A small chink appeared this month in the armor of nondisclosure that protects the oil and gas industry's relationship with federal leasing agencies. BLM had refused to disclose the nominating entities. Federal District Judge Matsch ruled that the Freedom of Information Act requires the disclosure.
Interested in water quality at the local and watershed level? Not only does the multi-agency "Water Quality Portal" offer large amounts of measurements of water quality in specific lakes and streams — but EPA is offering free training on how to use it via a Webinar.
As new heads for environmental and energy agencies come before the Senate for confirmation, they will likely feel heat over the gulf between the Obama administration's rhetoric on transparency and its iron discipline on message control. Case in point: Gina McCarthy, widely expected to be Obama's nominee for EPA's top administrator slot.
"The acting head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warned staff on Tuesday that it may place an unspecified number of jobs on temporary furlough if across-the-board federal budget cuts take effect at the end of this week."
"WASHINGTON -- A top environmental official is warning lawmakers that automatic spending cuts due next month would jeopardize EPA's ability to protect against oil spills, air pollution, and hazardous waste."
"A new report from the Government Accountability Office elevates the problem of looming gaps in satellite weather data to a 'high risk' concern for the federal government."
"SIMI VALLEY, Calif. -- NASA has agreed to an 'excessive and unnecessarily costly cleanup' of a former rocket test facility near Los Angeles that was the site of a partial nuclear meltdown in 1959, the space agency's watchdog said Thursday."
Among those that haven't updated FOIA regs since before Congress enacted FOIA amendments in 2007 are USDA, National Transportation Safety Board, DoE, National Indian Gaming Commission, DoJ, Chemical Safety and Hazards Investigation Board, OMB (which claims responsibility for FOIA discipline), Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Consumer Product Safety Commission, and DHHS.
A leaked draft of the replacement rule suggested Interior would leave handling of fracking data to the industry-run "FracFocus" project, which has come under criticism by environmental and watchdog groups for being hard to use and incomplete.
The United States, whose Minerals Management Service simply neglected to collect in-kind offshore oil royalties under President Bush, has yet to prove itself a paragon. Yet now a new Interior Department committee is poised to lecture other countries on how to do it right.
