Publication Items

The Senate's Nov. 30 vote not to impose a moratorium on "earmarks" practically ensures that pork-barrel spending will live on as a subject for journalists — at least in fiscal 2011.

TRI-CHIP assembles a great deal of toxicity and hazard information from many sources and makes it easy to search. TRI.NET allows you to construct complex queries into the Toxics Release Inventory database, and to map the results in ways that can be used for publishable graphics or layered on maps with other environmental and demographic information.

The order gives agencies 120 days to review their existing secrecy designations and to come up with standardized ones "in a timely manner." When there is doubt, Obama's order states, agencies are to err on the side of disclosure.

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.