This article is reported by AfroLA and co-published by AfroLA, Guardian US and the Mammoth Sheet. It’s the first of several stories examining the impact of Los Angeles’s extensive landownership in the Owens Valley.

A red horse statue perched on a 12ft pole greets drivers coming to the town of Bishop from the south. It’s one of the first landmarks here, part of Mike Allen’s corrugated metal feed store – a local institution that sells camping gear, livestock feed and moving equipment in this expansive region of inland California.

But Allen desperately wants to sell it so he can retire.

“I own the building, the inventory, and the asphalt for the parking lot,” Allen said. “But I don’t own the land under it.”

And so Allen can’t get rid of it.

The land under Allen’s store belongs to an owner 300 miles away: the city of Los Angeles, specifically its department of water and power (DWP).

LA has owned large swathes of the Owens valley, where Bishop is located, for more than a century. The city first swooped in in the early 1900s, at the dawn of California’s water wars. As the metropolis grew at breakneck speed, its leaders searched for ways to sustain that population, and when they entered the Owens valley, they found what LA lacked: plenty of water.

Over the next decades, LA agents secretly, and aggressively, worked to buy up Owens valley land and take ownership of the water rights that came with those parcels. By 1933, DWP had gobbled up the large majority of all properties in the towns of Bishop, Big Pine, Independence and Lone Pine.

Today, DWP owns 90% of privately available land in Inyo county, which encompasses the Owens valley, and 30% of all the land in neighboring Mono county. Aqueducts transporting water from both counties provided 395,000 acre-feet of water to LA last year – about 73% of the city’s water supply.

Stories of LA’s brazen land grab in the Owens valley have been told for decades – it was loosely depicted in the 1974 film Chinatown. And the fierce legal battles that have ensued, including over the environmental impact, have made regional headlines for years.

But residents, business owners, and some municipal leaders in this rural region say LA’s landownership in the valley has taken on a new, and crippling, dimension in recent years.

DWP has taken steps to exert even greater control over its land holdings in the valley. An AfroLA review of hundreds of documents obtained through records requests, as well as interviews with municipal officials, residents, legal experts and business owners, reveals DWP started changing the terms of leases in 2015, and formally added restrictions on the transfer of leases from one owner to the next in 2016.

DWP’s moves have meant that hundreds of families who have built lives in the Eastern Sierra region have seen their plans upended, often being left with the stark choice of abandoning their livelihoods or fighting DWP.

For Allen, the owner of the feed store, the 2016 changes mean that he can’t retire to Montana, where his wife moved seven years ago.

Selling the store had always been Allen’s retirement plan. But since the new owner will not be able to transfer their lease or sell the business to recoup their investment, he hasn’t found a buyer. Meanwhile, his own lease has gone into holdover status: he continues to pay his rent and abides by the terms of his lease, but he can be evicted at will with 30 days’ notice.

Leases lapsing into holdover status have long been an issue, but between 2015 and 2023, more leases have gone into holdover than did before.

Allen now faces a brutal choice: continue to make month-to-month payments on an inactive lease, or surrender the building to DWP and abandon his business. If he lets the lease go back to DWP, he has to liquidate all of his inventory and demolish all of the improvements he has invested in over the years – including the asphalt in the parking lot and the building itself. That’s just a standard clause in DWP leases.

Since DWP implemented the changes, at least 13% of leases in Inyo county have reverted back to DWP control, an analysis of property tax records reveals.

Los Angeles is not alone in importing water from hundreds of miles away. San Francisco obtains most of its water from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir and water system in Yosemite, and the California state water project gets most of its water from rural areas in northern California. LA’s also not the only city that secures its water supply through land holdings – New York City has similar landlord-tenant relationships. But DWP in the Owens valley is the “poster child” for negatively impacting the broader local economy, according to Greg James, special counsel for Inyo county.

As water becomes increasingly scarce in a more extreme climate, urban communities like Los Angeles will increasingly need to rely on imported water, obtained at the expense of the environment and economies of rural and Indigenous communities. Los Angeles claims to be working toward diversifying its water portfolio through stormwater capture, recycled water and conservation as well as importing water from the Colorado River basin and northern California. But even after conservation efforts, LA projects it will still need to get about 30% of its water from the Owens valley by 2045, meaning the city and the valley are locked in a relationship for the foreseeable future.

Los Angeles DWP did not respond to a detailed request for comment from AfroLA. DWP’s Eastern Sierra division also did not respond to a request for comment.

The Land of Flowing Water

Inyo county is a land of extremes. The region is larger than the state of Vermont but fewer than 20,000 people call it home. In its west, the peaks of the Eastern Sierra tower 10,000ft above the Owens valley. In its south lie the desert landscapes of Death valley. Brave hikers can trek from Mt Whitney, the highest point in the continental US, to Badwater Basin in Death valley, the lowest point.

During winter, the Owens valley ground is parched. But come spring, when snowmelt runs from the Sierra and White Mountains down to the Owens River, the valley turns lush green. The Paiute, who have lived in the valley for thousands of years, named it Payahuunadü, the Land of Flowing Water.

William Mulholland, LA’s famed water and infrastructure czar, realized the valley’s potential when he camped in the area in 1904. LA agents soon went on a buying spree, locking in land and water holdings.

In the late 30s, the city briefly authorized the sale of about half of Bishop’s properties back into private ownership, but by the mid-40s, DWP had stopped that practice. Between 1967 and today, DWP added 10,000 more acres in the valley to its holdings.

Today, LA owns 252,000 of the county’s 6.5m acres. The federal government, which owns the land in Death Valley national park and Inyo national forest, holds much of the rest.

DWP’s extensive holdings make it the de facto landlord for many of Inyo county’s residents. DWP leases the majority of the region back to those living there – to the county government, to ranchers, to veterinarians and retailers, to families who have lived here for generations and people compelled to move in because of its stunning outdoors.

Living here had long been affordable, too. LA’s leases were inexpensive, and for decades, the lease process was simple and straightforward, valley residents said. Much like the way many mobile home parks operate, property owners own the structures of their homes and businesses, but not the land underneath. DWP leases them that land through agreements with fixed terms, at fixed rates. Lease holders pay either month-to-month or yearly. When a lessee previously sold their home or business, the lease for the property transferred to the new owner after a credit score check, lease holders recalled. Lease transfers were hardly ever rejected, they said.

