October 5, 2018
Washington, D.C.
Anne Hallam walked purposefully through the call center of the Environmental Community Access Hotline, a division of the EPA. She had just returned from a managers’ meeting and was replaying the uncomfortable commentary in her mind. She strode past the twelve employees in her section. They were at their stations, headsets on, typing as they took calls from the hotlines. This center was one of twenty hotlines that could be accessed by anyone. Some of the lines had clear titles such as Asbestos Hotline, Drinking Water Hotline, or Lead Information Hotline. The Environmental Justice Hotline, however, welcomed calls from anyone concerned about an environmental threat to their community. There was never a dull day.
Anne cast a glance at Susan. Her workstation was a mess, as usual. Sensing that she was being observed, Susan kicked her overflowing tote bag under the desk.
Anne continued to her office and sat at her gunmetal gray, government-issued desk from the 1970s. A dinosaur, just like Anne. At seventy-three, she was one of the longest serving EPA employees. She had joined in 1978, only eight years after the agency was established by Richard Nixon. She recalled the enthusiasm and sense of purpose they all had. An agency to protect the environment! The original staff of 5,000 had swelled to 17,000.
Anne had been a career employee since the Carter administration and was now on her seventh president. She lost count of the number of agency directors who came and went. It had been a wild ride. With her experience in multiple divisions, it was no accident that she landed at the Environmental Justice Hotline. It was her job to sift through the call reports and decide what merited further investigation. She relied on her staff’s attention to detail, experience, and sixth sense to enable her to do her job.
Anne could tell that Susan had a story to tell when she came into her office. Despite her unruly workstation, Susan was among the best in the department. Anne saw her as a potential successor. But then again, she had no plans to retire.
“This is a strange one,” Susan started. “I had two calls today about Gulf National Lab. It’s Region 6.”
Anne accessed her memory bank. Texas Gulf Coast. Lots of calls from community members, folks in the tourist trade, and fishermen had poured in before the opening of the BSL4 on that hurricane prone island. She had fielded many not-in-my-backyard concerns about all sorts of facilities—nuclear power plants, strip mines, and chemical waste dumps. But the uproar on Galveston Island calmed down when the Gulf National Laboratory withstood Hurricane Ike in 2008.
Anne was up and pacing behind her desk at this point. “Go on, Susan.”
“The first call came from Dr. Bertram Springer. He’s a microbiologist at the University of Oklahoma and a surveyor for the U.S. Biosafety Association.”
“U.S. Biosafety Association,” Anne repeated as she made a quick turn towards the opposite wall.
Susan, like all the hotline employees, was familiar with Anne’s habit of pacing through a report. It meant she was listening.
Susan continued. “Dr. Springer said he was afraid research was being suppressed. Research related to climate change. In this case, the emergence of a disease. Let me check my notes. Dengue. A new variant. It’s transmitted by mosquitoes. The warmer it gets, the further north these mosquitoes invade and transmit the disease. This variant of dengue is killing people in South Texas.”
Anne drew in a deep breath. God that hits a nerve.
“What’s this about a second call?” Anne asked.
“So, I’m on Region 6 today. A woman called and said she was concerned about research being destroyed at the same laboratory. She said it was related to that disease, dengue. Then, and this is where it gets weird, she said she thought it was related to the murder of a researcher!”
“Did she give her name?”
“The caller? No. But she said the researcher who was murdered was Gennifer Drake, MD, PhD.”
“Thank you, Susan. Good work. Drop off your report when you have it completed. Put these two calls on the top of the list. I’m going to need to put this in front of someone upstairs.”
The two women exchanged meaningful looks before Susan left the office. Since the election of the current president, the EPA’s mission seemed to have gone into reverse. The agency was actually cheering for repeal of regulations on polluting industries. The automakers had a green light to produce more gas guzzling, hydrocarbon spewing SUVs. Despite being economically nonviable, new coal powered electrical plants were in the works. Today’s managers meeting had been about rolling out a retraining module for the call center employees. The EPA Director had proposed a policy which required calls from all twenty hotlines that related to climate change be sent to a “tactical group” made up of new hires. Anne and her fellow career employees knew what that meant. In her four decades, Anne had never seen anything like it.
Sure, the EPA staff grumbled through some administrations. But flat-out denial of scientific facts was another thing. In his last job, the director described himself as a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda. He was appointed by a president who said that global warming was created by the Chinese. If even half the stories about the director were true, he should have been fired months ago. First class travel, living in a lobbyist’s luxury condo, having his staff keep a secret calendar of his meetings with industry magnates, and a $43,000 soundproof phone booth for his office! And that’s just what’s been in the news. The insiders at EPA knew more.
Anne realized she was ruminating. She knew to whom she could speak frankly, but she would need to proceed carefully. She didn’t want to implicate Susan or any other employee. Anne could take a hit if need be, but these kids needed their jobs.
She didn’t tell Susan that she had also received troubling news from Galveston. The night before, her old friend from college, Nancy Finnerty, had called her out of the blue. Normally, they just exchanged Christmas cards. After catching up on friends and family, Nancy asked if she could give Anne’s contact information to her daughter and her daughter’s friend. One of their classmates from medical school had been murdered and they thought it might be related to her research on climate change and emerging diseases. She worked at Gulf National Laboratory. After Susan’s report, Anne needed to talk to these women.
Where there's smoke, there’s fire. Time to get to work.
She pulled up the EPA organizational chart. Since she worked better on paper, she printed it out on several sheets and taped them together. The jackass director was on top, but she was starting at the bottom. She started circling names. The ones she identified had served in the agency for over twenty years. Since the last election, they had all commiserated with Anne at one time or another regarding the current state of affairs. She smiled when she came to Dave Yardley, Deputy Regional Director of Region 6. She knew she could count on him.
She connected the names in a zigzag line that led to Acting Director, William Oakes. He was a career employee who had to hold his nose to continue in his current post. He was doing his best to mitigate the damage done by the current administration.
Casting a motherly look over her employees, Anne closed her office door and went to work. She felt the rush she got when she was doing something meaningful, something that mattered, something morally right.