The Senate Appropriations Committee has ordered the EPA to reopen all their closed libraries.
The $2 million dollars cut by the Bush Administration will be made available again in the 2008 Interior Appropriations bill and used to “restore the network of EPA libraries recently closed or consolidated by the administration.”
The bill now heads to the full Senate so, if you haven’t already, this is a good time to contact your Senator and urge them to support the bill. It would then need to go to the House to find support in a similar bill since this funding was not included in their Interior Appropriations bill.
The passage of the bill would be a well deserved victory over the Bush administration who cut the money out of the 2007 EPA budget purely on political grounds and clearly influenced by special interests. For how in our right minds can we destroy some of the main repositories of information on our environment unless we are trying to protect the people killing it.
ALA dispatch
List of Open Access posts on the issue
Previous Book Patrol posts on the EPA Library closures