That changed in 2016. That year, DWP ruled the way it had been treating leases conflicted with the 1924 Los Angeles city charter, which outlaws the sale or lease of city property except at public auction. From then on, DWP has only allowed leases to be transferred once. That meant an existing tenant could pass on their lease, but the new tenant could not, and instead would have to let the land revert back to LA control.

If leases go out to bid, DWP auctions the lease off to the highest bidder. Under the old system, the lessee was able to profit directly from the sale of their business. Now, DWP reaps the financial benefits of the auction.

DWP retroactively applied this policy to leases established before 2016. For lessees like Mike Allen, who have leased for decades, it has devalued their businesses and made them difficult to sell, because a new owner has no guarantee of recouping their costs.

The department carved out an exemption for families, allowing leases to transfer within a family an unlimited number of times.

“For 100 years they’ve never cared,” said Mark Lacey, a Lone Pine resident and rancher who sits on the Owens Valley Committee, a non-profit that helped negotiate environmental mitigations in a water agreement between LA and the county. “Now all of a sudden, you know, somebody decided, ‘Well, we’re going to actually follow the letter of the law based on the LA city charter that says, you know, we can’t do this. We have to put [leases] out to bid.’”

Many lessees often only learned of the changes when they went to renew their leases, or tried to transfer them.

Tom Talbot was the valley’s veterinarian for more than 45 years. Talbot owned Bishop veterinary hospital, a yellow cottage on the north side of Bishop near the intersection of Route 395 and Route 6. It’s the only full-service vet practice for hundreds of miles in every direction.

In 2015, Talbot wanted to retire from medicine while still healthy enough to ranch full-time. But when he went to sell the hospital and transfer his lease, he said, he found completely rewritten rules.

Talbot had hoped his son-in-law Tyler Ludwick, and Nicole Milici, who had volunteered working at the clinic since she was a teenager, would jointly take over the business.

But the new transfer policy meant Milici could not be put on the lease. As a relative, Ludwick could. “We’re 50% partners in the business,” said Ludwick. “But it’s all me on the lease.”

The lease structure forced Ludwick to take on more risk, he said in an interview, leaving him at the mercy of changes to his lease terms. But it was just the start of the veterinarians’ problems.

“It’s just a giant handcuff that completely stymies any possibility of growth, equity, business advancement, because you don’t have anything real to sell,” Ludwick said.

Ludwick’s lease has been expired for years, and DWP hasn’t renewed it. Without a lease active for the long run, it’s been hard to secure funds for repairs and improvements, he said.

The yellow and brick building that houses the clinic is 60 years old and “rotting out from under us”, said Ludwick.

After Talbot transferred his lease to Ludwick, lease policies changed again. Starting in 2016, the family transfer policy was limited to transfers between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, and between spouses. As Talbot’s son-in-law, Ludwick would never have been able to take over the lease.

Ludwick and Milici recently purchased an out-of-business Ford dealership on some rare non-DWP-owned private land. They built a brand new veterinary hospital on the land and they plan to use their current lease to provide specialty care, such as physical therapy.

“The good news is we got something that is ours,” said Ludwick. “It gives us freedom.”

Reagan Slee, owner of a sporting goods store, went through a different set of disappointments.

In 2019, DWP changed its stance on selling properties to lessees. The new policy allows some business owners the chance to purchase the land they are leasing. Slee’s store, filled with hunting and fishing gear, was at the top of that list.

Appraisers appraised, surveyors surveyed, and more than a year later Slee had a purchase agreement with the city of LA. That’s where progress stopped.

“The price was fair,” Slee said. He put money in the bank, then waited. More than 18 months have passed since Slee signed his purchase agreement.

“There was some excitement a year or two ago where we thought, ‘OK, this is finally going to happen,’” Slee said. “But now, I would be surprised if they called and said, ‘Hey, we’re ready to move forward.’”

Slee’s lease expired in 2017, so he, too, is in holdover status. It would take more than a year to draft a new lease in order to sell his business, he said.

Meanwhile, Slee struggles to upgrade or perform maintenance on his store. “You’re invested in something that is unknown, that is not yours and then there is no date attached to it. The value of the business is worth almost nothing, because if I was to go sell, it can’t be transferred.”

According to Slee, DWP could keep the lease in holdover for 15 years, or it could pull the plug tomorrow. DWP did not respond to questions about Slee’s case.

Since the transfer policies went into effect nearly a decade ago, approximately 20 leases have changed hands, according to AfroLA’s review of tax assessor data.

Meanwhile, at least 49 of DWP’s 354 leases and use permits in Inyo county have been removed from circulation and not put back out to bid. Use permits, which function similarly to leases, are “agreements for private use”, according to the aqueduct operations plan. These include people’s backyards, pasture for horses and other uses.

Tamara Cohen, a former Inyo county public health officer who served for 23 years, saw the use permit for her backyard return to DWP control. For years, she lived on a multi-home lot with two business partners, Kenney Scruggs and Benett Kessler, and a shared 1.3-acre backyard. The homes and the land underneath them were in a trust, with Scruggs’s name on the use permit. When Scruggs died, the DWP agreement passed to Kessler. And when Kessler passed away, Cohen was ready to take it over in turn. Instead, a DWP real estate officer paid her a visit, and told her to vacate the yard within 60 days.

The rules had changed since 2013, when Kessler, an investigative reporter who spent her career monitoring DWP, took over the agreement, Cohen recalled the agent saying. Because the agreement was held in a trust, the agent said, it was taken out of circulation and would need to go to auction instead of being transferred.

The agent didn’t seem happy about the prospect of an auction either, Cohen recalled: “[He] was pretty clear with us that going for the bid process was just really a hassle for him to do,” said Cohen. “He said they are trying to get rid of these kinds of [backyard] leases.”

Cohen was later given until the end of the original agreement, an additional 18 months, to clear out and vacate the land. This included ripping out a patio and Scruggs’ garden. Now there is nothing but dirt and locust trees. Last spring, Cohen spent $7,000 to remove the dead vegetation on DWP’s property in order to prevent flooding and fires.

“It’s disconcerting. The trees have come down on what used to be leased land and it’s scary – it’s such a fuel for fires,” Cohen said, pointing to the dead locust trees that line the creek behind her home. “That used to be a lease that was maintained, and now it’s not. It’s a fire risk.”

The cost of drought

The circumstances LA found itself in when it applied the lease changes were similar to the ones it faced when it arrived in the Owens valley more than a century ago: it was desperate for water.

