As the director of the Buildings Technology Services Division at the General Services Administration’s Office of IT, Sandy Shadchehr said there has been a surge in desire for interconnected building systems over the past decade. In her office’s case, presidential mandates to integrate buildings for more, and more efficient data, are reinforcing the trend to migrate systems to the network.

“There’s a lot of IP-enabled devices. And with that, obviously, with the connectivity, with all those benefits that you get from connectivity, there comes the risk. And what is happening these days, back to your question is cyber, cyber, cyber,” she said on Federal Monthly Insights — IoT Security.

In the days of “standalone mode,” building systems were meant to last 20 or so years, and the risk levels were comparably low because those systems were not connected. Today, when system components are now IT components, the risk if greater, she said. But, interconnectivity can have preventative measures that bring on cost benefits.

“Once you have the systems interconnected and they communicate with each other, then you can actually have a dashboard that you can have in an entire building in a nice console that you’re looking at and you can start doing predictive analysis so that you’re not just waiting until system breaks down,” she said on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin. “You can actually have a way of systems sending you notification: This thing doesn’t sound like this, this piece of equipment is not working quite right.”

That can mean fewer people needed in the building at all times, as well as greater energy efficiency, she said. But it also raises questions around ownership of the data on those systems. If something is hacked, Shadchehr said, traditionally that was a problem for IT or the singular security person. She said GSA changed its stance and determined that everyone has a role in solving cybersecurity weaknesses, from the Public Buildings Service to the chief information officer, to the building manager, the operational management maintenance person, and the service center director.

Examples of cyber dangers to building systems include people obtaining data about the operations to predict when personnel are working, to disrupt operations by hacking into a building. GSA’s portfolio of critical buildings for the federal government’s more sensitive agencies are top of mind, and are why constant vigilance is required, she said.

“Another one is that there can be a disruption of operations. There could be a very sensitive court proceeding going on and somebody can turn the lights on and off, and that can disrupt, or it can make a building very hot in the middle of July in Arizona, or in Texas,” she said. “They can make it unbearable to be in the building or incredibly cold, and the pipes get burst … so many things, so many scenarios that can happen, absolutely.”

Part of the predictive analytics of buildings systems Shadchehr described comes from occupancy and environmental sensors. The former can be things like thermostats and motion-detected room lights. COVID-19 was a game changer for these, as agencies needed to spread out their building occupancy for social distancing. At GSA headquarters in Washington, D.C., they used sensors to determine where to place people throughout the building. It is not just cameras but also devices using wifi or Bluetooth can alert a censor when they enter the building. The Office of IT is tapping into the Internet of Things to see what works and what does not compromise security or privacy.

“We’ve done a few different pilots to see what works better for us. And we have buildings and all shapes and sizes and color so it’s we have to probably try different types of things for different types of buildings that we have,” Shadchehr said.

Sensors and networks produce data, and the “mad rush” of IoT inspired a similar dash to collect that data. Just because GSA is collecting that data does not mean it will “just talk with each other,” she said. The Office of IT wants to work closely with the Office of Design and Construction to ensure the IT backbone is installed in new construction to be an afterthought.

“It’s a lot easier to put it in place or to build it correctly, as you’re building the building, instead of going back and retroactively try to fit that. We’ve been in that scenario many times, and it’s a lot more costly, a lot more time consuming to basically fit a square peg in a round hole,” she said.

The General Services Administration told lawmakers in a phone briefing Friday that sites in Greenbelt and Landover, Maryland, and Springfield, Virginia continue to meet the agency’s mission needs.

The FBI has been working with GSA, as the federal government’s landlord, on plans for a new consolidated headquarters for nearly two decades.

House lawmakers, meanwhile, have recently proposed the first new tranche of money for a suburban FBI headquarters in the early stages of planning for fiscal 2023 appropriations.

The Biden administration, in its FY 2023 budget request, revisited plans under previous administrations to relocate the FBI headquarters to the D.C. suburbs.

Congress repeatedly stonewalled funding requests from the Trump administration to build a new FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., on the site of the current J. Edgar Hoover building.

The Maryland and Virginia congressional delegations are both vying for the new FBI headquarters to be built in their state.

Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) Ben Cardin (D-Md.), House Majority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) urged GSA in a statement Friday to select a final headquarters location this fall.

“Today’s GSA finding that the two Maryland FBI campus sites remain viable options to meet the needs of the Bureau is another positive step towards our goal of securing a new, consolidated headquarters,” the lawmakers wrote.

“For far too long, the FBI workforce has remained in a building that does not meet their security or operational needs. That’s why we will keep pushing for the new headquarters, and we are confident that the Maryland sites in Greenbelt and Landover are the best locations,” they added.

Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) praised GSA’s determination that the Springfield site remains “a viable and competitive location for the new FBI headquarters.”

“This is an important milestone in the site selection process, and we look forward to continuing to work with the Administration to bring an FBI headquarters that best supports the mission of the FBI, to Northern Virginia,” the lawmakers wrote.

The House Appropriations Committee, in its draft financial services and general government spending bill for FY 2023, released Wednesday, would give GSA $500 million to build a new FBI headquarters.

Congress, as part of the fiscal 2022 omnibus spending bill, requested a briefing from the FBI and GSA on the viability of relocating the headquarters to one of the three potential sites. 

The FY 2023 spending bill also includes language that authorizes the administration to use previously appropriated funds to construct a consolidated FBI headquarters at one of the suburban sites.

Hoyer and Brown joined Reps. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), John Sarbanes (D-Md.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and David Trone (D-Md.) saying in a statement that the funding contained in the spending bill would “ensure that the Biden Administration has the resources it needs once it selects a site to move forward with construction of the new headquarters this fall.”

“The FBI will soon have a headquarters that meets its security requirements and allows it to carry out its vital national security mission,” the lawmakers said in a statement.

USPS announced Wednesday that it would soon publish a Notice of Intent that will supplement the Final Environmental Impact Statement for its next-generation delivery vehicle (NGDV) fleet.

USPS said that update will reflect its plans to consolidate its delivery facilities across the country, which may justify the agency purchasing more electric vehicles as part of its next-generation fleet.

“Delivery network and related route refinements may alter the appropriate mix of vehicles to be procured under the NGDV contract,” the agency said Wednesday.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, speaking at the National Postal Forum in Phoenix last month, said USPS will consolidate delivery units into Sort and Delivery Centers, with enough space, docks and mail processing equipment to operate more efficiently than its current infrastructure.

DeJoy, speaking Thursday at a Reuters event on supply chain execution in Chicago, elaborated on the agency’s consolidation plans.

“We are consolidating our routes. Our routes, which normally might have 20, 24 carriers and reach 40,000 people, will now have 300, 400 carriers and reach 600,000 people,” DeJoy said.

USPS, he added, operates 220,000 routes that deliver to 160 million addresses six days a week.

DeJoy said this consolidation would add more miles to most delivery routes, and that longer routes would result in a better cost analysis for electric vehicles.

Letter carriers affected by this consolidation would drive more miles out to their delivery stops, and more miles to return to the Sort and Delivery Centers.

DeJoy said the plan would also streamline the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, as it would reduce the number of facilities where charging stations are needed.

“The big, big risk in this is the infrastructure to accommodate for this. Well, we’re going to use a lot of our old plants and existing plants. We have hundreds and hundreds of them around the country. They have good amperage, they’re industrial facilities, and they can accept the infrastructure that’s necessary,” DeJoy said.

USPS delivery vehicles currently operate from almost 19,000 delivery units around the country.

DeJoy said he spoke with members of Congress yesterday before USPS announced it would update its environmental impact statement.

“I need to get vehicles, and we’ll explore electric vehicles as it makes financial sense,” he said. “There will be a lot of politicians saying they forced us into this. Not so! This is going to be an ongoing financial analysis, and where it applies and where we can accommodate, we’re going to do it, just like I said from the beginning.”

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), in a hearing last month, called on USPS to increase the number of electric vehicles that it purchases, and has requested documents from USPS on its fleet acquisition plans. 

Maloney said in a statement Wednesday that she was pleased by the USPS announcement to update its environmental impact statement.

“The Postal Service’s original EIS was deeply flawed, which is why I have been urging the Postal Service to issue a new EIS for months. Neither the Postal Service nor the American people can afford a gas-guzzling postal fleet that will damage our environment when clean, electric vehicles are an option,” Maloney said.

Maloney said she still has many questions about USPS plans to consolidate facilities and “will be monitoring this closely to ensure that mail is delivered on time as the American people expect and deserve.”

Joe Britton, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, said USPS still plans on “locking in decades of reliance on gas-powered trucks” as part of its next-generation fleet.

“We saw USPS ignore the crucial cost savings and societal benefits that electrification would bring to its delivery service and the public, using an error-ridden environmental analysis to justify procuring an overwhelmingly gas-powered fleet that will leave Americans worse off,” Britton said.

As part of this consolidation, DeJoy said USPS will close annexes around the country “that add cost, transportation and foster inefficient and ad-hoc operations.”

Annexes are USPS facilities separate from post offices used for mail delivery functions, but may not offer full retail services to customers. USPS said the consolidation will not change its retail presence.

DeJoy said these changes to the USPS network and local operations will take years to accomplish, but said each plant and delivery unit included in this overhaul “will provide immediate, systemwide benefits.”

To get USPS to break even starting in 2024, after 15 years of net financial losses, DeJoy said USPS needs to cut costs and increase revenue.

But with continued declines in first-class mail, the most profitable product for USPS, DeJoy said the agency is looking to expand its package business.

“Mail volume has continued to go down, so I have to supplement it with something. Home delivery is expected to go up somewhere between 4% and 8%. We’re going to capitalize on our piece of that,” he said.

To become a bigger player in the competitive package business, DeJoy said large regional plants, like one a million-square-foot facility being built in Atlanta, will help USPS reach more customers.

“You can enter a product into that plant and hit 5 million people next-day. And when we consolidate our delivery units, you can enter into our delivery units, like a lot of big players do, and instead of reaching, you know, 40,000 people, you can reach 750,000 people — next-day, if you do it in the afternoon, maybe same-day,” DeJoy said.

The network transformation initiative will impact nearly 500 network mail processing locations, 1,000 transfer hubs and 100,000 carrier routes. It will also impact 10,000 delivery units, which USPS defines as post offices, stations, branches or carrier annexes that handle mail delivery functions.

