"‘Our budget situation is such that we’re at real risk of years-long delays,’ one official warns".
"They were locked out. Experts tasked with assessing how hundreds of new chemicals may harm human health couldn’t access the data they needed to do their work.
The issue wasn’t chemical manufacturers holding back information. Instead, part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s computer system used to store sensitive data provided by companies went down — and the agency didn’t have the IT support to fix it quickly.
“No one could get into it for just about two weeks in October,” said Michal Freedhoff, head of the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, in a recent phone interview. “That happens fairly regularly.”
After years of neglect, President Biden promised to reinvigorate the EPA as part of his push to tackle climate change and ease the pollution burden placed on poor and minority communities. But the agency’s budgetary woes are preventing the nation’s top pollution regulator from doing its job, in ways large and small."
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