Blog Archives – Page 14 of 23 – Environmental Data and Governance Initiative

August 31, 2020September 18, 2025Blog, Get Involved, New

Change of the Week: Chipping away at methane information

This week’s change was made in 2017 and features the subtle removal of the lead-in sentence about methane from the EPA’s Overview of Greenhouse Gases page. What happened? In mid-April, 2017, the introductory sentence under the “Methane” tab, “Methane (CH4) is the second most prevalent greenhouse gas emitted in the United States from human activities,” was removed from EPA’s “Overview of Greenhouse Gases” page. Additionally, a graph of annual methane emissions was updated to include new and revised past data.

August 24, 2020March 25, 2021Blog, Get Involved, New

Change of the Week: Access Changes to Air Research Tools

This week’s change is from earlier this summer and features a link removal from the EPA’s Air Research homepage. What happened? The main change of interest here is the removal of a link to “Integrated Science Assessments (ISAs)” from EPA’s Air Research website homepage. In addition to that link removal, the previous link text and link to “Models, Tools, and Databases for Air Research” was replaced with the “SMaRT Search online inventory of models, tools, and databases.” The previous models, tools, and databases URL now redirects to the SMaRT Search online inventory URL.

August 19, 2020August 29, 2024Blog, Get Involved, New

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.

August 17, 2020March 25, 2021Blog, Get Involved, New

Change of the Week: Let’s just not mention the rising number of COVID-19 cases…

This week’s change is from earlier this summer and features a removal from the Coronavirus.gov “How It Spreads” FAQ webpage. What happened? The question and answer to “Why are we seeing a rise in cases?” was deleted from the coronavirus.gov webpage for frequently asked questions about how the virus spreads.

August 13, 2020September 7, 2021Blog, New

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.

August 11, 2020March 25, 2021Blog

EDGI’s Public Comment on the NCA5 Draft Prospectus: Build on the strong foundation of NCA 4 and increase information utility in the NCA5

Image: Hurricane Matthew, 2018. Courtesy of WXshift. Comment compiled by Gretchen Gehrke and the EDGI Website Monitoring Team Introduction The […]

July 31, 2020July 31, 2020Blog, New

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.

July 29, 2020July 29, 2020Blog, New

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.

July 24, 2020July 27, 2020Blog, Get Involved, New

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:

June 16, 2020October 15, 2025Blog, New

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…