USPS announced in March it spent nearly $3 billion on 50,000 next-generation vehicles as part of its initial order to the vendor Oshkosh Defense. More than 10,000 vehicles as part of that initial order are electric vehicles — double its previous estimate.

USPS expects electric vehicles will make up at least 10% of its next-generation fleet, but remains open to purchasing more electric vehicles if its finances improve, or if Congress authorizes funding to support its acquisition.

USPS officials recently told the House Oversight and Reform Committee the agency was able to purchase more electric vehicles than previously expected because of the rising cost of gasoline, as well as long-term savings the agency is counting on, now that Congress has passed the first major piece of postal reform legislation in 15 years.

USPS is facing three separate lawsuits over its plans to purchase mostly gas-powered vehicles as part of its next-generation fleet.

The lawsuits argue USPS set the estimated cost for electric vehicles unrealistically high as part of its environmental impact statement but placed a low bar for the future price of gasoline.

USPS expects next-generation vehicles, including electric vehicles, will first appear on routes in late 2023.

USPS began its search for replacement vehicles in 2015. Next-generation delivery vehicles will have air conditioning and heating and improved ergonomics.

The vehicles will also have 360-degree cameras, advanced braking and traction control, airbags, and a front-and rear-collision avoidance system that includes visual, audio warning, and automatic braking.

The vehicles will also have increased cargo capacity to maximize efficiency and better accommodate higher mail and package volumes.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is still planning to reshape its real estate footprint across the country, even if a commission meant to refine these changes doesn’t come into focus.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough told reporters Wednesday that he’s concerned the Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) Commission, which doesn’t have any Senate-confirmed members yet, won’t have enough time to review the agency’s plan to close some medical facilities and build others.

“If the commissioners are not confirmed, then we’ll continue to work this,” McDonough said.

President Joe Biden submitted eight AIR Commission nominees to the Senate in March, but the Senate VA Committee has not yet held a confirmation hearing for those nominees.

Federal employee unions, meanwhile, continue to hold rallies and pressure the Senate not to confirm nominees to the AIR Commission.

The VA issued its recommendations to the AIR Commission in March. The agency, under this plan, is looking to close approximately three dozen VA medical centers (VAMCs), but would replace about half of them with new construction. The VA would permanently close the other half, and would shift veteran care to local VA inpatient and outpatient facilities.

VA’s report kicks off a yearlong process of the commission reviewing the recommendations, holding public hearings and submitting its own recommendations to Congress and Biden by the end of January 2023.

Biden has until Feb. 15, 2023, to approve the AIR Commission’s final recommendations. If he doesn’t submit his approval to Congress before March 30, 2023, the process for modernizing and realigning VA’s facilities under the 2018 MISSION Act ends.

But if the AIR Commission process doesn’t move forward, the MISSION Act still requires the VA to conduct four-year reviews of its real-estate needs in each of its regional health care markets.

McDonough said the VA would be on the verge of starting the next quadrennial review soon.

“If there’s no commissioners, there’s still a statute. We still have these needs, and so we’ll be looking at what our options are there. But we’ll continue to communicate with the workforce, with you all, and with our veterans to make sure that everybody understands precisely the decisions we’re going to make. None of these decisions will be made behind closed doors,” he said.

The American Federation of Government Employees has held several rallies protesting the planned closure of VA medical facilities across the country.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) opposes the closure of two VA medical centers in Manhattan and Brooklyn. House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) also opposes plans to close the VAMC in Manhattan.

McDonough said in March that the changes envisioned in the AIR Commission recommendations, even if the process moves forward as planned, are still “decades away” from being implemented.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley told reporters last month at the union’s annual legislative conference in Washington, D.C. that the AIR Commission was a “closure commission,” comparable to the Base Realignment and Consolidation (BRAC) process at the Defense Department.

“This commission is designed to close VA facilities. That means that veterans would not have the care that they need. That means that the veterans would not have beds to sleep in when they have issues. That is a disgrace for our country,” Kelley said.

AFGE is directing its members to write to their senators, urging them not to confirm members to the AIR Commission.

“If the Commission is not seated by early 2023, its authority dies, and the closures will be halted,” AFGE’s webpage states. “The AIR Commission process is fatally flawed. We need to stop it cold and start a new process that actually focuses on investing in our veterans and their health.”

Meanwhile, McDonough said the VA is scrutinizing the market research that served as the basis for its AIR Commission recommendations.

The market research started in 2019, but doesn’t account for shifts in demand that happened during the COVID-19 pandemic.

McDonough said a VA “red team” and the Government Accountability Office both determined that the market research data was too old, and needs further review.

The VA has set up a process where regional VA officials can provide the AIR Commission with new information about their market needs. McDonough said he’s eager to get updated data from two of his recent VAMC visits in Chillicothe, Ohio and Coatesville, Pennsylvania.

“There will be others who want to provide updated data to the commissioners as well. And so I hope they are confirmed, and can get to work, because we’ve got important information to get to them, as well as important updates to get to them,” he said.

Regardless of the AIR Commission’s next steps, McDonough said the VA continues to spend too much money on maintenance and updates to aged medical facilities.

“We’re in a less strong position to invest in the modernized new facilities that we know we need in so many fast-growing markets,” he said.

‘Intense frustration’ over EHR rollout

The VA, meanwhile, continues to hear concerns about the rollout of its new Electronic Health Record.

McDonough said he heard “specific concerns about safety” regarding the new Cerner Electronic Health Record at a recent visit to the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Washington, but said the rollout remains on track for now.

While McDonough expressed “intense frustration” with a series of EHR outages, he said he would let VA’s patient safety experts across the country assess whether outages and other EHR concerns warrant further delays in the rollout.

“We have patient safety experts here who are engaged in processes across the country, in our facilities in every community, making those assessments. I’m going to take my risk advice from those clinicians, working then with our clinicians on the ground,” he said.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough told the House VA Committee last month about his concerns with the EHR rollout to date, but said the agency will press ahead with the rollout.

“The only reason to do this is if it has clinical value and improves outcomes for our veterans. Our clinicians continue to believe that it will and that it does. If it ever stops being the case, then I’ll come here and I’ll tell you that we’re not going to proceed, but I don’t have a basis on which to make that decision yet,” McDonough told the committee at an April 28 hearing.

The Spokesman-Review first reported Cerner has not kept the EHR in Spokane, Washington online consistently enough to meet a benchmark in its contract with the VA.

As a result, Cerner is giving the VA a credit in exchange for falling short of its “uptime” targets.

The VA inspector general’s office has issued several reports about the EHR rollout, but McDonough said many of these reports have highlighted concerns the agency has already addressed.

“So much of the reporting from the IG to date has been really going back to the start of the effort in Spokane – not all of it – but we want to make sure that we’re staying current, so that we can both account for what’s happened heretofore, but then that we’re making changes,” McDonough said.

VA seeks AI solutions to veteran suicides

The VA is also looking at artificial intelligence and automation tools to address veteran suicides.

Dr. Matthew Miller, VA’s executive director for suicide prevention, said the VA answers 2,000 calls a day, within 10 seconds or less, through its Veterans Crisis Line, and is looking at how technology can help the VA workforce keep up with the incoming call volume.

“We’re looking for ways to advance artificial intelligence to help us to address demand and capacity,” Miller said.

The Federal Communications Commission this summer will enable individuals to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988. Veterans under this new system will be routed to the Veterans Crisis Line.

Miller said the VA expects a “significant increase in demand” once 988 launches nationwide.

The VA is launching an innovation challenge online to help the VA develop new suicide prevention strategies for veterans. Participants in the challenge, called Mission Daybreak, must submit their concept online no later than July 8.

By the end of the challenge, 40 teams will receive awards ranging from $100,000 to $3 million. The VA expects to award $20 million in total through this challenge.

“Mission Daybreak creates a marketplace, if you will, for innovation around suicide prevention. Within this marketplace, we create an idea, we create a vision of what we’re looking for to advance the veteran suicide prevention mission,” Miller said.

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Some members of Congress believe former President Donald Trump had a conflict of interest. As a private citizen, Trump had leased, from the General Services Administration, the old Post Office Pavilion. It became a Trump Hotel. Now Representative Dina Titus (D-Nev.) has introduced a bill that would require the GSA to terminate any lease with an elected federal official or head of an executive agency. She spoke with the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Tell us what your bill would require of the General Services Administration?

Dina Titus: Well, thank you for having me. Just a little bit of background, the GSA owns and oversees about 377 million square feet of space within 9,600 public buildings. In addition to that, they do something they called out leasing. Usually that’s a minor project like a Starbucks in a federal office building. But with the Old Post Office, they out leased the entire building, did a big remake and turned it into the Trump Hotel. Some of us felt like that was a violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. Because that says you’re not supposed to take things from foreign entities or other levels of government. Trump was both the tenant and the landlord. And so there was obviously a conflict of interest. But when we tried to get information about the books, who was staying there, how much they were paying, the GSA just shut us down. So that’s not supposed to be a political partisan agency, supposed to just be a neutral regulatory oversight agency. So this bill will ensure that that’s the case.

Tom Temin: And what about the future leases? In other words, it would terminate leases, but also prevent this type of leasing in the future?

Dina Titus: No, not necessarily. But it will provide more congressional oversight and require the GSA to bring those leases to Congress. Also, what it will prohibit, is any kind of foreign interest being engaged in those leases.

Tom Temin: Now, in the case of the Trump Hotel, I remember when that lease was signed, it was a 100 year lease with the Trump Organization. This was six, seven or eight years before Donald Trump became President Trump. And so I think there’s a provision then that upon becoming president, that lease would terminate.

Dina Titus: That’s right, it will prohibit any kind of leases with the president, vice president, member of Congress, or head of an executive agency. I believe that’s already backed in the Emoluments Clause. But that’s something that the courts just wouldn’t really interpret in several cases that were brought. So this states it explicitly.

Tom Temin: Right. Are you aware of any other instances of where this has come up at all?

Dina Titus: Not really, nobody in government has kept a lease like this. And most things are put into blind trust. And this was just run or owned or operated by some of the family. And so it was obviously a conflict of interest. You had lobbyists stay in there. You had foreign dignitaries stay in there. You had the Republican Party doing events there. So obviously, there was some attempt to curry favor with the president by putting money into his operation.

Tom Temin: Well, maybe it’s because it had the best bacon you could get anywhere in Washington. I don’t know.

Dina Titus: I don’t know either. I never ate there.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Democrat Dina Titus, who represents Nevada’s first district. And do you have any other support for this bill, even from any Republicans by any chance?

