EDGI is hiring! Development Director — Part-Time
Job Posting: Development Director — Part-time Dates: February 1, 2021 – August 31, 2021 Compensation: $48 per hour Expected hours: 20 hours […]
Category: Blog
Only One EPA Web Resource Has Been Restored — Entirely Scrubbed of Climate Change Content
The “Climate and Energy Resources for State, Local, and Tribal Governments” website (left) was replaced with the “Energy Resources for State, Local, […]
Change of the Week: Story of Clean Power Plan Website Removal Underscores Need for Better Information Policies
This week’s change of the week was made in April 2017 and features the redirecting of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan website to a single webpage about a 2017 executive order on “energy independence.” We discussed this issue in our 2018 public comment on the proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan, and it underscores the urgent need to develop better web resource policies.
Democratizing Data Reports Released by EDGI’s Environmental Enforcement Watch
Seventy-six congressional report cards released by Environmental Data & Governance Initiative’s Environmental Enforcement Watch on October 22, 2020, show a decline in compliance and enforcement for key U.S. environmental laws under the Trump administration. The report cards are summarized in the new report, Democratizing Data: Environmental Enforcement Watch’s Report Cards for Congressional Oversight of the EPA, which provides for the first time an analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data on compliance and enforcement in the districts and states of the representatives and senators serving on the two congressional committees tasked with overseeing the Environmental Protection Agency.
Making a public dataset: reviewing and reclassifying changes to federal environmental webpages
Blog written by Alejandro Paz Lead image shows the HTML source code comparison for two versions of the same page, on which […]
Change of the Week: It’s the two-year anniversary of EPA abandoning its Climate Change website “updates”
Welcome! This post is part of the EDGI Website Monitoring Team’s “Change of the Week” blog series. The purpose of this series […]
Change of the Week: Stripping information and stripping protections for migratory birds
Welcome! This post is part of the EDGI Website Monitoring Team’s “Change of the Week” blog series. The purpose of this series […]
Change of the Week: Budget Info Goes Missing at DOI
This week’s change was made in spring 2020 and features the removal of all past years’ budget documents on DOI’s “Budget Justifications” webpage. For more information about this and related changes, please see our report, “Department of the Interior Deletes Budget Documents from Website.”
Bio-Lab’s Toxic Record Presages Chlorine-Fueled Fire Following Hurricane Laura
The blaze at Bio-Lab following Hurricane Laura was not the first release of toxic chlorine from the facility, EDGI’s research into available federal data finds.
As Hurricane Laura tore through Louisiana on the morning of August 27th, a chemical manufacturing facility called Bio-Lab, located in Westlake, caught fire. The facility manufactures chlorine for swimming pools and other cleaning agents. A chlorine leak ignited, setting the facility ablaze. Massive clouds of chlorine gas plumed over Westlake for more than 24 hours, prompting the governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, to implement a shelter-in-place order for residents living in the vicinity.
Change of the Week: Any idea why fighting wildfires is getting harder?
This week’s change was made in June 2017 and features the removal of the only sentences about climate change on the U.S. Forest Service’s Wildland Fire webpage. What happened? In the middle of wildfire season, June 2017, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) deleted the only sentence on its “Wildland Fire” webpage that mentioned the reasons that fire seasons have become longer and more intense, “This is due to a variety of factors, including climate change, buildups of flammable vegetation, insect and disease infestations, nonnative species invasions, and increasing numbers of homes and communities in the WUI…”