 All right, I guess it's time to get started. All right, so welcome everyone. My name is Casey Greenleaf. I'm a member of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative and the Environmental Enforcement Watch. I'm so happy to welcome you all here today. So I'm just gonna start with a little story that on November 3rd, 2016, which is almost exactly four years ago, which is why I was to think about the environmental movement and not to mention the entire United States was at a crossroads. And I really doubt any of us need reminding of this fact, but the election of Donald Trump dealt a major blow to the work of communities, activists, and conservationists the country over. In response to the fear that such an election would mean the deletion and obscuring of critical data on environmental enforcement, the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, or EDGE, was formed out of an effort to archive federal databases on environmental data. In the following years, EDGE documented massive layoffs at President Trump's EPA, a crisis not only in transparency of environmental enforcement data, but of environmental enforcement itself. This past January, EDGE formed the Environmental Enforcement Watch, which is a project to develop a new way to engage with and communicate this data to the public. Today, the Environmental Enforcement Watch is really excited to share the findings from our almost year-long journey into the depths of EPA enforcement data, resulting in 76 congressional report cards for each of the representatives and senators who serve on key congressional committees that oversee the EPA, the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee. And we can share the agenda in the next slide. So this project provides for the first time an analysis of EPA data on compliance with and enforcement of environmental laws in these congressional districts and states. And today we'll be sharing the main findings from these reports. We'll have a discussion on the importance of environmental data transparency. And finally, we'll show the tools we used in our analysis and how you can use them to view environmental enforcement data in your backyard. So I just wanna take a moment to thank our fabulous co-sponsors today. We have the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Environmental Investigation Agency, Physicians for Social Responsibility Colorado Chapter and the Physicians for Social Responsibility LA Chapter, the Kentucky Resources Council and Clean Power Lake County. Thanks everyone. We're also honored to have with us tireless individuals from organizations all across the country, pioneering policymakers, dedicated researchers and more, all fighting together for a just and habitable world. So today you can feel free to use the chat function. Please use it respectfully in accordance with our code of conduct. You can use that throughout the webinar today. And please feel free to introduce yourself noting which indigenous territory you're calling in from to acknowledge the land. And if you're not sure, I think that'll be shared in the chat as well. You can also use the chat to message the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative privately for any technical problems that might come up. And I'm going to turn it over to members of the Environmental Enforcement Watch Team, Leslie Anise and Kelsey Brazeman. And these amazing folks are going to be sharing with you all the major findings of our research and where you can access them. So thanks again everyone for being here today and Kelsey and Leslie, please take it away. Hello everybody. I have just a short introduction to our website for you. One second, there it is. So this is our website at environmentalenforcementwatch.org. And just to give you a brief orientation, we're going to be looking at, or as Casey mentioned, we looked at the home districts of two different committees that are working on oversight of the EPA. And for the senators, we outlined their states in green here and the light green will show the districts of the House of Reps Committee members. So that's just to give you a visual of the geographic diversity. And then if you click through or if you just go to the reports page, you can see that we have two different types of report that you can look at. We have the summary report here, which you can click through and see our full analysis across the various, I think there's 76 report cards. And then if you want to see the individual reports that we've produced for each of the committee members on EPA enforcement in their areas, you can see that we've got different sizes representing the ranking. You can hover over it, see a bit more, and then you can click through, for example, on Benjamin Carden here and see this much more detailed report that uses EPA's data to give a really thorough reporting. And we'll show more about that later. That's all for me. Over to you, Leslie. And then thank you so much, Kelsey, for guiding us through the website. So in this presentation, I'm going to be sharing the key findings from the democratizing data report, which essentially summarizes the findings of the report cards for all 55 congressional districts and 20 states in which we analyzed violation, inspection and enforcement data for the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and RIGRA for both states and the EPA. As Kelsey previously explained, this map shows the states and the districts we analyze and where they're located. The House Energy Commerce Congressional Districts are colored in a light turquoise and the Senate Environment and Public Work Committees are surrounded by dark turquoise borders. These states and congressional districts combined represent a total of about 36% of all the people in the U.S. So these are a lot of people and this is really significant data. A quick note that we wanted to bring up is that all the data used in the report cards and the report itself comes from the EPA's environmental compliance history, online aid database or ECHO. And if you have any questions about this data or about anything at all, we're happy to answer them in the chat. As we move through this presentation, you'll notice that we focus mostly on Clean Water Act data on violations and this is because this is the most reliable data provided by EPA's ECHO database. This data is particularly reliable considering that Clean Water Act data is directly measured and it's the best reported data as it is digitally submitted to the EPA. As this figure illustrates here, there are huge gaps, huge data gaps in the Clean Air Act and the Resource Contribution Recovery Act or RITBA, which manages hazardous waste. And according to a study by Cynthia Giles, EPA's former assistant administrator of enforcement as few as 15% of Clean Air Act violations make it into the EPA's ECHO database due to gaps in state reporting. In addition, this data is frequently estimated rather than directly measured and these estimates can dramatically underreport emissions by 400% cases. For these reasons, we report and analyze primarily Clean Water Act data. Overall, there were four key findings from the democratizing data report. The first one being that the Clean Water Act violations have increased significantly under the Trump administration. When comparing Clean Water Act violation rates during the Trump administration to those of the previous 16 years in each congressional district respectively, we found that Clean Water Act