Dina Titus: Well, we’ll see if any Republicans sign on to it. This was a topic that we discussed at length within the subcommittee that I chair, which is part of infrastructure and transportation. The chairman, Mr. DeFazio has signed on to this bill with me. And he was pursuing this issue long before I got here. And so we went through about 24,000 pages of records to come up with a report on it. So this is not some fly by night thing. This has been a long time in the making, and based on a lot of facts and figures.

Tom Temin: Sure. Anything in the Senate at all at this point?

Dina Titus: No. The Oversight Committee, in addition to my committee looked into the issue. So I’m sure we’ll get support from the members of that committee, at least on the Democratic side.

Tom Temin: All right. I want us to switch gears if I may while we have you for just a moment. You have asked Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to stop the mustang roundups. And apparently there’s been some serious issues with the burros and the mustangs under the control of the Bureau of Land Management, including in Nevada.

Dina Titus: Oh, yes, especially in Nevada. We have the most wild horses of any state in the country. And they’re such an iconic symbol of the Wild West. You don’t have to be from the West to appreciate them. The folks who support my efforts come from all over the world, in fact, not just all over the country because there’s such majestic creatures. And the BLM has done a dismal job of trying to manage these herds, and they do need to be managed because if they just keep reproducing, they’ll starve to death or they’ll die of thirst because there just aren’t that many resources on public lands. Now the cowboys hate them, or the ranchers because they want their cows to get the water and the grass out there on public lands and see the horses as a pest. But the public certainly is supportive.

Now, there are a couple of areas that are problems. One is the roundups themselves, they use helicopters. There are about three companies that have had all the contracts with helicopters, and they make a lot of money that comes right out of the taxpayer’s pocket. Also, it’s just a cruel process, they just run the horses down scare them to death. There was a recent incident that was on national TV of a little colt that they ran down, it crippled it and they had to shoot it. So that’s a problem. Now the third problem that has arisen is they put all these horses in very close, small, contained spaces, once they round them up. So they get diseases that are quickly passed from one to another. And we’ve seen just recently, about 150 Horses die in several pens from respiratory ailments. So I would want to look into this. I wrote the Secretary to stop the roundups until they can figure how to do them better, and how to better manage the horses. Oh, let me add a fourth problem shows you how bad this is. They had an adoption program at the BLM. They gave you $1,000 to take the horse, and then they didn’t follow up. And a lot of people were getting the money and then selling the horse for consumption across the border. It is just a nightmare. And so we need better management. And I think we need to focus on birth control as opposed to just putting these horses in these pens.

Tom Temin: Yeah, the National Park Service manages some of the bison herds out west. And they do regular culling, as you say, to prevent the same problem of overpopulation and starvation and so forth. And they can become a pest if you let them. Maybe there’s some National Park Service aught to collaborate with the Bureau of Land Management on how to manage herds.

Dina Titus: Well, that’s a good idea. I’ll reach out to them because the BLM certainly has done a terrible job and they are in the pocket of the ranchers it appears because they don’t seem to want to help in this case, you know, only a very small percentage of the money that we give to BLM for management has been used for birth control. And listen to this interesting story. They have used drones for round ups, because a horse will follow a drone, then you don’t have to chase the horse. You don’t have to scare it to death. But you can leave it to someplace where you want it to go. Wouldn’t that be more humane? Plus, I say hire some more cowboys. They know how to round up horses. So this is an employment bill but some of those cowboys do work and get out of the helicopter.

Tom Temin: Yeah, get some of those casino workers maybe and retrained as a round up folks.

Dina Titus: Well, everybody’s talking about workforce development. This may be something to look into.

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The Environmental Protection Agency, having consolidated several of its facilities nationwide over the past few years, is delaying plans to close a lab in Houston.

The EPA told employees last week that it is pushing back plans to relocate Houston lab employees from their current leased office space to another facility about 400 miles away in Ada, Oklahoma.

The agency, at first, planned to relocate employees no later than 2023, but is now pushing those plans back to 2027. The relocation would affect about 30 EPA lab employees and 11 contractors.

“EPA has heard and takes seriously the concerns of its employees related to this relocation,” the agency said in a May 3 email to employees. “We hope this new timeline will provide the agency with the opportunity to continue to work with our impacted staff on a smooth transition while ensuring full transparency throughout the process.”

The American Federation of Government Employees has urged the Biden administration to cancel plans to close the Houston lab. The EPA under the Trump administration pursued plans to consolidate facilities.

AFGE Local 1003 President Justin Chen said management cited “significant changes within timelines and also costs” for modifications to the Oklahoma lab, in order to accommodate additional employees.

“As everyone knows, due to COVID-19 and the supply chain and logistical issues around the world, essentially everything is quite a bit more expensive, due to inflationary rises in price,” Chen said in an interview Friday.

E&E News reported in June 2019 that former EPA Region 6 Administrator David Gray briefed employees about relocating to the Robert S. Kerr Environmental Research Center in Ada, Oklahoma within the next three years.

Chen said “significant pushback” from both employees and Congress contributed to the EPA’s decision to postpone the lab’s closure.

The Houston lab processes environmental samples for EPA Region 6, which includes Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and the rest of Texas.

Chen said those samples come from Superfund sites, natural disasters and human-made disasters. The Houston processed samples from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

That incident spilled 4 million barrels of oil into the gulf over 87 days. The EPA considers it the largest oil spill in the history of marine oil drilling operations.

Chen said the relocation would disrupt the lives of EPA employees who have set down roots in the area. The Houston lab, he added, serves a region that’s vulnerable to climate change and hurricanes. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria devastated the Gulf Coast in 2017.

“Houston is an incredibly important location to conduct such a mission. It’s in the petrochemical heart of the United States, arguably the petrochemical heart of the world essentially. It’s also an incredibly important area for environmental justice,” Chen said.

He said the Houston lab is also well positioned to gather samples from the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. But the Mississippi Delta would be at least an eight-hour drive once lab employees are relocated to Oklahoma.

Chen said the rationale for the EPA lab closure dates back to the Obama administration executive order, which directed agencies to reduce leased office space across the federal government.

“The rationale was supposedly a cost-savings measure,” Chen said.

The EPA in its fiscal 2021 budget request expected to save $1.8 million annually in lease costs by moving out of the Houston lab and relocating staff to the agency-owned facility in Oklahoma.

The EPA in that same budget request also looked to consolidate office space in Washington, D.C and optimize office space at a lab in Athens, Georgia.

The D.C. consolidation was expected to begin in March 2021. It impacts employees who work for the agency’s Office of Research and Development, Office of Land and Emergency Management and Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.

The EPA seeks to move 1,200 employees from its Potomac Yard One building in Arlington, Virginia to the agency’s headquarters at the William Jefferson Clinton Complex in Washington, D.C.

Chen said the EPA also recently closed a lab in Richmond, California and relocated those positions to Corvallis, Oregon. However, Chen said none of the lab employees in California took those relocation offers.

“Now the agency has to basically restock all of that Region 9 lab staff with new hires or transfers, basically, in Corvallis, Oregon,” Chen said.

The EPA also closed and consolidated several sites during the Trump administration.

The EPA’s Office of Research and Development, including its National Exposure Research Laboratory, ceased operations in Las Vegas in 2018, and gave the 50 employees impacted by the closure about six months to relocate to new offices, accept a buyout or step down from their positions.

The EPA in 2019 closed its Las Vegas Finance Center and move all grants-related functions to the Research Triangle Park Finance Center in North Carolina.

The agency in 2018 also closed the Large Lakes Research Station in Grosse Ile, Michigan and relocate personnel to the National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory in Ann Arbor. That move affected about 20 EPA emergency response employees.

The Trump Organization said Wednesday that it had completed the sale of a long-term lease of the Trump International Hotel to CGI Merchant Group of Miami for what it described as a record price per room for the city. Sources close to the deal demanding anonymity to discuss the private transaction have said that the price was $375 million, handing the Trump family business perhaps as much as $100 million in profit.

The new owners planned to remove the Trump name from the facade and rebrand the hotel a Waldorf Astoria. Workers were seen removing signage from the hotel Wednesday night.

The Associated Press reported earlier this year that the group of investors includes former Yankee slugger Alexander Rodriguez.

Many hotel brokers, owners and consultants did not expect the 263-room hotel down the street from the White House to fetch such a high price. The hotel lost more than $70 milllion during the four years of Trump’s presidency, including in each year before pandemic shut downs.

The high price, equivalent to more than $1.4 million a room, has drawn scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers. The U.S. House Oversight Committee earlier this month requested documents from CGI listing all of its investors.

The hotel was a magnet for lobbyists, diplomats and others seeking to curry favor with the president. Democrats said it sullied the reputation the presidency, pitted his financial interest against public interest and possibly broke the law. Several lawsuits challenging his ownership of the lease were unsuccessful.

The hotel is the former Old Post Office building, and its still formally owned by the federal government. The Trump Organization won rights to fix up the building and run it as a hotel in exchange for paying the government annual rent and a cut of profit upon a sale.

“I have three kids, millennial kids who are constantly wrapping me for being a boomer and how boomers kind of screwed it up for them. And I’m always arguing with them. ‘Well yeah, but they were unintended consequences of progress,” she lamented at the National Capital Planning Commission’s meeting Thursday. “And so to stop and be more deliberate is never a bad thing.”

The meeting presented NCPC’s new equity action plan, one of 90 released last month by federal agencies in response to President Joe Biden’s January 2021 executive order. Agencies developed their equity plans under the guidance of the Office of Management and Budget, and the Domestic Policy Council. They were required to have accountability mechanisms, success metrics and key milestones, according to Shaibya Dalal, a senior equity fellow at OMB working to implement the executive order.

“Given that this assessment was very much a first step, we asked agencies to prioritize three to five programs and services that were closely aligned with their mission and delivered high impact as measured by number of customers served or another metric,” Dalal told NCPC on Thursday.

Congress established the National Capital Planning Commission in 1924, and the independent commission advances the federal government’s interest in the region’s development. The agency also provides overall planning guidance for federal land and buildings in the region, reviews designs of federal and certain local projects, oversees long-range planning for future development, and monitors capital investment by federal agencies.

Considering NCPC’s independent function, Dalal commended its equity action plan for exemplifying why the White House wanted agencies to undertake such an effort. She said NCPC’s plan in particular “recognizes and applies the key distinction between equality and equity. It gives voice to narratives left out of the commemorative landscape. It builds equity into foundational planning frameworks to enable agencies to ask the right questions, and the plan reinvigorates community engagement.”

