grist.org · 245 days ago

The Fight for the Heart of the Us Environmental Protection Agency

When Montana Krukowski signed a letter calling out the dismantling of the EPA's scientific mission, he was fired within weeks - as were roughly a dozen other employees who put their names alongside his. What this story reveals is something quieter than political conflict: the portrait of people who chose, at real personal cost, to say that clean water for tribal communities and lead-free blood in children's veins are worth protecting out loud. Ted Yackulic, 69 years old with a 36-year career behind him, could retire, but says he'd "like to see the Lower Duwamish work through" - a sentence that carries the full weight of what public service, at its best, actually means. Hundreds of former EPA employees are now offering pro bono expertise to vulnerable communities, salvaging datasets, fighting in court, and planning for the day when the agency might be rebuilt - not out of certainty that it will happen, but out of the conviction that the knowledge must be kept alive until it can. As one union president put it, these people "want to survive this" - and in that survival, they are quietly holding open a door that others tried to close.