violations rose alarmingly. As you can see here, during the Trump administration, there has been a 98% median increase in Clean Water Act violations for congressional districts. That's nearly double the median it was before. And the same occurs with states to a lesser degree where there was a 60% median increase or an increase of more than half. Continuing with the trend and increased rates of Clean Water Act violation, this map shows the percent change in Clean Water Act violations in each congressional district we analyzed. In the dark purple districts, we describe the violation rates as much worse if there are increases in Clean Water Act violations where 100% or more. We see that in 46 of 55 congressional districts, again, the majority of these districts, Clean Water Act violations have increased since Trump took office. For example, this can be seen in both Florida District 9 and Virginia District 9 in these graphs where Clean Water Act violations increased drastically during the Trump administration shown here in orange. And here we can see a similar pattern in states with which violations of the Clean Water Act have increased in 14 of 20 states and nearly three of four congressional districts since Trump took office. A great example of this is the state of Oregon where Clean Water Act violations increased dramatically. But there are some outliers with exceptionally large increases in violations. For instance, New Jersey and California in which large increases are related to improved reporting. New Jersey and California didn't enter data properly until ECHO until 2016. And this is why this chart shows that there was a 2,423% increase in Clean Water Act violations for New Jersey. This is why we report the median change rather than the average. However, New Jersey's example should not be used to dismiss the fact that there is a vast problem with Clean Water Act compliance. Let's take a look at the 2019 data, which is likely the most complete data on record. So this graph here makes it very apparent that there's a crisis in compliance with the Clean Water Act, as one can see. The orange line shows a rate of 100 violations per 100 facilities. In other words, one violation per facility on average. Overall, nationally in 2019, there were 111 violations per 100 facilities. That's more than one violation per facility. And here are some of the main findings from this data. Among the congressional districts we examined, there were 143 Clean Water Act violations per 100 operating facilities on average. And among the states, there were 154 Clean Air Act violations per 100 operating facilities on average. To summarize these findings, 32 of 55 congressional districts and 13 of 20 states registered one or more violations for each operating facility. The rates of violation are truly extraordinary, particularly for the outlier congressional districts and states. In Washington's Fifth District, there were 1029 violations per 100 operating facilities. And in Alaska, there were 841 operations violations per every 100 operating facilities. If increased reporting does account for some of the large percent changes discussed above, then it's likely that non-compliance has just been this dire for a longer period of time. And unfortunately, these non-compliant issues aren't new. This map shows how chronic non-compliance has become. Here, states and congressional districts are colored by their percent of operating facilities which have been out of compliance for nine months or more of the past three years. As one can see, dark purple states have had 42 to 59% of their facilities out of compliance for nine months or more. And dark purple congressional districts have had 44 to 78% of facilities out of compliance for that time period. Overall, there were 23 districts and 11 states where more than 20% of operating facilities had been in violation of the Clean Water Act for at least nine months of the past 3.5 years. This data really goes to show that non-compliance is a chronic and routine problem. For a second key finding, we found that inspections have increased under the Trump administration. One would hope that in the face of such profound and widespread issues with compliance, with the laws intended to ensure that American water waste would remain fishable and swungable, inspections and enforcement actions would increase, but unfortunately, they have not. Instead, we found that the median decline in inspections in congressional districts was 17%, and it was 14% in states. This might not seem like a huge decrease, but when the rates of inspection are already dangerously low, this is incredibly alarming. So far, we've only been looking at Clean Water Act data, but from now on, we'll be looking at Clean Water Act data, Clean Air Act data and RICRA data. With mapping the percent change in Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and RICRA inspections, we can see the inspections have declined in the majority of the states and congressional districts we examined. However, in 36 of 55 congressional districts and 13 of states, inspections under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and RICRA have decreased since Trump took office. Overall, inspections generally decreased in both Republican and Democrat districts and states demonstrate that this is a bipartisan issue. A quick note we'd like to point out that there was only one state where inspections improved significantly over 100%, and this was the state of West Virginia. But when we look a little bit closer at that increase, we see that it actually reviews huge gaps in inspections in West Virginia. This increase in inspections of 182% occurs against a back tub of a 251% increase in violations of the Clean Water Act. Even at this increased rate of inspections of almost 6,000, this is still a far cry from every facility being inspected as there are 10,000 plus facilities. And in 2019, there were more than 20,000 violations. And continuing to look at West Virginia and national averages in 2019, you can see how few inspections are occurring. Nationally, for every 1,000 facilities, there are just 261 Clean Air Act by inspections and a mere 37 inspections for every, and a mere 37 inspections for every 1,000 under RICRA. West Virginia, again, is still pretty terrible with 220 Clean Air Act inspections and 123 RICRA inspections. This is deeply concerning for the Clean Air Act and RICRA as inspections are the primary way that violations are identified under these acts where data isn't necessarily poured as it is with the Clean Water Act. For a third key finding, we found that enforcement actions have decreased under the Trump administration. In the day we saw there was a 20% median decline in enforcement actions in congressional districts and a 23% median decline in enforcement actions in states. Overall, decreases in enforcement actions have occurred across the country. The decreases occurred in both states with Democratic senators where 100% of districts saw a decrease in enforcement actions and states for Republican senators where 91% of districts saw a decrease in enforcement actions. These maps here are looking at the decline in enforcement actions in the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and RICRA in congressional districts and states. And overall, we see that enforcement actions decline in the majority of these states and congressional districts. In 41 of 55 congressional districts and in 18 of 20 states. Once again, the