"The Environmental Protection Agency denied on Thursday a petition by several environmental groups to ban lead in fishing tackle, two months after rejecting the groups' attempt to ban it in hunting ammunition."
EPA in-house tool may be released to public within months. It will give reporters themselves the ability to estimate the cumulative impacts of pollution on water bodies.
myRTK lets you thumb in an address or ZIP code and get back a map or list of Toxics Release Inventory facilities on your feature phone or smart phone.
This new tool allows any user online to create custom study areas based on a wide range of variables: address, ZIP code, county, city, township, facility, watershed, or geographic coordinates. Other environmental data can then be mapped onto that study area.
The beta tool allows anyone to compare TRI information from a facility to air pollution data from the same facility or a related one. For example, an investigator could find inconsistencies in the amount of pollution reported by a facility under the two separate laws.
This newly powerful, easy-to-use mapping tool can help environmental journalists find and report great local and regional stories.
The new record for getting raw data reported by industry to the general public: 28 days. Nearly 95 percent of reporting companies filed their reports electronically.
The WatchDog attended EPA's annual training conference for government workers on the Toxics Release Inventory, Nov. 1-3, 2010. See a preview of the showcased offerings, which have extra emphasis on environmental justice and EPA data tools ranging far beyond TRI.
"Two chemical manufacturers are seeking an exemption from new rules in Wyoming that require public disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, a controversial natural gas drilling process suspected of polluting groundwater."
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