NCPC’s plan focuses on five priority action areas: commemoration, the Comprehensive Plan for the National Capital, the Federal Capital Improvements Program, a review of master plans and significant projects, and public engagement. As for the last action area, NCPC said that as of now its outreach activities do not regularly reach underserved communities.

“To encourage greater familiarity and participation in Commission meetings and all agency activities, NCPC will expand its distribution lists, hold individual or small group meet-and-greets with underrepresented community members, and offer more accessible meeting formats and materials,” the plan says.

For the “commemoration” action area, NCPC partnered with the Trust for the National Mall and the National Park Service to pilot the Beyond Granite program, from October 2021 to December 2023. The program will bring 8-10 temporary installations to Washington, D.C., to explore how the Commission can broaden representation and subject matter of public art and memorials to include marginalized groups.

On the matter of its Comprehensive Plan for the National Capital, the Commission said its existing strategy “lacks targeted policies, actions and investments to improve outcomes for people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ communities, people with disabilities, and those adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.” NCPC cited findings from the Greater Washington Partnership that in 2021, 13.6% of Black residents and 10.9% of Hispanic residents in the region lived in poverty, compared to 4.9% of white residents. Last year the gap in median home value between Black and white residents was $156,000, and Black residents were nearly two times as likely to have housing costs that represent 30% or more of household income. The “30% rule” originates from the Brooke Amendment to the 1968 Fair Housing Act, and has been used by academics and financial websites as a baseline for family budgeting despite critics saying it oversimplifies the issue of what constitutes affordability, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In response, the equity action plan calls for updating key sections of the Comprehensive Plan, and compiling all of its existing policies that advance equity into an “equity crosswalk” tool. NCPC Communications Specialist Bsrat Mezghebe said these changes would inform how equity is integrated into the Federal Capital Improvements Program (FCIP).

“For the FCIP, site selection and capital improvement funding can have profound equity impacts, and the FCIP really offers the earliest opportunity for agencies to consider them. NCPC has already proactively working with the OMB to incorporate equity-related questions for applicants to answer for NCPC review to determine how proposed capital improvement projects might create or reduce equity disparities,” she said.

The Commission includes members of Congress and the heads of the three executive branch agencies with significant land holdings in the region: GSA, the Interior Department and the Defense Department. Speaking for the House of Representatives’ seat, Collin Davenport from Rep. Gerry Connolly’s office (D-Va.), asked how these findings would be presented to the commissioners when making decisions.

Diane Sullivan, NCPC director of Urban Design and Plan Review, said to expect equity areas to play a larger role in recommendations to the commissioners. She also said transportation would be a bigger theme in future master plans.

“With the master plans that are coming in, we’re in a process right now where a lot of master plans are coming in, out in the counties, especially Prince George’s County [Maryland] and there are equity emphasis areas there,” she said. “Traffic is going to be a big impact. So the cumulative effects of all of these, the intensification of all these master plans.”

While representing GSA on the Commission, Wright applauded the plan’s public engagement efforts.

“We preach that in the design world all the time: Just engage early. Think very early on in the process, because if you’re trying to fix it at the eleventh hour, it’s too expensive,” she said.

NETL has been working on carbon capture and sequestration for at least 30 years before President Joe Biden’s executive orders on sustainability last year. One prime opportunity to cut energy consumption is at data centers, the demand for which is only expected to grow as government further embraces cloud computing and modernizes legacy IT. Currently they account for approximately 2% of total U.S. energy use, equivalent to 10 to 50 times the energy per floor space of a typical commercial office building, according to DOE.

“Data centers are some of the most energy-intensive type buildings and a lot of that comes to electricity. So if we focus on decarbonizing [the] electricity sector, we have huge components of our economy that we miss,” Anderson said during the General Services Administration’s Data Center Sustainability Summit this week.

The country needs more integrated energy systems to get off fossil fuels, Anderson said. Four years ago his lab, along with the Idaho National Laboratory, which specializes in nuclear energy, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado formed a consortium to build on hybrid energy systems.

The placement of federal data centers could also be a way to transform communities left behind by a waning fossil-fuel-based economy. Anderson used the Mineral Gap Data Center in Wise County, Virginia, as an example. The center reclaimed some former coal mine sites and is powered by solar energy, sparking local economic investment and investment in renewables.

Wise isn’t alone – several Virginia counties are trying to attract data centers in traditionally coal-dependent regions with strong solar and geothermal resources for electricity.

“And certainly, our colleagues at the Department of Interior are in the process of deploying billions of dollars — $11 billion in the Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Program under the infrastructure bill — and billions of dollars in plugging orphan oil and gas wells around the country,” Anderson said. “These are truly opportunities to take an environmental legacy and turn it into economic opportunity.”

With about $62 billion of newly authorized funding for DOE in the infrastructure bill, NETL has a serious opportunity to leverage those reclamation projects for data centers. DOE is also releasing $19.5 million in awards for extracting sustainable critical minerals from coal waste, according to the initial report of the Biden administration’s Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization.

Meanwhile, Anderson said the tri-labs also teamed up with the Pacific Northwest National lab to create a “net-zero laboratory initiative,” to reduce their scopes 1-3 emissions to zero over the next decade. This refers to emissions that directly and indirectly result from government activity.

“We will be working not only on site with decarbonizing our onsite usage, but with our power supply partners on driving forward the technologies that we have been developing in house and the Department of Energy with our partners,” he said. “And this is the call for partnership: I have the perfect audience here, we’ve been working with GSA on our power purchase agreements and many of our other sister federal agencies. There’s power in us putting all of our efforts together, there’s power — with the checks that we write through our power purchase agreements. And if we put our heads together, we can start driving the economy and creating the market that we need to see.”

GSA on Friday approved CGI Hospitality Group as a “qualified transferee,” the agency said in a press release, after an extensive internal and third-party review.

CGI and Hilton Worldwide Holdings plan to convert the building, known as the Old Post Office, into a Waldorf Astoria luxury hotel. After the transfer of the contract, CGI will assume responsibility for the terms and conditions of the lease.

“GSA based this decision on the strength of the partnership between CGI and Hilton and the parties’ commitment to ensuring the success of the future hotel,” the agency said in a press release.

GSA’s lease for the Trump Hotel became the focus of intense legal scrutiny and congressional investigations for much of the Trump administration.

At the core of the matter, Congress and courts debated whether former President Donald Trump’s financial ties to a federal lease violated the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

GSA’s inspector general found in 2019 the agency’s legal team “ignored” legal questions about the Emoluments Clause, but declined to weigh in on whether or not the 2012 lease violated the Constitution.

The Supreme Court threw out several lawsuits focused on the Trump Hotel last year, on the grounds that the cases were moot now that Trump is no longer in office.

Under the terms of the lease, GSA had 45 days to approve the sale and transfer of the lease once the Trump Organization has named a “qualified transferee.”

To meet that standard, GSA had to examine the buyer’s financial responsibility, their ability to pay the rent and their track record of maintaining historic properties.

The Trump Hotel, in many ways, was an anomaly in GSA’s private lease portfolio. The agency leases about 600 federal properties to the private sector, but former GSA Administrator Emily Murphy told lawmakers in 2020 that many of those are for parking lots or antennas.

Only a handful of those leases, she added, has GSA struck an agreement for a private company to occupy 20% or more of a federal building.

Congress passed the Old Post Office Building Redevelopment Act in 2008 to allow GSA to lease out the building to the private sector while ensuring federal ownership.

After winning the lease in 2012 following a competitive bid process, the Trump Organization spent more than $200 million restoring the Old Post Office. Prior to that, the building had fallen into disrepair and accounted for a $6 million annual loss for the agency.

Top Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee recently called on GSA to terminate its lease for the Trump Hotel in downtown Washington after Mazars, a long-time auditor of the Trump Organization, said it could no longer vouch for the accuracy of 10 years of financial statements it prepared for the company.

The financial statements the Trump Organization submitted to GSA precede the documents in question, but Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Government Operations Chairman Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said the Trump Organization may have misrepresented itself in negotiations with the agency.

Maloney said in a statement Friday that the “sale of the Trump Hotel does not resolve the committee’s grave concerns about former President Trump’s conflicts of interest, the false or misleading financial documents he apparently used to obtain this lease, and the lack of transparency surrounding the sale to a group of largely unidentified investors. ”

“No one is above the law, and former President Trump should not be rewarded for providing false or misleading information to the federal government or for seeking to profit off the presidency—yet he now stands to reap tens of millions of dollars in profits,” Maloney said,.

Connolly said in a statement Friday that the sale — and GSA’s original lease to the Trump Organization — raises concerns.

“The original sin by GSA to allow President Trump to hold this lease and benefit has tainted this whole process. Today’s decision doubles down and abets the Trump family’s continued profiteering off the presidency. This is a stain on federal procurement that will not wash away,” Connolly said.

Talk of selling the lease, however, never settled lawmakers’ push for confidential financial and legal documents tied to the Trump Hotel.

House Transportation Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), in a 2019 subpoena, ordered GSA to turn over “unredacted documents and communications” between the agency, the Trump Organization and members of the 2016 presidential transition team.

Murphy told members that GSA provided the “vast majority” of what the committee asked for, including more than 10,000 pages of documents.

Following the subpoena, GSA has also offered members of Congress an “in-camera” review of confidential financial records, on the condition that lawmakers not publicly disclose the information contained in those records without GSA’s consent.

Murphy said GSA had asked the Trump Organization for approval to disclose those financial documents, but the company, she said, declined to do so.

The Old Post Office is about 400,000 square feet, and is one of the tallest buildings in D.C., and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Washington Post first reported this story Friday.

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Goddard Space Flight Center, one of NASA’s original sites, is about to get a major nip and tuck. This after NASA’s Office of Strategic Infrastructure said yes to a new master plan for Goddard. For one thing, Goddard plans to cut its building square footage by 25%. For more details, Goddard’s Associate Center Director Ray Rubilotta joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Mr. Rubilotta, good to have you on.

Ray Rubilotta: Good morning, Tom, nice to talk to you.

Tom Temin: And just give us a sense of the scope of Goddard. It’s a big facility and it has a lot of satellite facilities, no pun intended. So it’s kind of all over the place.