majority of congressional districts and states, there was a decline in the number of enforcement actions taking under the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and RICRA since Trump took office. Perhaps for most concerning findings are the steep declines we identify in enforcement penalties. What we saw in this data was that there was a 69% median decline in penalties in congressional districts and 53% median decline in penalties in states. Seeing these large decreases in penalties is incredibly concerning, given that these are essentially EPA's big stick that forces compliance based on fines. This data, we looked just at civil fines or financial penalties, but recent reporting from the environmental crime tragic shows that there was a similar drop in EPA criminal prosecutions. Continuing to look at penalties, these maps show the percent change in Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and RICRA penalties. We saw in this data that 44 of 55 congressional districts in 19 of 20 states, there was a decline in penalties levied under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and RICRA since Trump took office. And with a few exceptions, this is occurring both in democratic and Republican districts in the North, South, East, West, and the Midwest as well. As you've seen through this presentation today, it was overall binding is that there's an immense crisis in environmental enforcement. The EPA has failed to enforce the environmental laws intended to protect our air, waters, and soil. And this is particularly concerning as we're in the midst of a global respiratory pandemic and into environmental injustice, these exposures disproportionately fall on black, indigenous Latinx and other systematically marginalized communities. We hope that this report cards, sorry, for the overall findings that we saw within this report card is that violations pretty much increased, inspections decreased, and enforcement decreased as well, which is incredibly concerning. We hope that these report cards provide the Congress people with the information necessary to call the EPA to follow its mandate to enforce the environmental laws and hold the industry accountable for the violations of environmental laws. We hope to also make evident the need to increase funding for the EPA and to deep action or in community care center thinking about enforcement and compliance operate. This require the direct measurement and digital reporting for all programs. We also recommend the EPA increase community engagement in both monitoring and analysis of environmental data. This would occur in through tools like the Jupyter notebooks we developed to generate this report cards. Additionally, we recommend embracing community-based participatory research science as a core to the EPA's work. Just as recommended in 2016 report, EPA environmental protection belongs to the public from the National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology and for constituents and for those of you listening. In the short term, we hope that these, if you find these findings concerning, you'll reach out to your representatives. You can do so by sharing these report cards and by asking your representatives to work towards material improvements. And why is this data so important? And the truth is that this is an environmental justice issue. Race is the strongest predictor of whether a person lives to a toxic waste in low-income, non-white communities. Low-income, non-white communities just fortunately live among the most hazardous facilities. On average, black and lion-like communities experience more pollution than they generate. They are burdened by approximately 56%, 56 to 63% more hazardous air pollution respectively than they create by their consumption. Conversely, non-white and non-white majority communities experience less pollution than they generate, approximately 17% less air pollution, exposure than is caused by the consumption. And so I care about environmental enforcement because I know that communities like mine who are disproportionately affected by the EPA's lack of environmental enforcement. I live in a state that I live in now after having moved away due to horrible air quality. And I do the work that I do now because I see how people are affected by environmental pollution on a daily basis and nothing is really done about it. I do this type of work because I want people to be educated about local environmental issues. I really thank you all for listening, for taking the time and attention to listen. And we really look forward to discussing this and I'll pass it on. Thank you so much, Leslie. So now we're gonna move over to our panel. They're gonna give us the bigger picture about science, policy, environmental justice, environmental health and so on. And we have some really incredible guests today that I'm really excited to chat with. So I'm gonna introduce our panelists now. So first up, we have with us Hannah Vogel. Hannah is a senior legislative assistant for Senator Ed Markey in Massachusetts, managing his Climate, Energy, Environment and Space portfolio. She's previously worked as a legislative assistant for Congressman Lloyd Doggett in Texas, where she handled energy, environment and healthcare and social security issues. Before coming to Congress, Hannah also worked for Climate Nexus, a climate communication strategy nonprofit and as a grassroots organizer in Cleveland, Ohio. Welcome Hannah. Our second panelist is Martha Dina Arguello, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibilities LA chapter. For the past 35 years, Martha has served in the nonprofit sector as an advocate, as a community organizer and as a coalition builder. She joined PSR LA in 1998 to launch the environmental health programs, became executive director in November 2007 and has built the Los Angeles chapter of PSR into one of the largest and most active chapters. She's also an active board member of numerous organizations, including Californians for Pesticide Reform, Californians for a Healthy and Green Economy and she's also the co-chair of Standing Together Against Neighborhood Drilling. Welcome Martha. And thirdly we have Jacob Carter. Jacob is a research scientist for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In this role, Dr. Carter investigates how science is used in the policymaking process, focusing on issues of scientific integrity across the federal government. Prior to joining UCS, Dr. Carter worked at the EPA as an Oak Ridge Institute for Science, at an, as an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education Postdoc Fellow, also known as ORISE. At the EPA, Dr. Carter integrated the effects of climate change into estimates of future coastal inundation on contaminated lands, such as brown fields and superfund sites to help guide decisions on adaptation efforts that could better protect nearby communities from the spread of dangerous contaminants during future floods. Welcome Jacob. And last but certainly not least, we have Eric Nost from the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. Eric led the data team for the report card project that you are hearing about today. He's an assistant professor of geography and GIS at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, where his research explores how data technologies inform environmental governance. He's been a member of edgy since early 2017, working with its web monitoring and environmental enforcement