If LA’s 200,000 residents were thirsty in 1904, today, the city has a daunting task of servicing 3.8 million people living in an ever-warming climate. Much of the south-west US has faced crippling drought conditions at various points in past decades, with states and cities competing for few resources.

DWP has also seen its operations in the Eastern Sierra curtailed. The origins of a trio of lawsuits settled between the late 80s and the early aughts are long and complicated. But the outcome of the suits, initiated over rules on environmental protections, legally requires DWP to leave hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water in Inyo and Mono counties for the towns; people, including Indigenous nations; and wildlife of the region.

The drought lasting from 2011 to 2016 marked the driest years ever recorded in California. In 2014, internal DWP documents show, department staff recognized it needed to make changes to “prevent waste of water” in some of its most important leases: those of Inyo county’s ranchers.

The majority of acres leased by DWP in the Eastern Sierra are to ranchers, who graze their herds in the shadows of rugged Sierra Nevada mountains.

Ranchers and DWP have a “symbiotic relationship”, said Scott Kemp, whose family ranches more than 1,000 cattle on department land, one of the largest herds in the valley. “We take care of the land … People from Los Angeles can come up here and fish, and do what they do.”

A 2006 internal agency document describes the relationship as such: “The ranch lessees serve as stewards of the land and monitor and manage their leases consistent with LADWP’s goal of providing a reliable high quality water supply to Los Angeles. With the ranch leases providing this function, LADWP is able to concentrate its personnel on maintaining and operating water conveyances.”

In 2014, amid the drought, DWP proposed to the ranchers to change their lease terms to limit the amount of irrigation water they receive as part of their leases in years of normal water supplies. The department also proposed to allow DWP to provide water at its sole discretion in years with low snowmelt from the mountains, and place restrictions on water for cattle to drink.

Inyo county’s water department responded that those changes could violate the 1991 water agreement between the county and DWP.

The proposed lease changes led to conversations between DWP and the trade group representing the ranchers. Both parties agreed on restrictions for how water, particularly for cattle to drink, would be used. They also agreed that ranch lessees from then on could only transfer their lease once. They agreed that DWP would keep the proceeds from leases that would be auctioned off instead of transferred.

A year later, DWP attempted to cut water off from the ranch lessees a second time. In a 27 April 2015 letter, DWP informed ranch lessees it would cut off their water supply in three days. According to a letter dated two days later, “plainly stated, there is insufficient water to meet all water users’ needs”. Concerned community members and the county met with DWP. The solution? Diverting some water destined for Owens Lake, which helped keep toxic dust from the dry lakebed out of the air, to irrigation water for ranchers.

Even though the transfer limits originated with the ranchers, the department applied the policy broadly. On 15 November 2016, commercial lessees and Inyo county supervisors grilled the aqueduct manager about the lease changes during a board meeting.

The county supervisor Jeff Griffiths told the then DWP aqueduct manager he hoped he and the city understood the repercussions of imposing the lease-transfer restrictions the ranchers had agreed to on commercial lessees as well. “This could be the largest economic impact to the community since LA’s original acquiring of Owens valley land,” said Griffiths.

A DWP memo on the origin of the one-time assignment policy that was included in emails between DWP real estate staff and the then board president, Mel Levine, in 2016 only addresses ranch leases, and explains the changes were designed to bring the lease transfer process into compliance with the Los Angeles city charter and state law protecting DWP lessees in Inyo county.

But reporting by AfroLA shows the one-time assignment policy and the family transfer policy are being applied to commercial leases and use permits, such as Cohen’s backyard.

The restrictions that have been imposed on how much water LA can pull out of Inyo county, either through negotiations with the county or the courts, have been extremely costly for the city.

Internal DWP documents indicate that DWP has spent $30m-$40m annually buying water from southern California’s metropolitan water district to offset the water it now leaves in Inyo for the ranchers. The water DWP has been required to provide to Indigenous communities, for environmental mitigation and for agriculture since the water agreements costs the agency at least $124m annually, according to an internal briefing book.

A way of life

Though long constructive, the relationship between DWP and some ranchers has been strained by years of drought and lease changes.

“DWP is nice to us in the wet years,” said Talbot, the former veterinarian, whose ranch is located in the picturesque Round valley just north of Bishop.

In years water is plentiful, the department releases more water and provides flood control measures, Talbot said. But in dry years, DWP limits the ranchers’ water allocation to the minimum it is legally required to provide, he said.

Many Inyo county ranchers have been affected by severe cuts DWP has made to water allocations in Mono county, which doesn’t have the same legal protections as Inyo county.

Mark Lacey said he had to look for pasture land as far away as Oregon and Nebraska when DWP cut water to Mono county in 2015.

“I got transportation costs going up and then coming back. And then I had to pay for that pasture while I was there, as well as everything I have from DWP,” he recalled. “The transportation costs were horrendous.”

“After 2016, I couldn’t afford to do what I did. The price of cattle just didn’t allow me to make those moves,” he said. “Freight was too high. Pasture elsewhere either wasn’t available, or it was poor, [the price] was too high.”

Lacey has seen every drought in the Owens valley since the 70s. He said the 2011-16 drought was not as bad as the 1980s drought, but the impacts were more acute because of the water shutoffs.

For some in the county, the changes to the leases do not outweigh the benefits of LA’s land ownership. The county supervisor Jen Roeser said the agency’s presence in Inyo has been critical to maintaining the rural lifestyle residents enjoy.

Roeser lives in a mobile home on a DWP lease she’s had for decades. “It’s our whole lifestyle. And our purpose in life that we felt we were given was to operate a quality business in the mountains,” she said, one of her dogs napping in the shade of the black locust trees.

Roeser and her husband recently retired from running a mule packing business, which serves tourists hiking deep into the Sierra backcountry and also serves as one of the only ways to fight fires high up in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Bishop’s home to a week-long mule rodeo, and Roeser is a mule rodeo champion.

“[We’ve] introduced families and tourists to amazing experiences that impacted their lives and gave them memories that last generations, and we hear from hundreds of people every year that have memories that are still with them from pack trips. And these leases make that possible,” said Roeser.

On the other side of the Sierra, Roeser explained, the lease rates of winter pasture land have grown increasingly expensive. DWP land, she said, is higher quality than alternatives.

