EPA delays plans to close Houston lab, relocate employees amid nationwide consolidation

The Environmental Protection Agency is delaying plans to close a lab in Houston after shuttering other facilities. The EPA at first planned to relocate staff to another facility 400 miles away in Ada, Oklahoma, no later than 2023. Now the agency is pushing those plans back to 2027, citing higher costs than planned to consolidate its footprint. The EPA closed other regional labs over the past few years including in California, Michigan and Nevada. For more on this update, Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman spoke with the president of AFGE Local 1003 Justin Chen on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.