watch teams, and more recently, serving on the coordinating committee. Welcome Eric. All right, everyone. So as you're listening to this panel today, I just want to encourage all of you to answer or to ask questions in the chat feature. It's the Q and A. And I'm assuming it's right down here at the bottom of my screen. So you'll see that there. So feel free to ask questions. We're going to get right into it and start with a question for you, Hannah. So my question is, how has environmental enforcement data played a role in your work? What problems do you see? And what changes do you think need to be made? Yeah, thank you so much for the question and thank you for this incredible report. We've been drawing upon edgy's work and research since the start of the Trump administration when it became just painfully, painfully necessary. So thank you all so much for that. Environmental enforcement and compliance data has played a really integral part in our oversight work and our understanding of various issues within the federal government. The COVID-19 pandemic actually provides a really clear snapshot of how this kind of data can make a difference. So we've used it for everything from tracking how COVID-19 recovery money got snapped up by corporate polluters who get hundreds of thousand dollars in PPP loans despite having unpaid fines or high-cost violations to assessing how the EPA has stopped enforcing its own regulations after the pandemic began. So you can really see there how enforcement and compliance data tells a bigger story about how well or unfortunately more often how poorly our federal government has been functioning recently. Because likely because this administration's record on enforcement is just so appalling and intentionally so, this administration really has hidden and obfuscated this data at every possible turn. So the American public really deserves to know about the wrongdoing and violations that threaten their health and environment. And Senator Markey and other lawmakers deserve to know how their policies are being enforced. Are they being enforced to the letter of the law or are they being enforced laxly or not at all? So in that sense, I think that this is just a really valuable way to democratize this information that we do try and use and try and find our way through very often. Thanks, Hannah, I think your spot on there about how we really need to bring this to people and make it as visible as possible. And Martha, so the same question for you. How has environmental enforcement data played a role in your work? What problems do you see and what changes do you think needs to be made? Our organization actually came into being over 40 years ago when we began working with community residents around a contaminated site where there had been 40 years ago a complete systematic failure of regulatory agencies to watch dog, to enforce, to levy fines. And what's really sad is 40 years later, we are still working on the Santa Susana Field Lab. And so what we see is, and this has happened in a number of other sites where we end up developing a relationship, long-term relationships with communities as they struggle to find information about whether it's a contaminated site, a bad actor polluter. And so this data from this report for me was verifying what we knew, but to be able to visualize it, right? As environmental justice communities and organization believe strongly that health professionals should be deeply aligned with the environmental justice movement as we fight pollution and racism and poverty together. So for us, this data, again, is we see it's highly impacted communities, mostly communities of color, where this enforcement isn't happening. And so it's... And as we participate in a lot of different regulatory spaces, having this information will be really effective in us continuing to really push from stronger, bolder actions to actually prevent pollution but also to hold polluters accountable, right? Why, you know, I worked in criminal justice in many years and I would like to see, you know, data three strikes and you're out, you lose your permit because they really have ability to harm vast swaths of people with their violations. I'll stop there. Thanks, Martha. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. We really need to see some enforcement happening and some accountability. Jacob, I have the same question for you. And I'll repeat it again, because it's long. How is environmental data played a role in your work? What problems do you see? What changes do you think need to be made? Yeah, thank you for having me and thank you everybody for attending today and this great report. So I work for the Union Concerned Scientist and there we combine scientific analysis and advocacy to push for science-based decisions that are protected of a public health and safety. In my own work, I focus on issues of scientific integrity or to put that more simply when we see some form of political interference in science-based decision-making processes, which I wanna note, we see under all administrations both Republican and Democrat administrations. So, you know, I think from when we think about science-based decision-making, we often think about maybe a new rule being formed or a new policy in science informing that new role of policy. But science can play a really important role in enforcement as well in enforcement mechanisms and that's because how an agency decides to go about enacting those enforcement mechanisms should also really be grounded in scientific evidence if that enforcement is truly to be protective of public health and safety. And there are some cases where we have seen political interference and enforcement decisions where senior decision-makers have failed to consider the best available science. And quite a few examples, actually. So it's pretty clear to me, you know, that some changes need to be made when senior officials can bypass mandated inspections, sideline science and enforcement mechanisms at a whim for such critical decisions that really affect public health and safety. So from my end, I think a lot of those changes can be made in agency scientific integrity policies. Although what we've seen is that those agency policies are really hard to enforce themselves when senior decision-makers that are often the culprits behind political interference. So I think we have to go a step further and get Congress to codify these policies, which Congress has been working on. There's actually a bill now, the Scientific Integrity Act with bipartisan support in the House that looks really good. So I'd like to continue to see those changes being made. Awesome. Eric, can you tell us, this question is a little different for you, but sort of similar because you are from edgy and you work with this data all the time. But can you tell us a little bit about how you came to work with edgy? What problems you've encountered with this data and what you think needs to change? Thanks, Casey. So I joined edgy in early 2017. I began my work in this group in its web monitoring team. So one of the things we showed was the Trump EPA's removal of its climate change website in April, 2017, and then more broadly, how other federal agencies removed mentions of climate change, altered descriptions of its causes and impacts on their websites. One thing that we didn't really see though was the removal of climate data sets themselves, just language and links on websites. And there are many