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scientists to stay within the agency. It is not always salary. It is 

 equipment, facilities, opportunity to publish, opportunity to interact 

 with fellow scientists — and I will go as far as to say that if I had 

 to hire a scientist who was only interested in salary, I would prob- 

 ably be making a poor choice. 



Senator Reid. Dr. Glaze, would you add anything? 



Dr. Glaze. Just to reinforce the things that Dr. Ford has said. 



One of the real problems, in my opinion, with the EPA labora- 

 tories and the morale of the staff is — at least from the information 

 I have gleaned from talking to them personally — that they are 

 overwhelmed with paperwork. They are supervising contractors; 

 they are supervising external people; they are filling out pieces of 

 paper for transfer of this sample from one place to the other; they 

 are dealing with a tax by the Inspector General; they are covering 

 themselves in so many ways in the pursuit of what someone has 

 defined as their job that they don't have time to do research. 



This is demoralizing for people who went into the profession hop- 

 ing that they would make accomplishments in the area of research. 



Mr. DeGennaro. Mr. Chairman, I would note that the EPA 

 Science Advisory Board, in its review of this year's President's 

 budget request made a similar point to what Dr. Glaze and Dr. 

 Ford just made, that they were spending so much time supervising 

 and administering contractors that they don't have time to do their 

 own scientific work. 



Senator Reid. What should we do about this? 



Mr. DeGennaro. I think the separate track makes a lot of sense. 



Senator Reid. The Mitre Corporation recently published a report 

 critical of EPA's research laboratories. We talked about that a little 

 earlier in the hearing. 



What are the merits of the criticisms raised by the report and 

 what should be done by the agency to respond? 



Dr. Glaze, do you have a comment? 



Dr. Glaze. I think the Mitre report — by the way, I have not read 

 it in detail, I have only read about it — I think it goes in the appro- 

 priate direction, asking for efficiency. Some people are saying that 

 the Mitre report may simply be shuffling parts and not really get- 

 ting at the core issues, some of which I think have been raised here 

 today. 



The concept of megalabs which focus on national priorities of re- 

 search is not a bad idea. I do think that one is concerned that this 

 will be used only as a way to cut personnel. That is to say, Are we 

 really trying to make the research establishment much more effec- 

 tive? Or are we simply looking for ways in which to effect cost cuts? 



I think it is the former. I think there is a real effort on the part 

 of EPA to reorganize to become more effective. But frankly I would 

 like to see some structural changes, as we have discussed today, 

 within the agency more than I would like to see the reshuffling. 



Senator Reid. Section 19 of this legislation requires the Adminis- 

 trator of EPA to identify at least 10 environmental research issues 

 that present the greatest degree of risk and have significant sci- 

 entific uncertainties concerning their environmental assessment 

 risk assessment. 



If you, Dr. Ford, could list two or three items under that, what 

 would you list? 