Ray Rubilotta: Yes, that’s correct. The Goddard Space Flight Center is comprised of six major campuses and they are in the states of Texas, New Mexico, West Virginia, New York City, Maryland, and of course, Virginia. Those, again, are our primary campuses. And then we are a worldwide kind of a setup for NASA, in that we have launch sites all over the world where we conduct our science and our different activities.

Tom Temin: All right, and what does go on there in terms of launches, because it’s called a Space Flight Center?

Ray Rubilotta: Correct. So, quite frankly, Goddard actually starts out with science. Everything we do, we are a science center for NASA. And so what happens is it starts with our science. And we have different operations from cutting technology, to launch support activities. We were intrical, the James Webb Space Telescope, which a lot of news media talked about just last, yesterday, actually was integrated and many components built here at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Our primary campus is here at the Greenbelt, Maryland, facility, where you’re talking about with the launching that actually is out at our Wallops Flight Facility, located in Accomack County in Virginia. And so what we have from there is we have the capability, we actually launched the International Space Station cargo resupplies with our partnership with Northrop Grumman. But we also do a lot of just science work out there. We launch sounding rockets, we have the capability, we manage a balloon program. So the initial technology and science areas of discovery are actually launched from there as well as other sites around the world that Goddard maintains. And then that grows into the larger missions, like a James Webb Space Telescope, as scientists and engineers are able to test those technologies in a safe test range area that we have at Wallops. When you look at our West Virginia, our Katherine Johnson, what we call IV and V, or independent verification and validation facility, that’s where we actually go ahead and we provide an independent look for NASA at all of the software that actually operates on either like, say, science missions, or the Artemis satellite. So we have a select number of missions where we go ahead and do that verification and validation of that code that will be used to make sure that everything operates well.

Tom Temin: Give us a sense of the acreage and the number of people involved here, and then we’ll get into the master plan.

Ray Rubilotta: Sure. So each site has a different footprint. Again, as I mentioned before, our Greenbelt site is the the largest facility we have. And so I would say that we have close to multiple hundreds of thousands of square footage at the Greenbelt campus. We view our footprint not so much in the way of acreage, but is in assets and dollars. So we have over $1 billion of assets. For example, at our Wallops Facility in Virginia, we have 36 major buildings that would cost over $2 billion to replace many of them. Here at the Greenbelt campus, some of our science and engineering and technical facilities. So we have multiple billions of dollars. And so when we look at it, we look at it as a combination of both acreage and square footage and cost of building those facilities.

Tom Temin: And the population?

Ray Rubilotta: We have about a 3,300 civil servant workforce strewn over the six campuses of the Goddard Space Flight Center. And then in totality, we have about a 10,000-person workforce. It’s about 6,700 of our contractor partners that help us support the mission of the Center.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Ray Rubilotta, he’s the associate director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Let’s get into the master plan, or the newly approved master plan. It looks like you’re going to reduce the building square footage. But first of all, tell us what is the goal of the master plan, in the large sense?

Ray Rubilotta: Sure. So not only for Goddard, but also for all NASA facilities we’ve embarked on making sure that for the NASA of the future that we have the right facilities that will go ahead and be able to efficiently and effectively make sure that we can meet those commitments that the agency has before us. And so the purpose of the master plan is to look at what facilities we have now. See if they have a usefulness into the future? And if not, what new facilities do we need to build? What facilities do we have that with a slight renovation or modification can meet the needs of the future, and then which ones do we just actually need to go ahead and divest ourselves of? And so there is a vision and a plan that the agency has laid forth. And so we’ve worked over the last five years, from a concept plan up to the full approval of our master plan, to go ahead and meet those mission commitments and agency directions to make sure that we have the facilities and the capabilities to go ahead and meet all of those.

Tom Temin: And what will you be doing, then?

Ray Rubilotta: It’s a master plan that actually goes out to about 2037. And so again, this is an agencywide initiative. So we have broken ours out into what I would call five-year phases. What we do is we look at is what we would like to do, as we know today, go ahead and demolish what we would like to renovate, what we would like to divest, where we would like to develop potential partnering or outreach zones at our center, to go ahead and position ourselves so that by the completion of the master plan phase, which is 2037, we have positioned ourselves to be ready to meet the challenges and the needs of the agency.

Tom Temin: And why do you plan to reduce square footage by 25%? That sounds like a lot of buildings to tear down.

Ray Rubilotta: Most of our facilities were built in the ’60s and ’70s, where the layout, the construction, the design of what I would say, current architecture isn’t as readily set up in some of these buildings. They are old in their age. Much of NASA’s infrastructure falls into that area. And so because of that, as we build new buildings, and as we do renovations, we will be able to leverage the technologies of both architecture, as well as needs, as well as what we call within the agency our future of work. If there is a silver lining to the last two years of the pandemic, we have been able to prove as an agency and as a center that working in a hybrid mode, finding the positions not so much of necessarily having people on site but how they can best meet the mission of the agency, whether it be on site or in some other location has afforded us the ability to find buildings that we no longer will need, or that we would have to spend a significant amount of our operations and maintenance budget to maintain, given not only their age, but also the antiquated infrastructure that goes ahead and makes up those facilities. And so we’ve been able to identify buildings that we can go ahead and reduce and take off of our footprint.

Tom Temin: It sounds like you’re expecting a hybrid workforce with respect to on campus and remote or telework pretty much for the foreseeable future?

Ray Rubilotta: Yes. We clearly want to be and continue to be as you know, our employee viewpoint survey scores, NASA 10 years running has been proven to come out to be the best place to work in the federal government. And we want to continue to be that employer of choice for the best and brightest that there are in our nation to help support our advancement in space and in technology and science. And so therefore, yes, we look at how industry is moving. And we have seen that this is something that is not only commonplace in private industry, but starting to make inroads in the federal government. And that’s something that we are looking to embrace and move forward to in the coming years of this hybrid work.

Tom Temin: And earlier you mentioned some of the missions, of course, the space launches to resupply the space station scientific research. You mentioned software review, which sounds like a small mission, but anyone that’s ever touched software knows how much work that takes. Is there any fundamental change in the mission set for Goddard or you’re just realigning to the way they have to be carried out in the future?

Ray Rubilotta: Absolutely, Tom, you’ve got it. It’s the latter. We have verified through this master plan process, that there are nuanced changes to our lines of business as a center, that will be changed going into the future. But the fundamental basis of our lines of business will remain in that of science, balloons, technology, verification of our software, climate change, the environment, all of those areas that we are actively leading today. We will continue to do so into the future.

Tom Temin: And just a detailed question in the science and research area and this is prompted by something I saw which is the emptying of a garage full of oscilloscopes, and other kinds of instruments like that older computers. And at one time oscilloscope was a floor-standing big instrument with a big tube on it. And I asked a friend of mine in electronics, he said, “Nobody uses them anymore. It’s an app on your phone now, everything that an oscilloscope could do.” So I imagine an average laboratory doesn’t need the footage and electrical power. And all of these things that it did decades ago, when people had tube-powered testing gear and that kind of thing.

Ray Rubilotta: You’re absolutely correct. We have just finished building here, for example, at the Greenbelt site recently, within the last 10 years, two new facilities that house our science and our engineering communities. And that’s exactly it. Flexibility is now the key. In previous construction, you built it for a specific purpose. That is no longer the case. All of our technical space is now built with that flexibility and the ability to adjust to new emerging technologies, new requirements. And so that’s where there’s a huge partnership with our science and engineering community, as well as our facilities engineers, to make sure that we are building that capacity into all of our new construction.

Tom Temin: And by the way, getting to a more topical issue. What is the status of Goddard with respect to those that want to come back into the buildings to work? Where do you stand at this point?

Ray Rubilotta: Sure. So we have a saying in NASA, it’s “People first, mission always.” And that’s really the fundamental guidelines that we’re having these conversations right now. So we are having not only our supervisors talk with our missions, and our customers as to what their requirements are, but then we’re also doing the conversation with their staffs to see how we can best then meet those needs. There’s no cookie-cutter approach. There’s no one size fits all. It’s going to be based on the mission, but also taking into account the great benefits that we’ve been able to realize from this hybrid workforce and experience. And then just bringing that on into our future way of working going forward.

Tom Temin: And finally, you said the plan goes to 2037, you won’t be around probably that is to say, working at NASA, we hope you’re still around, but you won’t be at NASA by then will you?

Ray Rubilotta: No, you’ve hit the nail on the head, Tom. I hope I’m not a part of the environment by 2037. But yes, so many master plans, that’s what it does. This is not the first time for Goddard that we’ve had a master plan. In fact, I inherited a master plan from my predecessors that was done, actually in the ’90s. And so what it does is it lays a blueprint of leadership and agency priorities at that time of how the center was going, and then it allows you the ability to modify or adjust that. So even though I personally won’t be here in 2037, working for NASA, whoever replaces me, it will provide that blueprint so they’re not starting from scratch as to what the philosophy, the thoughts were behind how the center needs to position itself to be viable going in for future decades.

Tom Temin: Ray Rubilotta is associate director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Thanks so much for joining me.

Ray Rubilotta: Thank you, Tom. It’s a pleasure talking to you.

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Before it can hire contractors to build or renovate federal buildings, the General Services Administration’s Public Buildings Service has to engage architects. Over the years, some of the world’s top architects have designed federal buildings. Now GSA wants to ensure diversity in its roster of architects. It’s inked a memorandum of understanding with the National Organization of Minority Architects. For more, the Commissioner of the Public Buildings Service Nina Albert spoke to the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Ms. Albert, good to have you back.

Nina Albert: Thanks for having me, Tom, I always appreciate talking to you, as well as your listeners.

Tom Temin: And tell us more about the process of buying and contracting for architecture. It’s totally different than from construction and renovation. Because there is the, I guess the aesthetic element here that people sometimes take for granted.

Nina Albert: Well, as you know, or your listeners may know, the GSA is one of the significant landholding agencies within the federal government. We manage 1,300 federal buildings, which we own. Thirty percent of those buildings are historic facilities, which is quite remarkable. And we continue to build or renovate. And all of that activity requires designers, engineers, and then as you said the general contractors who actually build come a little bit later in the process. So we’ll go out, architects are involved in the development process, very, very early on. They’ll work with us on feasibility studies, really trying to scope the size of the building, how does it fit into a site. And then of course, as we pull the trigger and know that we’re going to move forward with a project, then they will be doing the design. And they’re responsible for the exterior of the building, they’re responsible for the interior of the building, and equally important in our world is making sure that our federal buildings as they interface and interact with space and community around us really ties in to the essence of the community. So they play an incredibly important role in development.