possible reasons for that legal requirements for data versus websites and information on websites, but also federal data, environmental data, so messy, flawed, hard to find, as Hannah said, hidden and obfuscated, that maybe censorship wasn't particularly necessary. So a bunch of us, including Sarah, Kelsey, many of us here tonight thought, why don't we try to productively work to bring this public resource further into the light? So we focused on EPA's Echo database, which has already been thoroughly described by Leslie. Echo.epa.gov is the best available resource we have on enforcement and compliance trends, not to mention pollution levels, it compiles all that data. Federal and EPA staff have compiled it from older and state level databases over the past decade and more more. But the public interface for Echo at echo.epa.gov has its limits, it's rather technical with lots of information displayed. Historical data isn't available on it beyond the past three to five years, which makes comparisons of administrations really challenging. And perhaps most importantly, the focus is on individual facilities, which is great if you wanna look up what's going on in the plant next door, but hard when you also need to know what's going on in your entire town, your entire congressional district, your entire state. So we gathered a team to copy the raw data behind the Echo interface. And we built an alternative infrastructure around that, one that helped us calculate the metrics Leslie's already gone through, visualize them in impactful ways, and also perhaps most importantly, one that allowed us to try to get to the stories behind those data. So that's my background in the edging. Thanks, Eric. Yeah, thank you for any of us on this webinar who have encountered Echo, who have resoundingly agreed that it's really frustrating to deal with. But we'll save that large conversation from another day. So I'm gonna turn back to you, Hannah. So as many of us know, Senator Ed Markey has been really instrumental in the creation and the popularization of the country's highest profile legislative plan to adjust climate change, the Green New Deal. So curious about what your understanding is of how environmental data will play a role in this effort, and if community accessibility is going to factor in. Yeah, thank you so much for that question, Casey. I mean, one of the key tenets of the Green New Deal is engaging in a collaborative effort with stakeholders. And that collaboration becomes so much harder if there is an insurmountable barrier to access, like incomprehensible and accessible or hidden data, which gets at some things that Marta was talking about in her answer to the first question. Which communities deserve to know what environmental harm they face. And, you know, conversely, what benefits they stand to gain from enacting something like a Green New Deal or a comprehensive climate and environmental restoration policies. So making environmental compliance and enforcement data more easy to find and understand will go a long way toward accomplishing that goal and facilitating that sort of dialogue that is so important between policymakers, regulators, and the people who are actively being harmed by environmental pollution and malfeasance. One of the goals of the Green New Deal is to manage and address the intersectional effects of climate change and environmental harm, but you can't manage what you don't measure. So hidden or confusing data is basically the same as not measuring it at all. And so what will need to not only take action to stop the climate crisis, but also to undo the climate environmental harm that this administration has done over the past four years. And that has been done historically through many other administrations as well. So to do that, we're going to need a full picture of how badly, you know, this administration has let down the American people compared to prior enforcement regimes and this kind of study and report card style analysis of that shift will be really helpful for us to make the case that this is something that needs to be prioritized as part of the Green New Deal or whatever action comes out of the next Congress. Awesome, I loved what you said about, and I completely agree about how, you know, this data being obscured or inaccessible is akin to it not being measured at all. I think that's one of the goals I know on the edgy side. So Martha, I'm going to turn to you. What are the implications of these enforcement gaps for communities like the ones you work with and what role does enforcement play in the fight for environmental health and justice? Well, lots of thoughts and feelings. And I think I'll say one, I think the enforcement piece is critical because often what we see is the experience, the lived experience of communities in terms of their health impacts and others are actually diminished and ignored traditional risk assessments, look at facility by facility and not cumulative impact. And so I think looking at the failure of existing laws to actually protect public health is a broader frame for us to look at this failure to hold businesses accountable for the harm that they do to the environment. And it is part, you know, so this allows us to begin to look at sort of the very tip of the iceberg because we don't see all of it. But for us, it allows us, you know, we are talking a lot about holding companies accountable for their mess. If we're going to actually have a just transition, then they need to be held accountable and responsible and financially responsible. And, you know, we are now looking at severe budget shortages and for cleanup, for addressing issues, you know, just a few days ago, Exide Battery Recycling Facility got off, got free, they were being able to claim bankruptcy and they're going to get out from under cleanup agreements. So the enforcement piece has got to be there, right? And you don't get to be unregulated for 35 years, make a mess and walk away. And that's part of, you know, for the environmental justice community and for us as a public health organization, this is just one more arrow in the quiver that we're using to deliver the message that we have to address racism, pollution and poverty together. Yeah, I think it does keep coming back to that enforcement piece. And what's frustrating is to see how poorly, you know, to see the actual numbers, it can be, you know, not surprising but reinforcing. And I think that's, it's painful and, you know, it definitely makes me more passionate about keeping going with this work. So thanks, Jacob. So this is, I would say topical. Science itself has been consistently maligned by the current administration. Do you think that's at play here? And what role do you see science policy playing in rebuilding this trust and ensuring good data going forward? Yeah, thanks for the question. It's absolutely at play here. I think we just logged, so we keep a log of the attacks on science. So just examples of political interference in science-based decision-making processes. And we just logged over 170, which is quite unprecedented for an administration to give a comparison under the George W. Bush administration, which many in the scientific community considered that administration damaging to science. We had logged under the same criteria, 98 attacks on science and that was over eight years. And so, you know, we're nearly four years now and at 170 attacks. So really unprecedented. And as I mentioned before, these