DWP, she added, also stimulates local economies as the county’s largest employer. It provides well-paying jobs – employing engineers and scientists and staff maintaining its infrastructure – with good benefits for local residents, including multigenerational families who live in the county but work for the city of Los Angeles, she said. DWP’s payroll in the Owens valley was approximately $60m.

As Los Angeles takes steps to diversify its water sources, the Eastern Sierra region will still make up a critical supply of the city’s water needs. For the Owens valley, that means a continuation of good jobs, but also the continued presence of a landlord 300 miles away making decisions about its residents’ livelihoods. While decisions, often behind closed doors, are made, lessees like Slee and Allen wait.

Credits

This investigation was supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project, which is funded by the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University | Medill.

The stories are the result of more than two years of records requests, interviews and data analysis by AfroLA. Guardian US provided assistance as a co-publishing partner in the editing, production and promotion of this story. Collaboration and co-publication with the Mammoth Sheet helped ensure that Owens valley residents have ready access to news that directly affects their lives and communities. Thank you to the many people who made reporting and sharing this story possible.

For AfroLA

Justin Allen, technology manager

Dana Amihere, editor

Jennings Hanna, interaction designer

Alexandra Kanik, web developer

Katie Licari, reporter

Stu Patterson, copy editor

Alex Tatusian, visual designer

For Guardian US

Matthew Cantor, copy editor

Will Craft, data editor

Eline Gordts, editor

Thalia Juarez, photo editor

Andrew Witherspoon, data editor

Diane Abbott has confirmed she has been banned from standing as a Labour MP at the next election, bringing to an end a near 40-year career as one of the party’s highest-profile politicians.

The MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington issued a statement to broadcasters on Wednesday morning confirming she had been handed back the Labour whip after a months-long investigation into her conduct, but would not be allowed to stand again as a Labour candidate.

The decision leaves Abbott, the first black woman to be elected to the British parliament, likely to head out of parliament having sat as an MP since 1987.

According to the BBC, Abbott said: “Although the whip has been restored, I am banned for standing as a Labour candidate.”

Separately, Abbott said on X she was “dismayed” that reports overnight suggested she was being barred as a candidate, reflecting a chaotic 24 hours in which her political future hung in the balance.

She appeared to suggest she would not stand as an independent candidate to challenge Labour, tweeting: “Naturally I am delighted to have the Labour Whip restored and to be a member of the PLP. Thank you to all those who supported me along the way. I will be campaigning for a Labour victory.”

Abbott did not respond to a request to comment further.

Her allies had previously said she had not been informed of a reported decision to ban her from standing as a Labour candidate. Reports on Wednesday suggested she had wanted to announce her own retirement but was caught off guard by a story in the Times saying she would be barred from standing for Labour.

Abbott was suspended from the party last year after writing a letter to the Observer that appeared to play down racism against Jewish people. She argued that minority groups such as Jewish people, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people faced similar levels of prejudice to people with red hair.

Abbott apologised for her remarks, was placed under investigation and lost the Labour whip.

Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, sparked some hope among Abbott’s allies when he defended her this year after the Guardian revealed she had been the subject of racist remarks by the Conservatives’ biggest donor, Frank Hester.

Starmer praised Abbott at the time as a “trailblazer”, adding: “She has probably faced more abuse than any other politician over the years on a sustained basis.”

Abbott’s friends were dismayed that she did not get the whip back in the subsequent weeks.

Starmer said this week that the investigation into her conduct was ongoing. But it emerged on Tuesday it had concluded in December, with Abbott being told to complete an online antisemitism training course in February.

Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, said on Wednesday: “The Labour party has been telling everybody this investigation into Diane Abbott is ongoing, [but] it now appears it concluded months ago. So really it’s a question for them to clear this all up, what happened when, be transparent about it.”

John McTernan, a former adviser to Tony Blair, described the events of the last 24 hours as “a mess that could have been avoided”.

Jacqueline McKenzie, a lawyer at Leigh Day and a friend of Abbott, told the BBC on Wednesday: “What was really astonishing was the fact that just this week we saw Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour party, as well as senior officials saying that an investigation was still under way. I think it’s really incumbent upon them to explain. Have they been honest about this process? And I think that’s what’s really shocking.”

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “This is a decision for the Labour party’s national executive committee.”

He sought to put Abbott’s case in the context of Starmer’s desire to clamp down on antisemitism in the party. “Keir Starmer, when he talks about improving standards in the Labour party, he really meant it,” he said.

Asked on Times Radio whether he felt comfortable about the way Abbott’s case had been handled, Streeting said: “No, not particularly.”

The poet Patrick Kavanagh was inspired to write sonnets about the “leafy-with-love” banks of the Grand Canal near Baggot Street bridge in south-central Dublin. There was not much poetry or love on the same stretch of the canal the other day, as rain whipped a row of brightly coloured tents neatly lining the towpath, side by side.

The occupants I met were mostly keeping hidden from the rain and, perhaps, from those who kick the tents and attack volunteer helpers, or the self-styled “patriots” who travel the country burning down designated refugee accommodation sites, chanting that Ireland is full.

But Nabil, who arrived in Ireland on 8 May, told me about his journey from the Gaza Strip, through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, reaching Ireland via “Italia”. Despite the pitiful and precarious conditions, he was relieved to be in the country, he said, and hoped his family – including a newborn – would eventually be able to join him. He made a cradling gesture as he said the word “baby”.

If Nabil had heard about Ireland’s advocacy for Palestinian rights, he might be puzzled by his current plight. As of 28 May, Ireland officially recognises that the Palestinian state exists. Nabil is no longer stateless in the eyes of Ireland – he is just homeless on the streets of its capital.

Ireland’s recognition of Palestine is applauded by millions of people around the world. Younger generations in particular feel immense pride at the willingness of a small country to go out on a limb, to take a historic step that the taoiseach Simon Harris told the Dáil on Tuesday, is “the right thing to do”.

Micheál Martin, the foreign minster, told the Guardian in March that empathy was a factor driving Ireland’s outspokenness on the slaughter and starvation in Gaza. “We’ve experienced famine, we know what it’s like in our psyche,” he said.

Martin is right that Ireland’s national trauma should give its people a particular antenna for injustice. Few families were not touched by mass starvation, displacement or dispossession. My ancestor Rose died at the age of 20 on a “coffin ship” crossing the Atlantic to reach the US in the spring of 1850, when famine had claimed nearly one million lives. I see little difference between her resolve and that of Nabil, and the many others who risk their lives every day to reach Europe.

