The Trump administration is proceeding with the first wave of layoffs at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), mainly centered around environmental justice program workers.
Assistant Deputy Administrator Travis Voyles wrote in an internal memo on Monday that the EPA will begin cutting the rest of its environmental justice staff on July 31, according to a notice reviewed by Daily Caller News Foundation.
“This action is necessary to align our workforce with the Agency’s current and future needs and to ensure the efficient and effective operation of our programs,” Voyles wrote in the memo. The notice advises staffers in the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights as well as those in the Regional Environmental Justice Divisions of the EPA’s intent to carry out a “reduction in force.”
Voyles’ notice did not specify how many employees would be cut.
“With this action, EPA is delivering organizational improvements to the personnel structure that will directly benefit the American people and better advance the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment,” Voyles continued in the notice.
“Today, EPA notified diversity, equity, and inclusion and environmental justice employees that EPA will be conducting a Reduction in Force in accordance with the Office of Personnel Management Workforce Reshaping Handbook and federal regulations governing RIF procedures,” a spokesperson from the EPA told the DCNF. “The agency also notified certain statutory and mission essential employees that they are being reassigned to other offices through the “transfer of function” procedure also outlined in OPM’s Handbook and federal regulations.”
Editor’s note: this article has been updated to add a quote from an EPA spokesperson.
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