enforcement mechanisms also require a scientific underpinning and there's definitely room for political interference in deciding those mechanisms or how the agency determines to enforce a standard. So, you know, this is happening with particulate matter pollution. Actually, just yesterday in the news, administrator Wheeler, you know, it was reported that he was going to double down on not tightening particulate matter pollution standards, even though the agency's own scientist and a particulate matter panel that we convene so the science really shows that the agency should be tightening those standards. And so, you know, you start from this place where you already have a standard or a policy that isn't backed by science. And then, you know, the edgy report shows that enforcement is inspection is down. And so all of this translates into very real harm to people, particularly for marginalized communities. So once again, you know, for me, it comes back to changing the scientific integrity policies to try to ensure that this political interference doesn't occur to codify the policies. In addition to that, we've just made a ton of recommendations as we've learned about these policies and how they work and how they don't work currently. And I'd be happy to put a link to that roadmap that we've put out there. But, you know, one example and one recommendation that we're suggesting is because it's so hard to hold these senior decision makers accountable is for the scientific integrity officers at the agencies to start working with the inspector general at the agency who has more power to hold those individuals accountable. So we do have some recommendations going forward, which I hope is good news, at least a little bit here today. That's great. And that plays right into my next question. It's almost like you planned that. So I'm gonna offer up this next question to everyone in sequence, give everyone a chance to answer it. And it definitely touches on things that everyone's talked about, I just wanna bring it back to why we're here today, which is just to talk about these reports and how they're rolling out. So what is the most concerning thing that you've seen so far from this report? If there's one thing you can sort of pick out and what next steps or perhaps just to make it simpler, what one next step would you hope to see to address your concerns? And I'll start with Hannah. Yeah, I think that, I mean, looking at this report, which distills this massive problem into such an accessible way, the numbers are horrifying. Every increase in violations is more than just a number on a page. It's a direct threat to public health and the environment. It's a direct threat to a specific community rooted in a specific place. And likewise, every inspection that doesn't happen is a risk that could go undetected or an enforcement action that fails to take place. It's someone escaping the consequences of their wrongdoing and basically allowing them carte blanche to put people in danger. And it's just a really strong depiction of how much of an overall dereliction of duty has taken place to the EPA's mission, to the laws of the land and to the wellbeing of the American public writ large and also to specific communities that are more likely to be exposed to this kind of pollution for decades and for generations. And so, you know, I think, unfortunately this report proves what we've, it's expected all along that the Trump administration is not just rolling back its enforcement work. It's also giving polluters a clear sign that there's no consequences for bad actions. And I think I just thought, Marjah's point about the liability and was so critical because these are the sort of, these are the sort of pieces of data that we can use to both argue for policies that do a better job of actually protecting people rather than protecting specific communities from ever experiencing this harm to begin with but also to keep fighting for polluters to actually have to pay for what they've done to communities that are at risk. So in terms of next steps, I mean, I think, you know, we'll be continuing to fight in Congress to pass laws that strengthen enforcement and strengthen the consequences for making sure that polluters pay for, you know, whatever sort of bad actions they've done. Thanks, Hannah. Marjah? Nope, you're muted, Marjah. Remind me of the question again because I wanna make sure I focus. Yes, so what is most concerning? Looks like the one piece that is most concerning from the reports or overall findings and is there one piece or one next step? I know there's a lot of stuff but that you would take to address the concerns. Well, for us, the California data is particularly important given, you know, we're about to start on the process of the state implementation plans for the California Air Resources Board and understanding the violations is important. You know, today was a California Air Resources Board meeting where the board took up the issue of race and inequality within their own institution but also how it is reflected in their policies and I think that these reports will help us tell that story both at the federal level but things are much better at the state level even though we like to think so in California. So for me, the next steps that, you know, I've been talking to Casey about well, we want more data on California and not just the districts that are there but to be able to tell a fuller story to bring this information to community so that they can use in their advocacy efforts as they work to, whether it's, you know, moving beyond fossil fuels or it's our efforts around addressing water contamination. For us, we're gonna, we really want to look at that data as well. So we're, you know, we're really excited about what you guys are doing because it will be something that will impact a lot of the work that we do in California. Great to hear. Jacob, and I'll repeat the question. What is the one most concerning piece from the report cards or overall findings for you and UCS and what next step would you hope to see to address those? Yeah, it's, there's a, there's a lot that's concerning. So, you know, picking one thing is difficult but so I would just, you know, pick the broader category of I think the decrease in inspections under the Clean Air Act and the reason I think that stands out for me, you know, at the moment is because we're currently living through this pandemic with a respiratory disease that is thought to be linked and worsened by air pollution. And so that seems particularly egregious for me. I think also, you know, just the fact that, and it's called out in the report and it was in Leslie's presentation as well, that, you know, the people bearing the brunt of the harm from the pollution, resulting from this lack of enforcement, lack of inspections are marginalized communities. And so that statistic that on average, Black and Latinx communities are burdened on average by 56 and 63% more hazardous air pollution respectively than they create here. The consumption was really just an astounding number to me. In terms of air pollution, I thought that, you know, the solution that Edgy offered and that UCS would agree with of having a better solution to monitor air pollution emissions, continuous real-time monitoring of air pollution would be great on the environmental justice front, you know, building in a consideration of cumulative impacts for communities when they're considering enforcement or inspection mechanisms because it often just isn't pollutant A or pollutant B, it's pollutants A through D that these communities have been fighting against for decades. In the environmental justice office is severely understaffed at the EPA right now. It's been moved out of the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance to the Office of Policy. So there's a lot to be fixed there. Thanks, Jacob. Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot. Eric, I'll turn to you. Lastly, same question. Yeah, thanks. So I'll just quickly say that, you know, despite the alternative data infrastructure that Edgy that we built, we still have no idea how many facilities were active and operating in previous years, making those kind of historical analyses near impossible for some kinds of metrics. Likewise, just echoing what Jacob mentioned, you know, for programs like the Queen Air Act, we don't have that kind of automatic continuous monitoring and reporting of air pollutants and emissions like we do under the Queen Water Act where effluent discharges are more automatically and regularly reported to the EPA. That's like two basic pieces of information. How many facilities were there, what are they doing? And it's incredible to think that in our so-called big data era that we don't have that. It just goes to show that the challenge is not the technology, it's really the powerful interests here. So, you know, we've written a little bit about in the science for the people magazine lately about what we think should change. I would agree, yeah, better reporting from industry on what they are releasing into the environment. We have the technology for that. It is a question of political will. And also, you know, we need meaningful metrics that are about holding bad actors accountable, but we also need metrics that are aspirational. You know, what do the communities want? How can they measure progress towards those features? So I'll leave it at that for now. Thanks, Eric. I remember when on the edgy side, we were talking about the first time we discovered that there was no number of historic facilities. I was just totally aghast. So it just seems like such a basic thing to be having to compare your numbers against is the number of facilities. So just a lot, there's always a lot to learn when you dive into this. And so I wish we had a million years to ask all the questions, but we have 10 minutes. So let's see how many we can get. So I'm gonna start and also wanna remind everyone who's listening that you can keep asking questions and we'll have the panelists try to answer them afterwards if they're able to. And Edgy will certainly keep answering your questions in the Q&A, but keep asking them down there in the Q&A future. So this first question, and I'm gonna direct this to you, Martha, if that's all right. This is awesome question in the Q&A is, what do you think about more mechanisms for community-driven enforcement, such as citizen suits that are allowed under the Clean Water Act, for example? Could this be more direct than trying to get the agencies to do the inspections and then take enforcement actions? What do you think about that? I think it's a great idea. I think it does require resources and this data is really helpful. We're looking at a facility right now that operated for more than 20 years has left the big giant mess. And we would like to sue them because how else are we gonna clean up the huge plume, underground plume that they've left of contamination in the groundwater? So yeah, I think we should be looking at more of that. I see Tracy Perkins who's brought up Ivan, which is the environmental reporting database that's been created by community to be able to push for enforcement. And we've tried to do it in LA, but in a city that is largest LA, it's hard to do, right? A resident will send us a picture of a violation. There has to be a back door to get the city to act on it. And that's been a little bit harder, but yes, there, and I got a little off track when I saw Tracy's question about Ivan, which I was actually thinking they should have some of this information. And it's been used both in the Central Valley and near the New River. Yeah. So we have another question and I'm gonna direct it over to Jacob. What is the best way for scientists to engage in policy work? That's a great question. I was just typing it out. So it's good that it's live. There are quite a few ways. I would say like the first one, and it all depends on what people are comfortable with, but just continuing to do your scientific work, that scientific work is incredibly important because it informs our policy directions. And so just continuing to do the work is really great. To call in or to schedule meetings with your congressional representatives, you as a scientist have a lot of expertise, a lot of power and Congress wants to hear from you. And so getting involved in talking about your expertise wherever it is pertinent. In that same vein, communicating out about the scientific aspects of these various policies. You can do that through writing letters to the editor in your local newspaper, which go a long way, or even writing an op-ed. So those are three ways that I think of off the top of my head. And we have more resources that I will pop in the Q&A. Thanks for those. This next question is for Hannah. Would a Public Health Information Act that requires local new agencies to report instances of violations and other public health emergencies in general be plausible in legislation? Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think there's definitely without a doubt, a lot more that we, I'm looking at the question now. I think without a doubt, there's a lot more we could do in terms of actually reporting what's happening and what's going wrong. This is something very similar actually to what we've been working on in the pipeline space where we've been trying to improve pipeline disaster reporting. So I think there's a lot of parallels in terms of the enforcement breakdown between federal, state, and local inspections. We have a climate change related health Protection and Promotion Act in the Senate that focuses also on a national health strategy. So I think there's another interesting question here about how can we be more conservatively working on a national level to ensure that we're filling our data gaps? Because this is something that is clearly terrible in the public health space, but I think you find it really populates in a lot of different areas from the toxic release inventory to some of the CERCLA and EPGRA reporting. So I think we need actually a really fundamental rethink of how we've been dealing with a lot of our data collection across the federal government. Thanks, Hannah. Next question for Eric. With regards to top violators under the Clean Air Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, given the partially complete nature of the data compared to the Clean Water Act, can we say with confidence that those companies slash entities have been out of compliance for the last three years? And this questioner writes, I guess I want to know what partially complete means. How should we take care with that data? Yeah, that's a wonderful question. So as Leslie noted previously, the major environmental health protection laws that we have in this country, the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which governs hazardous waste. Some of those keep better data and keep better