Tom Temin: And how does the selection work? Because again, it’s the appearance of the building and the interior environment that people are going to live with for the next 50 years. So it’s not something like making sure the concrete is to spec.

Nina Albert: That’s true. I think that the process for hiring architects is actually not so different from the process of hiring any other contractor. The difference is what particular qualities are you looking for? So we’ll put out an RFP. Firms will bid. We’re looking for qualifications, have they done projects that are similar to the one that we’re proposing? Who’s their team, because that’s really who you’re working with for probably a number of years? Are they qualified or do they have the time? And then obviously, what’s their price? So all of those things we evaluate and look at, and ultimately make a decision on.

Tom Temin: And tell us then about this agreement, this memorandum of understanding with the Minority Architects. I guess that puts GSA as a member of the National Association of Minority Architects?

Nina Albert: Well, I just want to say I’m so pleased that you even thought to highlight this as one of the stories that you’re doing, because diversity, equity inclusion and accessibility is one of the Biden-Harris administration’s priorities. And we believe that the GSA can play a huge role in advancing some of those goals. So the commercial real estate field and industry is not particularly representative and diverse. And so across all different groups of people and underrepresented populations in the workforce, we’re trying to reach out to. The National Organization of Minority Architects is the largest organization of underrepresented people who are professional architects. They have 2,500 members. And so they’re a great connection point for us. The MOU is really a three-part MOU. One is about education and sharing, being a part of their programs, participating so that we can learn and be better employers. Another piece of it is an internship pathway, and how can GSA benefit from the relationship and ourselves hire young architects? And then the third is really education about federal government contracting? And how can architecture firms who are owned by people of color understand the selection process and get into the pipeline? So it’s a three-part MOU, and we just launched it in February of this year.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Nina Albert, she’s commissioner of the Public Buildings Service at the General Services Administration. And you touched on one thing I think, is really important. Maybe you can elaborate on the fact that it’s sometimes not so easy for the uninitiated, to do business with the federal government. In fact, it can seem like the most difficult thing in the whole process, let alone designing the building. So are there provisions to help ease that without removing any of the competitive qualities that you need in the actual architect?

Nina Albert: We are looking, GSA as you plays a major role in government procurement. And so we are looking across the board at how to streamline, simplify and make much more accessible federal contracting opportunities. The smaller businesses, the more complicated it becomes for them to compete in large part because of the time that it might take or the expertise that you must have to have developed to compete effectively. And so we’re looking writ large and holistically at how to make the experience and the procurement process easier to access. We’re also making significant efforts to reach out to the small business community. And so our Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization has a program, again for doing that proactive outreach, get folks into the pipeline early, educate them on what our process is so that ultimately when they do compete, they can be more successful. So this is again, part of our contribution. And frankly, we believe it’s our mandate to make sure that federal government contracts are more readily and easily available.

Tom Temin: And how does internships fit into this whole picture, because that’s a different relationship with the person?

Nina Albert: We have a pretty amazing internship program. It’s called GSA’s Pathway Program. It’s an entry point for students from high school to graduate level, to have paid internships at GSA. That’s pretty extraordinary. So there’s three separate programs within it. The first one is recent graduates program. Another one is the Presidential Management Fellows Program. And then third is the internship program, which is the largest of the three. So folks can go on to GSA’s website, look for the internship program, or any of the other ones and apply. And the great part about it is that it is paid, which so many students need right now. And it also equals the playing field for folks who may come from underrepresented communities, and where that paid internship really becomes even more significant. But that applies to everybody, as we know.

Tom Temin: Sure. And just getting back to the acquisition end of this, give us a sense of how much architecture GSA buys, because people tend to think of architects in terms of here’s a new building, but brand new greenfield buildings are relatively rare compared to all of the other work that goes on. So where does architecture fit in besides brand new buildings?

Nina Albert: Architecture fits into even our repair and alteration schedules. That’s what’s great about really getting in and having a contract with us is that if you’re a smaller firm, we do what we call tenant outfits. So you know, moving office buildings within an existing building. That you need an architect for, if you’re going to change where the walls are, if you’re going to change how many people are in a space, that requires an architect to go do calculations, figure out if there’s more air that needs to circulate through the space, etc, etc. So we have projects large and small, all of which require architects. GSA has a significant new construction as well as repair and alteration program annually. I believe that we expend anywhere from $2 billion to $4 billion a year. This is across the country. So there are opportunities really across the country. And then with the bipartisan infrastructure law, we have $3.4 billion to invest in modernized land ports of entry on both our northern and southern borders. We will need architects for all of that work. So there are ample opportunity and we really looking forward to working even more with our architecture community.

Tom Temin: Nina Albert is commissioner of the Public Buildings Service at the General Services Administration. Thanks so much for joining me.

Nina Albert: Thank you so much for having me.

Despite the scattered arrangement of State Department employees around the world, going to a remote and hybrid work environment during the pandemic was less challenging than IT officials expected. Home internet connectivity, including in developing or rural parts of the world, is stronger than it used to be and in fact, many growing economies bypassed the wireless era and made investments directly into wireless and LTE technologies.

“The carriers of the world have updated all the networks worldwide. There’s alliances with telecoms all over. And we were very surprised that connectivity itself was not as big of a challenge as we thought,” said Ivan Watson, the State Department’s deputy chief information officer for Operations, on Federal Monthly Insights — Secure Tools for a Telework Future.

The labor laws of each country are different regarding workplace reentry, but Watson said people enjoyed coming back for the most part. Not so much in Washington, D.C., where Watson said people have really embraced telework, but now his team needs to make sure building systems work. The State Department must consider if it needs more hoteling, more Wi-Fi instead of a surplus of empty office space, he said.

“I think, as people get more used to it and start coming back to work a little more often, we’ll probably see upticks maybe in the middle of the week. But, when it goes from the beginning of the week to the end of the week, maybe that tapers off,” Watson said on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

It is all part of the ongoing support of a more permanent teleworking federal workforce. This includes allowing people to redesign their own workflows for better productivity and accessibility. Is printing always necessary? Is using Excel always necessary? What about a digital signature, or a more mobile-friendly application instead?

“Those are the things that we continue to, well at least in my office, we continue to push forward these ideas and concepts and it’s more of a cultural change than anything, right?” he said. “So it’s a lot of work ahead of us. But, I think the technology is there to support everything that we talked about.”

Although State tried to pivot away from VPN, which Watson said is not “the future,” the transition was not as simple as they expected. The department is in a transition period where many assets need VPN but some assets with commercial partners are accessible through an SSL website certificate. A shift is coming, Watson said, and his team is working in the background to facilitate that but he advised caution so as not to unnecessarily expose themselves or break useful things.

When considering if third-party, cloud-based apps make more sense for remote workers rather than something runs on a mainframe, Watson pointed to the department’s use of Microsoft 365 suite.

“The user now has all these applications that they can do, they can automate their own work workflows, they don’t really need us, you don’t need an IT expert. So some of these applications are complex, some of them are not, right, so it depends what the end user wants to do,” he said.

This is a sign that power is moving towards the end user with less reliance on IT professionals to show them how to do things. As such, training will be critical for an organization looking to go hybrid or fully remote, as well as making sure the enterprise is not too restrictive for users. If it is, they are likely to branch off and use other applications, which creates a “shadow IT” environment.

“How are we as an organization incorporat[ing] training and user training, that they can actually exploit the advances of these tools that we have, these environments that are available – at any time,” he said. “And I think that’s going to be key going forward is training, user knowledge.”

Best listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Subscribe to Federal Drive’s daily audio interviews on Apple Podcasts or PodcastOne.

A recent list in Forbes magazine of 500 of the best mid-sized employers in the United States included a couple of federal agencies, among them the Government Publishing Office. For an update on what this congressional agency has been up to, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin turned to Director Hugh Halpern.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Mr. Halpern, good to have you back.

Hugh Halpern: It’s always great to be back. Thanks for having me, Tom.

Tom Temin: So GPO made the list. You weren’t near the top of the list but you were on the list of 500. I should point out another congressional agency, [the Government Accountability Office] was a little bit higher. But we’re talking to you today.

Hugh Halpern: We’re just happy to be on the list. It’s our first time on the Forbes list. And we are really honored to be there. And it’s a real credit to our team here at GPO and the way we’ve been able to work through the pandemic and the culture we’ve been able to craft here at the agency.

Tom Temin: And talk about how you are situated at this point, in the waning days of the pandemic? I was there early on, and the place was mostly empty, and we went through masks, seeing some of the facilities, but who’s there, who’s not there, what’s the status now?

Hugh Halpern: So we are really at full production at the moment, we’ve got about 1000 people who come to work. That’s about two thirds of our workforce. The other third, the vast majority of them are full-time telework, or some sort of hybrid telework or remote work. And for us, it’s not too terribly different than I think it will be a couple of weeks from now, a month from now, a year from now, I think you’re gonna see a situation where the folks who need to come in because they’re production employees, they work with the machines that produce the Congressional Record, the Federal Register, U.S. passports and all of the other products that we produce. They have to be on site, and they’ve been on site throughout the pandemic. Now, the Congressional Record, we still had to publish that even at the height of the pandemic, same with the Federal Register. And while we took a little bit of time to make sure we could do passports safely, we’ve been producing them at pretty much full tilt since last summer. So they’ve all been coming to work, and our folks who are teleworking, our teammates, they’ve been doing a fantastic job, we have seen big productivity increases. And I think folks are happier in this kind of new environment. And we’ve actually been able to start experimenting with some things, we did not renew the lease on our Chicago office space, because most of our teammates in Chicago are full-time teleworking. And instead, what we did was we contracted with co-working space so that we could try that as a format. And we’re very interested to see the results because we think our teammates are gonna have access to more and frankly, higher quality office space than we could provide with nicer amenities. And hopefully, that’ll also help their productivity. So we’re really interested in seeing this through and the potential for really changing the way that we’ve worked as an agency in the future.

Tom Temin: And the people that are mostly or full-time teleworking, now in Chicago, or wherever could be the D.C. area, those are mainly people in policy, procurement, that kind of thing?

Hugh Halpern: Right. So the neat thing about GPO is we’ve got folks from sort of all ends of the spectrum. So on the one hand, I’ve got artisanal bookbinders, who work in the methods that were developed thousands of years ago. On the other hand, I’ve got software developers and policy folks and librarians and all sorts of folks who don’t physically need to be in the building. So the vast majority of our telework folks are finance folks. They’re human resources folks, they are engineers, they’re software developers, and designers and everything in between.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Hugh Halpern, he is the director of the Government Publishing Office. And what would you say makes other people say that work there, that it’s a good place to work enough to make a list of 500 out of tens of thousands of possibilities?

