Category: Get Involved
EDGI is hiring a Communications Lead
Join us! We are looking to hire a new, collaborative team member to join EDGI to help with communications—network-wide and with the broader public.
EDGI’s Fifth Birthday Celebration
EDGI is five years old! To celebrate, we hosted a virtual celebration on Wednesday, November 3, to reflect on our progress and […]
Join us to celebrate: EDGI at Five Years
REGISTER On Wednesday, November 3, 2021, from 8-9PM Eastern / 5-6PM Pacific, EDGI will hold a birthday celebration of our fifth year as […]
Barrett and Beyond: The Green Case for Supreme Court Reform
By Keith Pluymers, Sarah Lamdan, and Christopher Sellers (Syndicated for the Orlando Weekly, the Augusta Free Press, Canton Daily Ledger, Southeast Texas Record, […]
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…”
Practicing Our Right to Know, Together — Review of EEW Congressional Report Card Workshops to Date
Last Thursday 20+ organizers, students, activists and academics gathered for the second of four online workshops to practice our right to know about environmental hazards together by making congressional district report cards on industry compliance with and EPA enforcement of environmental laws. Building on EDGI’s findings that enforcement of environmental laws dropped precipitously under the Trump administration, we are developing report cards for each member of Congress involved in the House and Senate Committees responsible for EPA oversight (the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee). These Environmental Enforcement Watch or “EEW” Report Cards provide members of Congress and their constituents with data on violations of environmental laws, facility inspections, and enforcement actions in their districts since 2001. As the EPA is mandated by Congress to enforce environmental laws, we aim to provide legislators with an informative analysis based on EPA’s own data of compliance with and enforcement of environmental laws in the districts they serve.