Message to EPA Employees from Administrator Zeldin: Reaffirming EPA's Elevation Policy (March 7, 2025)
Colleagues,
As U.S. Environmental Protection Agency employees, we are part of a team charged with protecting human health and the environment. It is such an honor to be here at EPA and to work alongside of you. As I’ve visited with offices here in headquarters and on the road at our labs and regional offices, I’ve seen your dedication to our mission firsthand. It’s incredible how well EPA has been rising to the occasion to help communities with massive emergency response needs.
EPA issued the original elevation policy in January 2016, following the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Our experiences during the Flint water crisis underscore the important role that each one of us can play in ensuring that EPA identifies and appropriately addresses human health and environmental risks consistent with its authorities. I am affirming, as every Administrator has done since 2016, the importance of elevating human health and environmental risks so that we can properly assess and respond at appropriate policy and government levels in a timely and effective manner.
Our agency is responsible for ensuring the protection of all Americans – and we are required to consider when human health risks are not receiving the appropriate level of awareness, attention, and action. We need open communication and transparency at all levels in the agency to ensure such risks are elevated and mitigated – among our peers, across organizational lines, and between the regions and headquarters. We must use sound judgment in identifying and communicating issues and do so in a way that enables us to engage the full decision-making and operational resources of EPA.
I also want to make clear that elevating issues supplements, not replaces, standard office protocols. Our first obligation is to notify our supervisors and management. An issue elevated at the regional level must be communicated to headquarters and vice versa so that we ensure the agency's response is proactive and coordinated. In addition to the usual and vital avenues of communication between and among teammates, co-workers, and managers, the agency has a web-based tool that allows an EPA employee anonymously to notify agency senior management of a perceived unaddressed significant risk to human health or the environment that is within the scope of the EPA’s authorities.
Characteristics of issues that fall under this “Report an Issue” tool could include the following:
- There appears to be a substantial threat to human health or the environment.
- EPA is or can reasonably be expected to be a focus of the need for action.
- Other authorities have a role in addressing the threat and may need federal assistance, including when those authorities appear to be unable to address or unsuccessful in effectively addressing such a threat.
- Recourse to normal enforcement and compliance tools is not appropriate or unlikely to succeed in the near term.
- High and sustained public attention and concern is possible. The risk may involve a matter or subject handled by EPA or a different governmental body.
For EPA employees to provide a notification, please click on this link to Identify an Unaddressed Significant Public Health or Environmental Risk. You may also wish to review the record of past submitted notifications and the corresponding responses.
The notification will be shared with the Office of the Administrator and with a senior-level team that includes representatives of regional and national offices. The role of the team is to promptly assess and recommend any next steps for the reported concern.
It is important that everyone raise concerns quickly and think creatively when a broader perspective would suggest that a larger human health or environmental issue is at stake. Together we help the agency carry out its mission when we promptly elevate within the agency significant human health or environmental risks.
Lee Zeldin
EPA Administrator