor of not waiting and moving forward with the reviews.

"We mean something when we say defer. We mean there isn't information to have been reviewed. There is information to be reviewed here. We were not provided with it. That's a very different case," said Jeanne VanBriesen, an SAB member and Carnegie Mellon University professor. "Having a workgroup that looks at these may light a fire under the people who have that information to share."

The discussion about communication between the SAB and the EPA came several weeks after the working group criticized the EPA for issuing a controversial science transparency rule without notifying the board or including its members in the development of the policy. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the meeting, Honeycutt said he did not see that omission as a problem.

"Not really, I mean EPA does what they do," Honeycutt said, adding that even though he has only been chair of the committee for a short time, he has so far "had good feedback" from the EPA, and the SAB encourages the agency to bring matters to them "as early as practical."

During the May 31 meeting, the board also unanimously agreed to review the science transparency proposal.

In a statement, an EPA spokesman said the agency would work with SAB members to address their concerns once the final correspondence from the meeting is submitted.