But if our history can inspire a bold and principled foreign policy, why at home is the state telling a vulnerable Palestinian that the best Ireland can do for him is a pop-up tent and a sleeping bag?

About 1,800 people seeking asylum are homeless in Ireland. Mini-encampments began to mushroom in Dublin after the distressing forcible dismantling by the authorities of a bigger “tent city” on 1 May. The tents keep sprouting because Ireland’s asylum system is broken, and a panicked government, having failed to find spaces for asylum seekers or make them less visible ahead of local and European elections on 7 June, wants to be seen to be putting a “full” sign on the door.

They have become symbolic of immigration as an issue that is dominating an Irish election campaign – for the first time. The toxic context is months of small but persistent protests, clashes and arson attacks on vacant buildings designated for refugee accommodation. No charges have been brought, but online conspiracists, racists and ultra-nationalists, some of whom found an anti-vaxxer, anti-lockdown platform in the pandemic, have openly encouraged anti-refugee hatred.

In December, the government announced that it could no longer provide beds for asylum seekers – only tents. The timing, only weeks after riots in Dublin in which far-right agitators tried to whip up violence against foreigners by circulating a false rumour that an asylum seeker was responsible for a stabbing, was not a coincidence.

Claims and counterclaims about the “Rwanda effect” of UK policy have added a new layer of panic. Is the UK pushing its unwanted asylum seekers to Ireland via Northern Ireland? Gardaí have been stopping and searching buses travelling from Belfast to Dublin.

Either way, tents in the streets are welcome visual evidence for international conspiracists that Europe is swamped by “refugee camps”. To many Irish voters, they signify chaos and failed policy, but also a sense that immigration in all its forms is “out of control”.

And so Ireland, which has never elected a far-right politician, and whose government is showing commendable moral leadership over Palestine, risks heading down the same perilous rightward lurch on immigration as much of the rest of Europe.

Not all of this was inevitable. True, immigration is a very recent Irish phenomenon. Before the mid-1990s, and then an influx of labour from eastern Europe after 2004 that framed the “Celtic Tiger” boom years, the idea of anyone coming to Ireland for work or refuge would have seemed ridiculous.

Refugee numbers have risen sharply since 2022, even if Ireland is not by any stretch the most burdened EU state. In 2013, there were 940 first-time asylum applicants to Ireland. Between 2022 and the end of 2023, there were more than 26,000.So far this year, more Palestinians have applied for protection from Ireland than for the whole of 2023.

The suddenness of the transition from a country that was almost entirely monocultural and white to one in which 20% of the population was born abroad created an obvious space for pushback. Yet, in the 2020 general election, only 1% of people said immigration was an important factor in how they voted. Ireland took in about 100,000 Ukrainians after the 2022 Russian invasion – to zero public outcry. Until late 2023, immigration registered as a concern for only about 5% of respondents in an Irish Times survey.

At least some of the tolerance was the result of planning. I know this because about 3,000 refugees from nearly 30 countries were resettled in small rural places (including my home town) between 2000 and 2019, and a further 2,100 Syrians arrived from UN camps in Lebanon and Jordan between 2015 and 2021, with minimal fuss.

Language and other professional supports were provided. Schools and sports clubs were liaised with, and were happy to have new pupils and players in their midst. A councillor in another part of the region proudly told the local paper in 2023 that most of the Syrians who had arrived a few years earlier had become part of the community. “It’s good for your heart to see it,” he said.

The place where I grew up, and where my family has lived (and emigrated from) for generations, has a population of less than 8,000. Almost imperceptibly, it has gone from homogeneity to multi-ethnicity in 20 years. Syrian families have settled in alongside eastern Europeans. The small Muslim community has a prayer centre a few streets away from the church. Modular housing for 200 Ukrainian refugees opened in July 2023, barely noticed. No doubt racism shows its face occasionally, but immigration has been a non-issue. And this in itself is a remarkable achievement.

Or it was. Now, in a climate of disinformation and hardened mainstream political rhetoric, 63% of voters in Ireland clamour for a tougher asylum policy and more than a third say immigration is a negative thing. A modular homes project like the one that raised no eyebrows a year ago, has drawn violent protests in another town in the region.

A structural housing and rent crisis is often cited as a source of justified anger across Ireland. But refugees are not competing with people trying to get on the housing ladder. It is far-right and anti-immigrant voices who conflate the two issues, to foster a dishonest narrative in which foreigners are jumping the queue. Deliberately or not, the government’s hard talk seems to confirm the connection: you can’t get a house? Don’t worry, no foreigner will get anything better than a tent.

A dehumanising and shambolic refugee system – the current backlog of unprocessed cases is 21,000 people – could have been fixed.

When I was back visiting family this month, it was disturbing to see canvassers for far-right candidates handing out their incoherent and hate-filled flyers for the European elections.

But it’s been even worse to hear elected politicians on local radio, dog-whistling thinly disguised nativism as concern about the safety of local communities. Most people in small towns will not have had a negative encounter with a refugee, but once the public discourse is contaminated it is hard to detoxify.

When trouble flared at a protest against an asylum centre in County Wicklow recently, most of the social media posts egging on the “patriots” were generated in the US, UK and Canada. This suggests that support for hi-vis vest-wearing troublemakers is still fringe. But letting them set the discourse is playing with fire.

Anti-immigration candidates are standing in each of Ireland’s three European parliament constituencies. They may not gain an electoral foothold this time, but the anti-immigrant vote will almost certainly build if the political class nods along with their arguments. A general election must be held by March 2025. And as Ireland’s neighbours elsewhere in Europe have discovered, when mainstream politicians make elections about far-right issues, voters don’t vote mainstream – they vote far right.

In our old world, the national story was simpler: stagnation, unemployment, emigration. Now, having dwindled for a century, the population has, for the first time since the famine, recovered to exceed 5 million people and is growing.

This is good news. The Irish government is running a country which has full employment. It has enough wealth to fix its multiple housing issues and support those communities that are hosting refugees.

It is not too late to challenge the baleful myths of the far right. And just as they have dared to do on Palestine, Ireland’s leaders must pull public opinion with them behind a confident and hopeful narrative for a progressive, inclusive country that knows “the right thing to do”. If Ireland can inspire others with its political and moral leadership in the world, it can do the same at home.

The next government should force all tradespeople who install home heat pumps, solar panels and insulation to sign up to a mandatory accreditation scheme to counter mistrust in the industry, a leading consumer group is demanding.

