A scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shared his frustrations of working under the Trump administration in a somber letter to the editor of The New York Times on Wednesday.

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Environmental scientist Michael Kravitz wrote that he is “saddened” to watch EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt “dismantle the agency,” and that he walks among his colleagues “like a zombie in a bad dream.” He said the EPA’s weekly newsletter went from talking about environmental protection to featuring news about “flower shows and photo contests.”

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“The career staff at the EPA go to work for the EPA because they care deeply about the problems they’re working on,” Michael Wara, an associate professor at Stanford Law School who focuses on climate and environment, told ATTN:. “You don’t go to the EPA to get rich.”

Wara said many in the EPA are demoralized right now because the new leadership doesn’t support their goals. “There’s a real sense that the folks that are running the show are not working from a fact-based playbook,” he said.

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“The leadership went against the recommendations of the EPA scientists,” Wara said. “There was a clear judgment that Pruitt made against the views of the agency staff to accept more public health risk because of the cost of doing something else. In a way it’s the first actual regulatory decision […] Pruitt has made, and it signals a change of course that’s unfortunate.”