Hugh Halpern: Well, Tom, I think we’re known for our culture. And one of the things that when I came to the agency a little over two years ago, everybody talked about the GPO family. And frankly, I was a little worried when we went into the pandemic, are we going to lose a little bit of that close kind of camaraderie. And the fact of the matter is I think it has evolved. And it is definitely different than it was when I first got here. But we’ve still got that same kind of close knit situation where everybody relies on everybody else. And whether you’re working in production, whether you’re on the line producing passports or printing the Federal Register, or you’re working with a team trying to build out gov info, which is our trusted digital repository, where folks can go online to get free government information. I think everybody knows that they rely on everybody else, and it’s that kind of close nit camaraderie that I think really contributes to the kind of culture where people want to work. And we’re hoping to attract folks to GPO, we’ve got a number of open positions that we’re trying to hire for. And we’ve been able to attract the kinds of folks that we think are going to make GPO a great place going into the future.

Tom Temin: Couple of detailed questions: You mentioned, the passport production and State Department had problems during the pandemic, and now a backlog had developed. Are you able to ramp up to get that backlog of production done OK, because I’m wondering about the supply chain of chips, say, that are in the passports. How’s that all going?

Hugh Halpern: So we work very, very closely, both with our State Department customer, and with our other supply chain partners, some of whom are feds and a lot of folks are in the private sector. And I’m not gonna say it wasn’t challenging. But we’ve got a really, really good team involved in the design and production of the U.S. passport. And we were fairly creative in developing that product and making sure that we could meet the State Department’s needs there. And there were a number of things going on all at once. Part of it was the State Department’s ability to work through the backlog and personalized passports. But there’s also a change of product going on there. So the E passport, the electronic passport that most people have at this point that was getting phased out, we were bringing on board the next generation passport product that we’ve designed with the Department of State. And as those two products, one was ramping down and the other was ramping up, there were always issues of trying to balance the quantities. And we were able to meet State Department’s needs there. But we’re really happy that we’re mostly transitioned over to the next generation passport, which is, frankly, the most advanced identity document that you’re going to find anywhere in the world.

Tom Temin: But it still has a physical manifestation you can hold and put in your breast pocket.

Hugh Halpern: Absolutely, absolutely. And I know I’ve talked to friends who have recently gotten passports, and they’ve gotten the next generation passport, and you can tell the difference. But the Identity page is a little bit different than what you might have seen in the past. But it’s a great product. And we’re really pleased that we can work with State Department to produce that for Americans.

Tom Temin: And how has the supply chain been for the paper, the inks and the various specialized products that GPO uses in production of books and things like the Federal Register and the Congressional Record?

Hugh Halpern: Paper is in very short supply, and it is a constant challenge. But we have both great teams here in our production departments. And frankly, our acquisition team is very, very good at, combing the nation to find what we need. But I’d be kidding you if I didn’t say it was hard sometimes to make sure that we’ve got everything that we need. But there’s one case where one of our GPO teammates realized that we had very wide rolls of paper down in our warehouse, and that if we were able to cut that paper in half, we would actually extend the supply of paper we would need for some of the products we printed. So we’ve got a whole bunch of talent here at GPO. And that’s just one example of the kinds of creative problem solving that they can come up with that really let us come up with some creative solutions to meet our customers’ needs.

Tom Temin: So in that case, you run the roll through a press with no plates and just operate the splitter?

Hugh Halpern: Well we actually sent that out to another company that would split the roll for us, but it was actually a huge find. And it actually extended our paper supply by a number of weeks. So it was just a good example of the kind of ingenuity that our team is able to come up with day after day.

Tom Temin: Hugh Halpern is director of the [Government] Publishing Office. Thanks so much for joining me.

Hugh Halpern: Hey, thanks for having me, Tom. It is always great to talk to you.

But there was an underside, the dirty work of soldiering. Recruits tossed live grenades into the canyons of “Mortar Alley,” sprayed soapy chemicals on burn pits of scrap metal and solvents, poured toxic substances down drains and into leaky tanks they buried underground.

When it rained, poisons percolated into aquifers from which they drew drinking water.

Through the years, soldiers and civilians who lived at the U.S. Army base didn’t question whether their tap water was safe to drink.

But in 1990, four years before it began the process of closing as an active military training base, Fort Ord was added to the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of the most polluted places in the nation. Included in that pollution were dozens of chemicals, some now known to cause cancer, found in the base’s drinking water and soil.

Decades later, several Fort Ord veterans who were diagnosed with cancers — especially rare blood disorders — took the question to Facebook: Are there more of us?

Soon, the group grew to hundreds of people who had lived or served at Fort Ord and were concerned that their health problems might be tied to the chemicals there.

The Associated Press interviewed nearly two dozen of these veterans for this story and identified many more. The AP also reviewed thousands of pages of documents, and interviewed military, medical and environmental scientists.

There is rarely a way to directly connect toxic exposure to a specific individual’s medical condition. Indeed, the concentrations of the toxics are tiny, measured in parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of an immediate poisoning. Local utilities, the Defense Department and some in the Department of Veterans Affairs insist Fort Ord’s water is safe and always has been.

But the VA’s own hazardous materials exposure website, along with scientists and doctors, agree that dangers do exist for military personnel exposed to contaminants.

The problem is not just at Fort Ord. This is happening all over the U.S. and abroad, almost everywhere the military has set foot, and the federal government is still learning about the extent of both the pollution and the health effects of its toxic legacy.

The AP’s review of public documents shows the Army knew that chemicals had been improperly dumped at Fort Ord for decades. Even after the contamination was documented, the Army downplayed the risks.

And ailing veterans are being denied benefits based on a 25-year-old health assessment. The CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry concluded in 1996 that there were no likely past, present or future risks from exposures at Fort Ord.

But that conclusion was made based on limited data, and before medical science understood the relationship between some of these chemicals and cancer.

This is what is known:

Veterans in general have higher blood cancer rates than the general population, according to VA cancer data. And in the region that includes Fort Ord, veterans have a 35 percent higher rate of multiple myeloma diagnosis than the general U.S. population.

Veterans like Julie Akey.

Akey, now 50, arrived at Fort Ord in 1996 with a gift for linguistics. She enlisted in the Army on the condition that she could learn a new language. And so the 25-year-old was sent to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, and lived at Fort Ord as a soldier. By then the base was mostly closed but still housed troops for limited purposes.

“It was incredibly beautiful,” she said. “You have the ocean on one side, and these expansive beaches, and the rolling hills and the mountains behind.”

What she didn’t know at the time was that the ground under her feet, and the water that ran through the sandy soil into an aquifer that supplied some of the base’s drinking water was polluted. Among the contaminants were cancer-causing chemicals including trichloroethylene, also known as the miracle degreaser TCE.

She’d learn this decades later, as she tried to understand how, at just 46 and with no family history of blood cancers, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

“No one told us,” she said.

___

Despite the military’s claims that there aren’t any health problems associated with living and serving at Fort Ord, nor hundreds of other shuttered military bases, almost every closure has exposed widespread toxic pollution and required a massive cleanup. Dozens have contaminated groundwater, from Fort Dix in New Jersey to Adak Naval Air Station in Alaska. Fort Ord is 25 years into its cleanup as a federal Superfund site, and it’s expected to continue for decades.

To date, the military has only acknowledged troops’ health could have been damaged by drinking contaminated water at a single U.S. base: Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and only during a 35-year window, between 1953 to 1987. Servicemembers there were found by federal epidemiologists to have higher mortality rates from many cancers, including multiple myeloma and leukemia. Men developed breast cancer, and pregnant women tended to have children with higher rates of birth defects and low birth weight. Like Fort Ord, Camp Lejeune began closing contaminated wells in the mid-’80s.

Soldiers are often stationed at different bases during their years of military service, but neither the Defense Department nor the VA has systematically tracked toxic exposures at various locations.

Fort Ord’s primary mission was training troops who deployed to World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam. It supported several thriving small towns on a piece of coastal land the size of San Francisco. Soldiers and their families lived in houses and apartments connected to its water system, and civilians worked at its airfields, hospitals and other facilities.

In the course of their work preparing for battle, they spilled solvents into the base’s drains, sloughed chemical sludge into underground storage tanks and discarded 55-gallon drums of caustic material in the base landfill, according to a 1982 hazardous waste inventory report.

Curt Gandy, a former airplane mechanic, recalls being routinely doused with toxic chemicals from the 1970s to the 1990s. He said he hosed down aircraft with solvents, cleaned engine parts and stripped paint off fuselages without any protection. There were barrels of toluene, xylene, jet fuel and more.

“It gets on your body, it gets in your face, you get splashed with it, and we’re using pumps to spray this stuff,” he said. “It’s got 250 pounds of pressure and we’re spraying it into the air and it’s atomized.”

On Fridays, crews would forklift barrels of the used flammable liquids down a bumpy sandy road, dumping solvents, paint and metal chips onto the hulks of broken aircraft and tanks at a burn pit. One weekend a month, airfield firefighters would light up the toxic sludge and then douse the roaring fires with foam.

In 1984, an anonymous caller tipped off Fort Ord’s officials that “approximately 30 55-gallon drums,” containing about 600 gallons of a “solvent-type liquid” had been illegally spilled there, an Army report said. The state, which ordered a cleanup two years later, determined the Army had mismanaged the site in a way that threatened both ground and surface waters.

And the burn pit wasn’t the base’s only polluted site.

In 1991, when the Army began investigating what had actually been disposed of at the base’s dump overlooking Monterey Bay, officials told the public the trash was similar to what one would find in the landfill of any small city, according to transcripts of community meetings.

While it’s true that much of the trash going into that dump came from nearby houses — food scraps, old furniture, busted appliances, even gasoline — the Army officials who spoke at the meetings made no mention of the toxic stew of paints and solvents that today are banned from open landfills. The solvent TCE was among dozens of pollutants that scientists discovered as early as 1985 and today still exists in concentrations above the legal limit for drinking water in the aquifer below, according to local and federal water quality reports.

“The water from the aquifer above leaks down into the aquifer below and the pollution just gets deeper,” said Dan O’Brien, a former board member of the Marina Coast Water District, which took over the Army’s wells in 2001. “The toxic material remains in the soil under where it was dumped. Every time it rains, more of the toxin in the soil leeches down into the water table.”