A report from Which? found that households face “significant anxiety” in choosing tradespeople to fit low-carbon heating systems, such as heat pumps, and insulation after “press stories about poor work and rogue traders”.

It said 45% of households report that they do not know what qualifications to check for when selecting a tradesperson to carry out work in their homes, and 55% find it difficult to trust the available information, including contractors’ own claims and customer reviews.

The lack of clear information and quality controls threatened to delay home upgrades that were essential if Britain was to wean households off fossil fuel heating and hit its climate targets, the consumer group said.

Under current rules, installers who undertake work through the government’s boiler upgrade and energy efficiency schemes must sign up to either the Microgeneration certification scheme or the Trustmark certification scheme.

However, installers who plan to undertake work paid for without government funds are not required to sign up to any accreditation body.

Which? has called on whoever wins the 4 July election to set a clear deadline for all tradespeople to be certified via the same schemes, and to take responsibility for their oversight in order to maintain standards.

Rocio Concha, a director at Which?, said: “Over the next few years, millions of households across the UK will make significant changes to their home heating systems – such as installing heat pumps – to make their homes more energy efficient and support lower energy costs.

“It’s essential that the right standards are in place to ensure that work is done to a good quality and people are protected against the small minority of rogue traders and cowboy builders.”

Government data shows that by the end of January this year fewer than 5,000 homes had been insulated under a scheme which aimed to insulate 300,000 homes to guard against volatile energy prices.

Separate research from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) thinktank found that a lack of progress on insulating British homes is costing bill payers £3.2bn a year, despite recent drops in energy prices.

It reported that upgrading the average UK home with an energy performance certificate (EPC) rating of D to a C would have saved the bill payer £200 a year. For the 4.4m homes that have a rating of E or F the savings would have been between £400 to £550.

Last year, the government scrapped its target for all privately rented homes to be rated EPC C or above by 2025, in an overhaul of its net zero pledges. The ECIU said upgrading those homes alone would save those households a total of £1.4bn a year under the new prices.

The NSW government is “very concerned” that asbestos has been found in landscaping soil bought in Sydney, the environment minister has said.

A Guardian Australia investigation revealed this week that contaminated soil fill products were on sale at landscape and garden stores, a decade after NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) investigators first raised concerns about potential contamination.

The Greens said the revelation pointed to widespread and systemic failure.

But the government has delayed taking action until the state’s chief scientist completes his review into the management of asbestos, which is expected to be delivered in December, at least a year behind schedule.

That review is examining approaches to asbestos management in other Australian jurisdictions and whether a “tolerable threshold level” can be set for asbestos in waste intended for beneficial reuse.

The minister, Penny Sharpe, said the government would make any “necessary changes” once it received the chief scientist’s advice. The final report was due by the end of last year.

“It is illegal to provide any product that contains asbestos. The NSW government is very concerned,” Sharpe said when asked about Guardian Australia’s findings.

Sharpe pointed to new laws that increase maximum penalties for breaching resource recovery orders from $44,000 to $2m, or $4m where asbestos is involved.

But the Greens environment spokesperson, Sue Higginson, said it was “obvious” the new laws had not been enough to protect consumers from potentially harmful products.

The Guardian also revealed this week that some of the best-known waste companies in NSW were among those that broke safety rules meant to limit the spread of contamination found in a type of cheap soil fill.

The soil fill, made from recycled residues from construction and demolition sites, is known as “recovered fines”. An estimated 700,000 tonnes of the product is applied to land in NSW each year.

Higginson, who had asked for the names of the waste companies that had breached regulations to be tabled in parliament, called for a review of landscaping product supply chains and a new regime for tracking recovered fines.

She said the contamination found in the products the Guardian bought and tested was not a one-off situation.

“What we are seeing is evidence of a widespread and systemic failure that is putting potentially dangerous materials into household products, and the community is not being informed of the risks,” she said.

Guardian Australia reported earlier this year that the environmental regulator had known for more than a decade that some producers of recovered fines had failed to comply with rules to limit the spread of contaminants such as lead and asbestos.

The EPA’s investigations found that instead of reporting non-compliant results to the watchdog and disposing of contaminated products, some companies asked private laboratories to retest samples until they received a compliant result.

In 2022, under the former Coalition government, the EPA abandoned a proposal to tighten the regulations for producers of recovered fines products after pressure from the waste industry.

The small business minister at the time, Eleni Petinos, welcomed the about-face as a win for small skip bin operators, which she said would have faced a significant financial burden from stricter testing and sampling rules.

In December 2022, the Coalition government commissioned the chief scientist’s review.

The opposition environment spokesperson, Kellie Sloane, said the government should prioritise the review.

“Just as the opposition supported tougher penalties for operators doing the wrong thing earlier this year, we would welcome the opportunity to review the findings,” she said.

“The public should have confidence that they are not purchasing contaminated landscaping products.”

An EPA spokesperson said earlier this week the watchdog was considering further regulatory change, which would be informed by the chief scientist’s review.

A former California water official has pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal water in a deal with federal prosecutors in the state’s crop-rich central valley.

The Los Angeles Times reports Tuesday that 78-year-old Dennis Falaschi, who used to head the Panoche water district, entered the plea in federal court in Fresno. He also pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return.

Falaschi was accused in a case that alleged that more than $25m in water was stolen over two decades when it was siphoned from a federal irrigation canal through a secret pipe and sold to farmers and other water districts. The Panoche water district supplies irrigation for farmland in Fresno and Merced counties – much of it from the federal Delta-Mendota canal.

Authorities said in court documents that Falaschi wasn’t the only one taking water, but did not specify who else was involved. They estimated Falaschi stole less than $3.5m in water, a small portion of what they initially alleged had been stolen.

The case comes as California has embarked on a years-long effort to conserve water use by passing a groundbreaking law to regulate groundwater pumping, encouraging urban users to replace thirsty lawns with more drought-friendly landscaping and ramping up water storage efforts to help the state navigate expected dry years ahead.

The state moved to reduce groundwater use after over-pumping led farmers to drill deeper for water and some rural wells to grow dry. The prospect of pumping limits has worried California farmers who grow much of the country’s fresh produce.

Falaschi, who has agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in any additional investigations, is scheduled to be sentenced in September. He declined to comment after Tuesday’s hearing.

Assistant US attorney Joseph D Barton also declined to comment.

Harvard University announced on Tuesday that it would no longer take official positions on policy issues following widespread student-led protests over the war in Gaza.

