Yellowstone whistleblower alleges more lead in employee housing

Housing for Yellowstone National Park staff and their households is contaminated with lead paint, in line with a whistleblower disclosure filed with the US Office of Special Counsel on April 27. The submitting marks the second time in the previous 12 months a park employee has introduced forth considerations concerning the security of lead in employee housing; This time, info included with the disclosure paints a more sweeping image of potential lead publicity.

“Thousands of Yellowstone employees and their families have been and/or are currently being exposed to harmful levels of lead through the paint in their housing,” the disclosure states. “Many remain exposed today without a form of abatement. There are current and former residents who have not been warned of this risk.”

The submitting by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, a nonprofit that gives free authorized providers for presidency staff, is on behalf of an unnamed present federal employee.

The current whistleblower disclosure gives new particulars about Yellowstone’s monitoring of lead and, allegedly, an absence of motion to appropriate alarming finds. According to PEER, Yellowstone is the “target of an ongoing investigation by EPA on the issue.”

The submitting features a beforehand unreported 2025 evaluate of lead hazard in the park, which discovered that 79% of park housing didn’t totally adjust to federal tips for lead administration in household housing. The 2025 lead report concluded, “Evaluating and mitigating exposure risks, especially for vulnerable populations, is a regulatory imperative unmet” in Yellowstone.

The submitting additionally features a 2021 report that discovered that lead paint at ranges greater than Environmental Protection Agency requirements was discovered in “most” of the housing models a 3rd celebration reviewed; however just a few buildings have been rehabilitated in the years since, in line with PEER.

“Yellowstone management has long known about these dangerous conditions but has yet to make them a priority,” said PEER Western lands and Rocky Mountain advocate Chandra Rosenthal in a information launch. “The condition of this housing is both unsafe and completely illegal.”

Yellowstone National Park spokesperson Linda Veress stated in an e mail to SFGATE that over $100 million has been invested in bettering or changing employee housing, together with “tens of millions” on coping with lead paint and asbestos.

“These efforts have replaced outdated trailers with new housing units and rehabilitated more than 200 additional units,” she wrote. “Over $40 million will be invested in the next three years on new housing.”

Much of Yellowstone’s employee housing was constructed nicely earlier than lead-based paint was banned in 1978; park officers have stated in the previous they’re conscious of roughly 290 residences with lead-based paint. “The park continues to actively test for and mitigate lead paint risks, working with the EPA and certified lead professionals to identify and address areas of concern. Ongoing annual inspections are conducted to monitor paint conditions and initiate corrective actions as needed,” Veress stated. She additionally famous, “The Trump Administration was the first to begin addressing this issue at scale and to provide significant funding to improve employee housing conditions across the park.”

Lead publicity is particularly dangerous for pregnant folks, infants and kids below 6 years outdated, in line with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lead can harm youngsters’s brains and nervous techniques, sluggish their progress and improvement, and trigger studying, habits, listening to and speech issues. No quantity of lead is protected for kids; lead can construct up in the physique by means of repeated publicity. The PEER submitting notes that lead paint stays on or round youngsters’s playground gear in the park.

The new disclosure provides to rising claims of unsafe employee housing. SFGATE reported in June on a federal lawsuit from a Yellowstone employee whose youngsters are going through long-term results of lead poisoning. The case continues to be pending and focuses on the struggles of 1 household.

“The biggest regret of our lives was living in that house,” stated Emily Aiuppa, the spouse of a Yellowstone utilities techniques operator and mom to a few youngsters, one in every of whom is having extreme well being points they consider are related to the lead publicity.

SFGATE requested any and all check outcomes for exterior and inside lead in the Mammoth Hot Springs Historic District and Fort Yellowstone employee housing in a June 2025 Freedom of Information Request. As of April 2026, that request stays unanswered.

The judicial course of is shifting slowly for the Aiuppa household. In the meantime, the separate criticism could immediate motion from the National Park Service. PEER filed the criticism with the US Office of Special Counsel, a federal company that investigates whistleblower complaints and authorized violations by federal companies. In concept, the Office of Special Counsel might order the secretary of the inside, who oversees the National Park Service, to treatment any violations it finds Yellowstone responsible of.

“A private landlord offering housing under these conditions risks jailtime; if anything, federal landlords should be held to a higher standard,” Rosenthal stated in the information launch. “We seek outside intervention because business as usual at Yellowstone will leave families in jeopardy for the foreseeable future.”