Category: Blog

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EDGI is hiring! Communications Coordinator — Part-Time

The Communications Coordinator will develop and implement the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative’s (EDGI’s) communications strategy, with a specific focus to ensure that EDGI’s work reaches audiences with which it will have the greatest impact. We will begin considering applications on August 31st, with an anticipated start date of September 28th. Shortlisted candidates will be asked for contact information for three references. Interviews will be held in early September. The position will remain open until filled.

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More Permission to Pollute: The Decline of EPA Enforcement and Industry Compliance during COVID

On March 26, 2020, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a policy memo suspending pollution monitoring requirements for industries that claim to have been impacted by COVID-19. Since then, as part of EDGI’s ongoing Environmental Enforcement Watch (EEW) project, we have conducted original data science research using EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online ECHO database to investigate the effects of this policy on facility reporting of environmental data and compliance with environmental protection laws.

Results show that although few facilities have claimed the COVID exemption, a significant proportion of facilities are still failing to report. This reflects longer-term trends in and issues with both industry non-compliance and EPA non-enforcement. We cannot afford a return to “normal”. Non-compliance with the nations environmental protection laws is already rampant – as high as 70% of facilities under some regulatory programs.

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Financial Transparency is Dwindling at DOI

There has been a significant reduction in the financial transparency of the Department of the Interior (DOI). Between April and May 2020, DOI removed the budget justifications for all years prior to FY2020 that had been hosted on its DOI.gov website. The URLs for those budget justifications now register as “Page Not Found.” Additionally, budget request highlights (called “Budget in Briefs”) and budget process testimonies have also been removed and now register as either “Access Denied” or “Page Not Found.” Through these removals, DOI has significantly impaired public understanding of the financial trajectory of the Department, and impeded public and Congressional oversight.

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Joe Biden’s Clean Energy Plan Speech — Annotated

In this annotation, the Environmental History Action Collaborative — a group of environmental historians and scholars – furnishes context and provides fact checking to allow for a more critical assessment of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s July 14, 2020 speech on his plans for addressing environmental justice, economic growth, and climate change. Historians contributing to these annotations include Scout Blum, Finis Dunaway, Jason Heppler, Emily Pawley, Keith Pluymers, Ryan Driskell Tate, Jay Turner, and Conevery Bolton Valencius.

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Meet the Interns: Environmental Enforcement Watch

Environmental Enforcement Watch (EEW) is EDGI’s latest project. A collaborative effort across several of our working groups, EEW is a series of online workshops aimed at increasing EPA ECHO data literacy through our custom Jupyter Notebooks, in an effort to foster community research and polluter accountability. Our interns—young, passionate individuals—have put in countless hours developing and fine-tuning every aspect of our EEW workshops. We thank them for their many ideas and efforts, without which EEW would not be what it is today. Without further ado, here are our interns:

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DOI Adds “Recreation” Priority and Webpage, Continues to Lack Meaningful Focus on Other Priorities

Over the last year, the Department of Interior (DOI) has adopted a new priority: through the creation of a new webpage and a series of recent announcements and orders, DOI has indicated a desire to make public lands more open for recreational (primarily hunting and fishing) uses than ever before. Though greater public control and access might be an admirable goal in some contexts, in this case it has the appearance of more of a calculated political call to a small portion of the U.S. population, at the potential cost of conservation gains for protected environments and species. The extensive harm done to public lands during the January 2019 government shutdown underscores the potentially disastrous impacts of giving the public greater access while compromising even the maintenance of those lands…

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Evolving Language on DOI Webpages Shifts Focus from Long-term Conservation to Economic Growth

Over the last three years, the Department of the Interior (DOI), which manages more than 20% of the nation’s land, has been altering its public image through documented changes to its agency tagline, mission statement, and priorities. Every individual DOI webpage (www.doi.gov/) displays the agency’s tagline. Most recently, in March of 2020, DOI changed its tagline, from “Protecting America’s Great Outdoors and Powering Our Future” to “Stewarding Conservation and Powering Our Future.” This alteration may be understood as a continuation of a larger trend of the Interior shifting its public image. In 2018, for example, the DOI weakened the wording of its mission statement from “…protects and manages…” to “…conserves and manages…,” discarding the word “protects” after at least 20 years. DOI also inserted language into its mission statement with clear economic overtures, such as the agency’s newfound intent to help people “prosper.” Over the last three years, DOI has changed its publicly stated priorities, removing emphasis on long-term conservation, and adding new priorities related to economic growth…

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EDGI in the Time of COVID

Though no field of work is un-disrupted by the global pandemic, EDGI has largely been a site of stability for its members — volunteers, paid contractors, and academics alike. This is an opportunity to reflect on and share a few pre-COVID practices within EDGI’s working culture that help to give the organization resilience through a disrupted context.

While all organizations with the ability to do remote work have had to address the technical challenges of doing so in the last two months, and many have addressed the need for social engagement now that we no longer see each other in the hallways, fewer seem to have addressed the issue of many people’s decreased capacity for work, while trying to juggle jobs, family obligations, and the increased stress of daily life. These are unprecedented times in which we’re all trying to do more with less. The pandemic’s global impacts affect each person differently. Some are struggling with isolation and need a sense of community and meaningful work while others are overwhelmed and need to focus on their own households. EDGI’s explicit approach is to support its members in either case…