The decision from Harvard comes after the university formed a working group in April to decide if it should continue making public comment on “salient issues”, according to an email announcing the decision.

The working group determined: “The university and its leaders should not … issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.”

When asked for comment, a representative of Harvard University directed the Guardian to an earlier statement.

The university said, in part: “We have accepted the faculty Working Group’s report and recommendations, which also have been endorsed by the Harvard Corporation. The process of translating these principles into concrete practice will, of course, require time and experience, and we look forward to the work ahead.”

Harvard’s decision has already received intense scrutiny from other academics who accuse the university of pretending to be neutral amid Israel’s war in Gaza while being financially invested.

Michael S Roth, the president of Wesleyan University who spoke out about the upcoming election and how politicians have been attacking “higher education”, “democracy” and “the rule of law” in his commencement speech this year, quipped on X, formerly known as Twitter, that his speech was not intended to be taken quite this way.

“By ‘fighting back’ I didn’t mean neutrality about the freedoms, rights & responsibilities that make education possible.”

He told students in his speech: “The attack on higher education, on democracy, on the rule of law, threatens to sweep away the freedoms that have been hard won over the last 100 years. We can fight back. Between now and 5 November, many of our students, faculty, staff and alumni will be practicing freedom by participating in the electoral process. They will work on behalf of candidates and in regard to issues bearing on the future of fairness, inclusion, free speech and the possibilities for full engagement with others.”

Eric Reinhart, a PhD candidate at Harvard and psychoanalytic clinician, also criticized Harvard for suggesting neutrality while having investments in the US and Israeli military.

“Harvard declares itself neutral with respect to political affairs, while actively investing in arms manufacturers and continuing with its myriad contracts with Israel and the US military. Rather convenient notion of neutrality and institutional responsibility, if you ask me,” Reinhart said on X.

Others have defended Harvard’s decision as a needed step to protect free speech.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression applauded Harvard’s decision as a form of institutional neutrality “which preserves colleges and universities’ ability to defend the rights of all students and faculty without apology or qualification”, the organization said on X.

The latest change in policy comes after graduating students led a mass demonstration at Harvard University’s commencement ceremony over its treatment of pro-Palestinian student protestors.

Thirteen students were barred from graduating over their involvement in pro-Palestinian encampments, a decision that was met with widespread condemnation from students and faculty.

Two commencement speakers criticized the university’s decision to bar the students, despite pushback.

Harvard joins other universities who have embraced public neutrality as a strategy to defend free speech. In a unanimous vote earlier this year, Columbia University’s senate recently adopted institutional neutrality; efforts by faculty at schools like the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University are looking to follow suit.

The University of Chicago is widely known for its protection of free speech on campus, including its refusal to make public statements on policy issues. But the university recently came under scrutiny for calling police on pro-Palestinian encampment protests, a move that many interpreted as a stance on the issue, the New York Times reported.

Manchester United staff have been offered early payment of an annual bonus if they resign by next ­Wednesday, as part of Sir Jim ­Ratcliffe’s edict to get all employees into the club’s offices and his push to trim the workforce.

United have made it compulsory from 1 June for staff to work from their offices in either ­Manchester or London rather than at home. Staff were informed in an email on Tuesday that anyone who does not wish to ­conform can quit and claim their bonus early for this season.

It is understood the terms are also on offer to those who work exclusively from the offices but want to take the opportunity to leave with a payoff.

The bonus, which will ­otherwise be paid in September, can be worth four-figure sums for some staff. United employees have until noon next Wednesday to confirm they wish to resign.

The email said of the office‑only policy: “Whilst many have ­welcomed our new approach, we are aware that a number of colleagues prefer not to commit to this new way of working and are keen to understand their options. With this feedback in mind and the fact that we respect each colleague’s right to choose their approach to work, we will allow those who wish to resign now to claim their bonus early for this season if they cannot work from our offices from 1 June.”

United believe, the email said, that “a return to office will bring ­substantial benefits for ­individuals, teams, and the wider club and ­support our journey to return Manchester United to footballing success”.

A United spokesperson said: “This isn’t a voluntary redun­dancy programme. The club recognises that not everyone wants to work from the office full‑time so has provided options for staff who don’t wish to return to the office to step away now.”

Ratcliffe, the 27.7% minority owner, believes the workforce can be trimmed and has previously cited email traffic statistics to staff as the basis for a ban on working from home, telling them to seek ­“alternative employment” if they were not ­willing to come to club offices.

In an email sent to staff last ­Friday, plans for an end to home ­working were outlined.

“To ensure we have enough space for colleagues to work safely, we will convert the Trinity Club, the Knights Lounge and the 1999 Suite in East Stand into office space,” the email said. “This is ­addition to ­existing facilities in the Engine Room and elsewhere across the stadium. Each desk will have a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

“The London office will be reconfigured to allow additional space for teams. Some teams will also be based at the Ineos office at Hans ­Crescent in Knightsbridge.”

Ratcliffe is this week leading a ­season review, which was not expected to be concluded on Tuesday. Sir Dave Brailsford, Ratcliffe’s key lieutenant, Jean-Claude Blanc, the acting chief executive, and Jason ­Wilcox, the technical director, are the other individuals most prominently involved. Joel Glazer, the United co-owner, will also be consulted.

Once the review is completed a decision will be confirmed on the future of the manager, Erik ten Hag.

With more than $500m in court fines on his back, Donald Trump has sold one of the two private jets he owns to a major Republican donor.

According to FAA records, the former US president transferred ownership of the 1997 Cessna Citation X on 13 May. While it is unclear how much he sold the plane for, the private aviation company evoJets estimates a Citation X costs about $8.5m to $10m.

While FAA records do not name an individual who now owns the plane, the agency lists a Dallas-based holding company called MM Fleet Holdings LLC as the owner of the plane.

The Daily Beast tied the company to Mehrdad Moayedi, an Iranian American real estate developer in Dallas.

FEC records show that Moayedi donated nearly $250,000 to Trump’s re-election campaign in 2019 and 2020. Records show that he has also donated millions to other campaigns, including to Ted Cruz’s Senate re-election campaign and to the Republican National Committee.

Trump’s website still boasts the Cessna Citation X as a “rocket in the sky” that also allows “for entry into smaller airports”. Trump still owns his Boeing 757, his main jet emblazoned with his name, along with a small fleet of helicopters.

