Great Lakes lab hit by DOGE is hanging on — for now 

If the Trump administration had its way, an Ann Arbor-based research lab that studies the Great Lakes and its coastal ecosystems would be gone. 

So far, the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory has survived the administration’s attempt to eliminate it entirely, and it’s continuing to operate with its federal funding largely intact thanks to members of Congress who defied the White House’s wishes. 

But the lab is running at a fraction of its former capacity after early staff purges from the administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency effort aimed at squeezing the federal workforce. Former lab employees and allies of the research hub say the scaled-back organization is suffering from a loss of talent and institutional knowledge and is losing its ability to foresee disasters that could hurt the lakes and the communities that rely on them.

“The science allows you to look forward, predict and anticipate problems and crises to help us get ahead of those,” said Deborah Lee, the former director of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, or GLERL. Lee retired from her position in February 2025 as the DOGE operation was getting under way. 

Supporters of the lab say that scientific work is suffering after a wave of firings in early 2025, followed by voluntary departures from staffers who opted to accept the administration’s incentives for federal employees to retire early or resign.

“The big takeaway is that the laboratory has lost significant capacity in fundamental ecosystem research,” Lee said. “The second takeaway is that it has lost significant ability to communicate to the public the value of the science and to educate the public on the value of the science.” 

Lee, who had planned her retirement for about a year, was preparing for her farewell ceremony in late February 2025 when she received a list of employees that were to be fired by DOGE, she told Michigan Advance in a recent interview. 

“I was given 10 minutes to select one person off that list to not be fired,” Lee said. “That was all the input that I was permitted to have. I had no ability to identify who or shape the dismissals based on needs or efficiency.” 

The laboratory “went from 52 federal employees down to 34,” Lee said, noting that it put the lab at one fewer employee than it had when she started there a decade ago. 

The cuts included eight employees who were fired in February 2025 who were on “probationary” status, meaning they were new to their jobs or had been recently promoted, according to data compiled by AFGE 3908, a union that represents current and former laboratory staff. The administration targeted those positions, which have fewer protections, across the government as part of their early staff purge. 

By June 2025, the lab’s federal workforce was down about 35% from earlier that year, according to the union data. That included the probationary workers and others who retired or took administration incentives to leave their jobs. 

Targeted by Trump for closure

The Trump administration wants to eliminate the lab entirely. 

In its fiscal 2026 budget request to Congress, the White House sought to close NOAA’s GLERL locations in Ann Arbor and Muskegon. Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget request would also zero out the NOAA budget that funds GLERL. 

GLERL directed inquiries about its staffing and its work to Boulder, Colo.-based NOAA spokesperson Theo Stein, who said NOAA is “unable to address specific personnel questions” and declined to provide details about how many employees have left or about which, if any, were replaced. 

“The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory continues to pursue its mission to conduct scientific research on the Great Lakes and coastal ecosystems, to create useful observations, data, models, and predictions to help manage water quality, ice cover, water levels, fisheries, and coastal safety, and to share that knowledge with decision-makers and the public,” Stein said. 

Stein referred questions about the budget to the White House, which referred questions about the funding levels to NOAA and the White House Office of Management and Budget. OMB did not respond to a request for comment. This story will be updated when a response is received.

The Trump administration hasn’t gotten its wish to shutter the lab. 

“The zeroing out of the NOAA research budget that was proposed did not come to fruition,” said Gregory Dick, director of the Cooperative Institute of Great Lakes Research, which partners with the Great Lakes laboratory and co-locates its research arm at the GLERL site in Ann Arbor. Despite the administration’s proposed cuts, GLERL’s base funding “is close to flat, and so there haven’t been major cuts to the base funding for the NOAA lab,” Dick said. 

‘They’re stretched’

The Ann Arbor-based lab, launched in 1974, is one of seven NOAA research laboratories across the country. It’s the only one located in the Great Lakes region. Since its start, the lab’s research has included algal blooms caused by excess nutrients, the impact of climate change on the Great Lakes and invasive species. 

“It’s the only federal freshwater research laboratory that serves the Great Lakes, so what we’re working to do is to fully fund the work,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Ann Arbor) told the Advance in an interview. “They’re working as hard as they can and they’re stretched.”

Next month’s midterm elections could tip the scales of power in Washington and shift priorities in Congress. “After this election, maybe we can get them back to their former level,” Dingell said of the lab. 

The laboratory has been without a permanent director since Lee’s retirement in early 2025. Jesse Feyen, the deputy director, is also performing the duties of the lab’s director. NOAA declined to comment on whether it plans to fill the role on a permanent basis. 

The lab’s communications team has also taken a hit. A pinned post on GLERL’s X account, dated Feb. 27, 2025, says: “Due to a reduction in staff, NOAA GLERL’s communications services will be taking an indefinite hiatus.” 

Nicole Rice, a longtime NOAA employee who had been promoted in GLERL’s communications shop, was among those probationary employees fired in 2025. 

“I was a 13-year continuous fed and I had been promoted due to some retirements,” Rice told the Advance in a recent interview. “But technically, my job title changed and they used that against me to say I was still in a probationary status.” She’s still fighting her termination with the Merit Systems Protection Board. 

The lab lost its communications branch “in its entirety” and lost much of its ecosystem branch staff, Lee said. 

A reorganization of the laboratory merged its former ecosystem dynamics branch into another office. 

“Losing the ecosystems dynamic branch is probably one of the worst things that could happen,” Lee said. “That was where we produced all of our fundamental ecosystem research, and that research enabled us to develop state-of-the-art, state-of-the-science new forecasting products.”

That includes the laboratory’s harmful algal bloom forecast, which extends in three dimensions through the depths of the lake, she said. “If we had not been able to do the fundamental research in the laboratory that showed how that harmful algae moved up and down through the water column, and what caused it to form the thick scums on the surface, we wouldn’t have been able to produce a three-dimensional harmful algal bloom forecast.” 

The remaining staff in the lab has done a “really good job of finding ways” to get critical day-to-day activities done, said Dick. That includes going out into lakes and taking samples and measuring harmful toxins in the water to alert drinking water treatment plants. 

The cost of that “was a lot of the longer-term planning and really strategic research to prepare for the future,” he said. “To do the cutting-edge science that’s needed to develop the next generation of forecasts and products and scientific information that supports decision-making and supports the health and prosperity and safety of people on the Great Lakes.”