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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is bracing for even more devastating cuts to its workforce – with another 1,000 workers set to be let go, officials confirmed to The Independent.
The latest firings would affect 10 percent of the agency’s remaining workforce, though it’s unclear which departments would be hit in the new round after 1,2000 were let go late last month.
“NOAA was already understaffed for the mission that is congressionally mandated. And to sustain this initial round of cuts, much less further cuts, much less the fiscal cuts that are in the continuing resolution, there’s going to be pain and a lot of it,” an unnamed official who left during the Biden-Trump transition told The Independent.
The first layoffs hit the agency at the end of last month, as officials warned about the impacts on the weather forecasting agency.
“Until NOAA’s response is provided we won’t know which personnel and which offices will be affected, but a cut of that size (1,029 staff) on top of the almost 1,200 already either terminated or issued deferred resignations will have significant impact on NOAA’s mission,” former administrator Dr. Richard Spinrad told The Independent in a statement.
He repeated the message that even before terminations, retirements or reduction in force that “NOAA was already understaffed.”
Since then, the effects have threatened critical and local forecasting facilities, commercial fisheries and canceled internships.
“Everything that’s happened is just making the U.S. less safe and really making the world less safe,” Tom DiLiberto, a climate scientist who had worked at NOAA since 2010, previously told The Independent. “…This affects everybody, no matter where you live.”
The former official, who called terminations “capricious, malicious, ill-informed” and “poorly executed,” said they had heard through the grapevine that the Boston, Boise, Idaho, and at least one forecasting center in the middle of the country had been so decimated by buy-outs and terminations that it was unclear if they would be able to sustain staffing of the offices 24/7. The staff were doing their best to provide services with the workers they had.
“So it is, like, cutting off your nose to spite your face. Which seems a bit counterintuitive if your goal is really to serve the American people,” said the official.
Since the first cuts, there have been reports of some reinstatements at the National Weather Service. The official said they felt like the outcry over the impacts had been successful.
“But, it’s not just the weather forecasters on the ground. It’s the technicians that keep all of the computer power running. It’s the folks that operate the satellites, that are also part of NOAA. It’s our ocean data buoy network. Our tide and gauge network, NOAA is a great example of how the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And, you need all of those parts in order to effectively provide the data services and products that the American public has come to expect,” the official said.
The official said that if today is meant to be a time when the American public gets more for less, that might not work at NOAA.
“Especially when the elements of Project 2025 have the weather service being privatized. That means you’re going to pay for data you get for essential six cents a day now,” the official said. “And, you’re going to pay a whole lot more than six cents a day to get it from the private weather companies.”
The six cents is how much each American pays to fund NOAA’s entire operation per day.
“I think that there’s a lot of oops-ing going on. And, that may be the way you do it in corporate America,” the official added, “But, when you’re breaking things that are public services, you can’t necessarily easily repair or maybe ever repair the things that you have broken.”