The Army’s early tests of Fort Ord’s wells near the landfill detected levels of TCE 43 separate times from 1985 to 1994. The VA told the AP the contamination was “within the allowable safe range” in areas that provided drinking water.

But 18 of those TCE hits exceeded legal safety limits; one reading was five times that amount. It’s unclear how long and at what concentrations TCE may have been in the water before 1985. And TCE was only one problem. The EPA identified more than 40 “chemicals of concern” in soil and groundwater.

“It was not recognized that it was so toxic back then, and they threw it on the ground after use. They used a ton of it. Now, it’s the most pervasive groundwater contaminant we have,” said Thomas Burke, an environmental epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former EPA official.

Contractors initially brought in to clean up the contaminated groundwater were warned not to tell community members what they found in their drinking water, specifically not the news media or even local public agencies, according to a 1985 military memo.

At the time, there were elevated levels of TCE in the aquifers, yet the military assured the public the drinking water was safe.

“There never have been any test results that indicate that Fort Ord’s water was unsafe,” an Army official told several local papers in August 1985.

Since then, advances in medical science have increased the understanding of the dangers of the chemicals at Fort Ord. TCE, for example, is now a known human carcinogen, and epidemiological studies indicate a possible link between TCE and blood cancers like non-Hodgkin lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

TCE “circulates in the body real effectively when you breathe it or drink it,” Burke said. “It’s related strongly to kidney cancer, the development of kidney cancers and suspected in several other cancers.”

Julie Akey spent years collecting names of people who lived at Fort Ord and were later diagnosed with cancers. Her database eventually grew to more than 400 people, nearly 200 of which were listed as having those blood cancers.

___

Akey spent most of her Fort Ord days in a classroom, studying Arabic. But in the afternoons and evenings, she’d run along the coastline and do military drills. At home, she watered her small vegetable plot with the base’s water supply, harvesting the fresh crops to chop into salads.

She filled her water bottle from the tap before heading out each morning, and thought nothing of the showers she took each night. After all, she was among hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the base’s history who did the same.

She fell ill in Bogota, Colombia, in 2016. She’d left the military after nearly six years as a translator and interrogator to become a State Department foreign service officer, a dream job that gave her the chance to travel the world with her twin sons. Quite suddenly she became fatigued with a persistent ache in her bones. Soon she was in screaming pain.

When the Colombian doctors couldn’t find a cause, Akey was sent to the U.S. for what she assumed would be a quick trip. She left plants on the mantel, food in the refrigerator and clothes at the dry cleaners.

She never went back.

After weeks at the Cleveland Clinic, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer that attacks plasma cells, and is most often detected in elderly African American men. The disease is treatable but has no cure.

“I was a zombie,” she said. “I cried all the time.”

Worried about keeping her government health insurance, she applied to work at a nearby airport as a part-time baggage checker while recovering from a bone marrow transplant.

“You don’t ever think you’re going to have cancer at 46. Why? Why do I get this crazy cancer that no one’s ever heard of? So, I started looking for answers,” she said.

Akey meticulously reviewed her assignments in Spain and Haiti, her stints in Guyana, Ecuador, Nigeria, at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Gordon in Georgia. And Fort Ord — a federal Superfund site.

“I think that that was my answer,” she said.

Akey read as much as she could about the base, and searched for others like her. She combed through EPA reports, water records, newspaper clippings and obituaries. She scoured social media, and built a database of sick veterans; it’s grown to 491 people to date.

Soon after Akey started a Facebook group in June of 2019, she connected with Tracy Lindquist. Lindquist’s husband, Scott, was stationed at Fort Ord for two years in the 1980s. He has three types of rare cancers, including multiple myeloma. He had a stem cell transplant a few years back, and has been on chemotherapy since 2014.

He has health insurance through the VA, but when he applied for disability payments that would have allowed him to stop working, Tracy said, his claims were denied — twice.

Until May, he drove a van for $11 an hour, shuttling people with developmental disabilities from their group homes to daylong workshops. Sometimes he had to change the oil or do maintenance, and the physical labor was hard on him, Tracy said. Then he started having seizures, and could no longer drive. He tried working three days a week, cleaning the vans and assisting clients, but he couldn’t even manage that. Earlier this month, he was approved for Social Security disability payments.

“Scott hardly ever left the base and he drank water like a fish, and that water was contaminated,” Tracy said. “I know there are people out there, they’ve lost legs and arms, and they need to take care of those people who got hurt in action. But this is a disability, too.”

Debi Schoenrock, who lived around the corner from Akey’s house at Fort Ord, was diagnosed in 2009 with multiple myeloma at 47. Like Akey, she was stunned. She was a military wife and lived on base for three years, from 1990 until 1993. She’d never been sick, and had no family history of cancer. Nobody said anything about toxic substances, she said.

In 1991, the Army surveyed dozens of community members to find out what they knew about groundwater contamination at Fort Ord. Everyone said they were concerned, and no one reported receiving any information from the Army.

Five years later, a federal report assured them that “because the concentration of contamination detected in the past in Fort Ord and Marina drinking water wells was low and the duration was not over a lifetime (70-years), those exposures will not likely result in adverse health effects.”

Decades on, such health assessments at Fort Ord and other military bases are outdated and based on old science, said Burke of Johns Hopkins.

“A 1990s health assessment is a weak thing,” he said.

Peter deFur, a biologist who worked as an EPA-funded scientific adviser at the base, agrees. The report “stated that there could not be future health effects, which is not possible to know,” he said.

While the federal government has established acceptable standards for the amount of TCE in drinking water, no level of such carcinogens is safe, according to the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. Complicating matters, TCE vaporizes easily, and when it is inhaled it can be even more dangerous, according to a National Toxicology Program assessment.

William Collins, who is leading Fort Ord’s cleanup for the Army, said he’s never heard of anyone sickened by pollution at the base. Like the VA, Collins points to the 25-year-old study that found no likely human risks from exposure at Fort Ord. He said anyone can request a new, updated study if they want, which is what happened at Camp Lejeune in 2017.

Federal health officials told the AP no one has done so at Fort Ord.

___

LeVonne Stone and her husband, Donald, were living at Fort Ord when the base shut down. LeVonne had a civilian job there, and Donald had been in the 7th Infantry Division.

During the base conversion, Stone formed the Fort Ord Environmental Justice Network, demanding answers about the toxic materials and the impact on friends and neighbors, who, at the time, made up the only significant Black community on California’s central coast. But she said military and state officials were determined to develop the valuable coastal property and, in her mind, didn’t want to deal with the pollution.

“We tried telling everybody, the state, the federal, everybody,” she said. “There’s so many people who have died of cancer. They have not done anything for the community locally. … They just turned their heads, they looked the other way.”

There have been efforts in recent years to force the government to come to grips with the effects of the military’s environmental abuses.

Numerous bills have been introduced seeking to compensate veterans sickened by exposure to toxic chemicals during their service, but nothing significant has passed.

Last year President Joe Biden called on the VA to examine the impact of burn pits and other airborne hazards. In November, the White House announced that soldiers exposed to burn pits in a handful of foreign countries, who developed any of three specific ailments — asthma, rhinitis and sinusitis — within 10 years can receive disability benefits.

The Board of Veterans Appeals has ruled repeatedly that there’s no presumptive service connection for any disease — stroke, cancer, vision problems, heart disorders and more — due to exposure to toxic chemicals at Fort Ord, according to an AP review of claims.

The VA told the AP that it is updating how it determines links between medical conditions and military service, and encourages veterans who believe their ailments may have been caused by their service to file a claim.

Burke, the Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, said doing a study of health effects of living at Fort Ord now is difficult, if not impossible. “We can’t reproduce what happened on that base in California,” he said. “We need to admit we exposed people to a huge amount of toxic materials.”

And it’s not just a matter of exposures in the past.

Today Fort Ord is home to a small public university; some students live in former Army housing and spend weekends “Ording,” exploring the abandoned, and contaminated, military buildings. More than 1.5 million mountain bikers, hikers and horseback riders a year enjoy some 85 miles of trails in a vast national monument. Brand-new neighborhoods with million-dollar homes are being built across the street from the Superfund landfill cleanup. Local water officials say drinking water is now pulled from other areas and treated before being delivered to customers.

Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta grew up next to Fort Ord, went through basic training on the base and now runs a nonprofit institute there.

Too often, he said, the military does whatever is necessary at its bases to ready troops for war, “and they don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the implications of what will happen once they leave.”

Panetta said the military is abandoning communities, leaving huge messes to clean up.

“I think that they have every right to ask the question whether or not whatever physical ailments they may have was in part due to the failure to provide proper cleanup,” Panetta said. “And in those situations, there is liability. And somebody has to take care of people who have been adversely impacted.”

___

For Akey and other veterans with cancer, it’s a matter of accountability. Health insurance, disability benefits and an acknowledgment of wrongdoing, she said, “isn’t asking for too much.”

“You’re not just serving for six years, like me, and then you’re out,” she said. “If you’ve been given cancer, that’s a life sentence.”

On a recent foggy morning, Gandy, the former airplane mechanic, walked past the rusting hangar at the old airfield where he used to work. The single-landing strip and buildings are now the Marina Municipal Airport. But much of the legacy military infrastructure remains, including sheds with old paint cans, an oil separator the size of a school bus and disconnected nozzles and hoses.

Gandy became an outspoken activist along with LeVonne Stone, and also founded community groups to maintain pressure on the military to clean up the site.

His group repeatedly sued the Army, but a judge agreed with Defense Department attorneys who said the claims were moot because a rigorous cleanup was underway.

Gandy, now 70, said he talked to the base commanders, every mayor and health and safety officer. Twenty-five years later, Gandy’s comments — captured in videos and transcripts of contentious community meetings — seem prescient.

“I told them, ‘If we do what we need to do now, nobody will know that we did the right thing. But if we do it wrong, they’re going to know, because in about 20 years people are going to start dying,’” he said.

The AP obtained a roster of Gandy’s co-workers on a single day at the airfield in 1986. There were 46 pilots and welders, mechanics and radio engineers. Today, he was told, almost a third of them are dead, many of cancers and rare diseases, some in their 50s.

He knew three former colleagues had died, not 13. “I feel terrible,” he said, tearing up. “It breaks my heart. Those guys were good guys and they deserved better.”

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.