Agency agrees to keep research in-house

Following complaints earlier that the US Bureau of Reclamation was transferring research previously performed by staff scientists to contractors at much higher cost, the agency has now promised to keep the work in-house.

In a letter to the National Federation of Federal Employees dated 12 April, Reclamation’s regional director David Murillo backed away from plans to outsource jobs, and he also apologised.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)—an environmental lobby group comprising a national alliance of local, state and federal scientists, law enforcement officers, land managers and others—had specifically expressed concern that Reclamation’s Klamath Basin Area Office has increasingly contracted out work that used to be carried out by in-house scientists at its Water Quality unit.