EPA Begins Staff Furloughs as Government Shutdown Continues

Furloughs related to the federal government shutdown started hitting EPA employees nine days after the lapse in appropriations began, according to an agency letter reviewed by Bloomberg Law.

Previously, Environmental Protection Agency employees had been reporting to work, but staffers said they couldn’t get information from supervisors about how long that status would continue. In other shutdowns, the employee union was told how much carryover funding the EPA had and when they could expect to be furloughed.

The agency in the letter said EPA could no longer incur further financial obligations beyond exempted activities without funding from Congress and was placing an unspecified number of EPA employees in furlough status effective Oct. 9.

“EPA is operating according to our lapse plan,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement Thursday.

Under that plan, released before the Oct. 1 shutdown, 828 staffers would be retained who are financed by a resource other than annual appropriations, along with 597 whose work is considered necessary to protect life and property, 24 whose work is expressly authorized by law, 284 whose work is “necessarily implied” by law, and one deemed necessary to execute the president’s constitutional duties and powers. That leaves around 15,000 employees who would be furloughed.

In several regions, still-employed environmental justice staff are among those furloughed, according to one agency staffer who declined to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak to the press.

Other affected offices include the EPA’s enforcement, air and radiation, and chemicals divisions, the staffer said.

The notice is effective through Nov. 8.

The Senate has held several unsuccessful votes to end the shutdown, with the latest scheduled for Thursday.