The extra cash for Trump will probably help him pay off his various court entanglements. Earlier this year, Trump spent over $200m paying off fines from two civil cases earlier this year. The first was a defamation case from the writer E Jean Carroll, in which Trump was ordered to pay $83.3m. The second was a civil fraud trial that ended in a $454m fine.

In March, a Manhattan appeals court agreed to allow Trump to pay $175m – just a portion of the $454m as the fraud case is under appeal. Trump has said he has about $500m in cash, with the rest of his assets tied up in real estate holdings.

Though Trump was able to pay the appeals bonds for both cases, and will get the money back entirely if his appeals are successful, the cases are just two on Trump’s court docket.

Trump is also facing a criminal trial for covering up hush-money payments during the 2016 election and is working through three other criminal trials. In total, the former president faces 88 criminal charges and is paying hefty legal fees to fight them.

According to the New York Times, Trump has paid more than $100m in legal fees for the cases that have put him in court. While Trump has mostly used donations into political action committees, known as Pacs, to pay the fees, the money has been running out, and Trump’s legal bills continue to rack up. While Trump can tap into his 2024 campaign funds to pay the legal fees, the more he has to pay his lawyers means less money to spend on swaying voters.

Documents obtained from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicate the agency may have presented false information to the public about testing for harmful contaminants in pesticides, according to allegations being made by a watchdog group and a former EPA research fellow.

The claims come almost a year to the day after the EPA issued a May 2023 press release that stated the agency found no per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in testing of samples of certain insecticide products. The press release contradicted a published study by the former EPA researcher that had reported finding PFAS in the same pesticide products.

PFAS contamination is a hot topic in environmental and public health circles because certain types of PFAS are known to be very hazardous for human health, and world governments and public health advocates are pushing to sharply limit exposure to these types of chemicals. Accurate testing for PFAS contamination is key to regulating exposure, making the accuracy and transparency of EPA testing a critical issue.

The allegations that the EPA incorrectly reported some PFAS test results were made Tuesday by the nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), led by former EPA employees.

The Peer director of scientific policy Kyla Bennett said that the organization obtained pesticide product testing data from the EPA through a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) request. The documents they received back from the EPA showed the agency had indeed found PFAS in the tested products, directly contradicting the press release the agency had issued.

“It’s pretty outrageous,” said Bennett. “You don’t get to just ignore the stuff that doesn’t support your hypothesis. That is not science. That is corruption. I can only think that they were getting pressure from pesticide companies.”

Joining in the allegations is environmental toxicologist Steven Lasee, who authored the 2022 study that the EPA challenged. Lasee is a consultant for state and federal government agencies on PFAS contamination projects and participated as a research fellow for the EPA’s office of research and development from February 2021 to February 2023.

Retraction sought

The EPA declined to comment, saying “because these issues relate to a pending formal complaint process, EPA has no further information to provide”. But in past statements, the agency has presented itself as taking a tough stand on PFAS contamination. The agency recently finalized drinking water limits for PFAS and is classifying two types of PFAS as hazardous substances. And EPA administrator Michael Regan has stated publicly that the adverse health effects of PFAS “can devastate families”.

The EPA has also recognized the potential for PFAS contamination of pesticides, focusing on pesticides that are stored in fluorinated high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic containers. Last year the agency ordered a prominent manufacturer to stop using PFAS chemicals when producing plastic containers for pesticides and other products.

PFAS chemicals have been used by a variety of industries since the 1940s for such things as electronics manufacturing, oil recovery, paints, fire-fighting foams, cleaning products and non-stick cookware. Some types of PFAS have been linked to cancer, damage to the immune system, birth defects, delayed development in children and other health problems.

In challenging the EPA over the testing issue, Peer submitted a letter to the agency demanding a correction of the EPA’s public statement about the pesticide product analyses and a retraction of the agency’s research memo on the matter.

Peer alleges that as the EPA sought to refute Lasee’s study findings, the agency engaged in “egregious” misconduct and is “guilty of numerous departures from both accepted scientific and ethical practices”.

The agency “provided misinformation to a national audience and intentionally damaged Dr Lasee,” the Peer complaint alleges.

Questions about key findings

The Lasee study that kicked off the fight with the EPA was published in November 2022 in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Letters. The study said a key finding was the detection of a very harmful type of PFAS known as perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) in six out of 10 insecticides used in cotton fields and in growing other crops, posing a contamination threat to agricultural areas.

The EPA’s response to the study, released six months later, said the agency obtained samples of the same pesticide products from Lasee and also purchased additional products with the same registration numbers to analyze. The agency said unlike Lasee’s results, EPA scientists found no detectable levels of PFOS, nor any of 28 additional PFAS it screened for, and said its equipment and methodology were better than those used by Lasee.

Those findings immediately raised questions about the validity of the testing, according to Lasee and Peer. One concern was that the EPA report did not identify any of the “matrix spike” of PFOS, which was intentionally added to the samples before they were analyzed.

It is common in analytical chemistry to use a matrix spike as a type of quality-control to evaluate the performance of an analytical method. Lasee had not told the agency of the matrix spike, but if their methods were accurate, the agency scientists would have found the spike, he said.

Numerous other flaws and deviations from scientific norms were seen in the testing analyses by the EPA, according to the Peer complaint.

Another significant concern was that while the EPA publicly disclosed the results of two tests conducted on the pesticide product samples, the agency’s internal documents turned over to Peer in response to the Foia request showed the agency had actually conducted four tests.

The documents show that one of the tests did find evidence of PFOS as well as other types of PFAS, which were not introduced as a matrix spike, Peer said.

Peer said it is unclear why the EPA did not report the positive findings of PFAS in pesticides. Regardless, the “presence of PFAS in pesticides points to an appalling regulatory breakdown by EPA”, Peer states in its complaint.

In a letter to Peer responding to some of the concerns raised, the EPA division director Anne Overstreet said the agency “remains confident in our findings” and said the agency’s scientists “maintained scientific integrity and is in compliance with established good laboratory practices”.

Amid the uproar over his paper and the subsequent EPA testing, Lasee sought to reproduce his initial results but was unable to do so. That created enough doubt about his own methodology that he sought to retract his paper.

Now, after seeing the EPA’s internal testing data showing the agency did find PFOS and other types of PFAS in pesticides but failed to disclose those results, he has a new level of doubt – over the credibility of the agency.

“When you cherry pick data, you can make it say whatever you want it to say,” Lasee said.

• This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group