Democratizing Data: Environmental Enforcement Watch’s Report Cards for Congressional Oversight of the EPA

On October 22, 2020, EDGI released the Democratizing Data: Environmental Enforcement Watch’s Report Cards for Congressional Oversight of the EPA report and project. The summary report provides, for the first time, an analysis of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data on compliance with, and enforcement of, environmental laws in select congressional districts and states. It focuses on three of the most important environmental laws in the United States: the Clean Air Act (CAA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). For this release, we made report cards for each of the 76 congress people who currently serve on the two key congressional committees that oversee the EPA: The House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works committee.

All the data used in the report cards and summary report are drawn from publicly available data in EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database. The Congressional Report Cards were produced using an open source data analysis tool available here. To read the press release on the project, go here. If you’d like 2-page brief on the project, go here

Individual Congressional Report Cards available online here.

Summary Report of findings across all districts and states available here.

Democratizing-Data-Summary-Report

Author(s): Sara Wylie, Leif Fredrickson, Megan Raisle, Eric Nost, Steve Hansen, Monica Unseld, Emily Pawley, Jay Turner, Cole Alder, Kelsey Breseman
Publication Date: October 22, 2020
Preferred Citation: "Democratizing Data: Environmental Enforcement Watch's Report Cards for Congressional Oversight of the EPA," (Environmental Data & Governance Initiative, October 22, 2020)