records than others, in particular the Clean Water Act. Our records for the National Polluting Discharge Elimination System tend to be better. And so what does it mean that our Clean Air Act and RICRA data are partially complete? It means that we can say that those bad actors that we have in the report and report cards that they have been out of compliance for however long we've said they are. What it doesn't mean, or what it means that we have trouble with is that there may be other entities out there that are actually doing bad things, but that aren't reporting that data that aren't being inspected for it, that data is still languishing on some state agency server somewhere, something like that. So ultimately it means our analysis is a conservative estimate of the violations going on after. So yeah, in that sense it's not as, what we're reporting as conservative, there's a lot more going on, unfortunately. We just don't have the data keeping track of it. Thanks, Eric. So I think we have about time for one quick question, just go around for everyone. And again, I wish we could answer all the questions today, but there'll be a place at the end of this webinar that you'll be able to see our emails. You can direct questions to us that we can direct to the panelists and try to make that pipeline back and forth. And additionally, if panelists wanna keep continue answering questions in the Q&A, they're welcome to do that in the next half an hour. So the last question that I have for everyone is if people leave this webinar, remembering one thing about this, all of this, what do you hope that is? And can we start with Hannah in the classic order that we've established? Sure. So the one thing that I think people should take away from this is I mean, I think returning to my point that it doesn't matter if we're measuring the data, if it is unusable and also unused by the government. So we need to be, I think, weaponizing some of these findings in order to actively, not just undo the harm that's been perpetrated, but going forward have some kind of more robust response to each one of these data points, which like I said, each one of these data points is not just a number, they are actively putting people in at the risk of harm or at definite harm every time. So I think that for me, this certainly serves as a call to action and something that we want to use to fight for, increase filling data gaps, increase accessibility, and also increased teeth for environmental regulations and to ensure that polluters are held accountable. Thanks, Hannah. Martha? Yes, to everything that Hannah said. And then I think this also points to that the system as it currently operates is fundamentally broken and we need to look at different kinds of policy options. I've been a long time proponent of the precautionary principle and how we actually begin to implement that and fees and fines and enforcement are the backbone of getting us to a place where we actually start moving upstream and preventing harm. And so bringing a public health lens to this information and how we talk about it, I think will be really important. We wanna share this with many partners. We wanna figure out how to get more data, how to get you guys some support to be able to do more of this because in the absence of government taking responsibility for protecting its residents and giving us information, you've had to step in and do this on a volunteer basis. So I'm very interested in figuring out how this tells the story and how we use this both at the state and national level to push for more prevention. Thanks, Martha. Jacob. Now, I wanna still sum up Martha's answer as well. And so, yeah, the system is broken, I think. For me, it's the science-based processes that I often see as the bedrock of policies and also these enforcement mechanisms. So if we don't have that, that translates into real harm to people. So we thought we did have a good system and we did not. And so I think there's a lot to learn from that and a lot of changes to make, to protect the public health and safety that especially in marginalized communities where it's needed so dearly. Thanks, Jacob. And Eric. Maybe I'll loop us back around and echo what I think was Hannah's points or one of her points that around weaponizing this data and in particular not waiting around to get 100% complete data. I know that, you know, I suggested solutions around better emissions monitoring and all that, but we can't wait for that kind of a fix. We need to work and utilize the data we have right now that are showing these challenges and issues and problems in communities across the country. So we should not let uncertainty about what's going on keep us from acting. Thank you, Eric. Well, thanks again so much to all of our panelists. I know that everyone now, if you could hear them, there would be a lot of this going on. So thanks everyone again. And it's been an absolute honor to have you all on today and I'm saying thank you panelists in the chat. So we're gonna move on and give some demos and we'll wave goodbye to our panelists. Thank you guys for being here today. All right, so now for this last portion of our events, we're going to have two members of the Environmental Enforcement Watch Team, Melvika Bhatt and Megan Raisley show you all the data tool we used in our analysis as well as the final reports that are visible for everyone today on our website. So I'm just gonna turn that right over to them and Melvika would love to show you guys the Jupyter Notebook. Hello, thank you Casey so much. Let me just go ahead and share my screen so that can see the presentation. Here we go. Okay, so Jupyter Notebooks are essentially an open source web application which allows us to create and share documents with live code, equations, data visualizations and explanations of the text. And we like to think of the Jupyter Notebooks almost as Google documents that we can share with each other. So as you effectively copied the EPA's database onto our own database hosted at Stony Brook University and it's updated every two weeks, we archived it like this instead of querying the EPA directly in case the EPA ever decided to remove any of the data. And then this is when the Jupyter Notebooks come into play. We host the Jupyter Notebooks on Google Colab and this allows people to easily pull requests from edgy's copy database and create tailored reports based on state, congressional district or municipality. Now I'm gonna go ahead and take a look at the all programs notebook. This all programs notebook is what we use to generate report cards that Megan is gonna be showing us in a few minutes. Right now it is specific to the 76 locations that we analyzed and it's designed to feed well into the R script developed to generate these beautiful glossy report cards. For looking at other states, congressional districts and zip codes, we have developed this cross programs notebook. And I'm gonna take you through this and show you some information about Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, CIDWA, RICRA, and RICRA stands for Resource Conservation Recovery Act. And we can also take a look at some greenhouse gases. It doesn't make a pretty report card like the other one does, but we hope to develop that capacity over the next year or so. And we'd love to get your support and participation in that. So please let us know if you'd like to get involved. Again, this is a Jupyter Notebook. Right now it's being hosted in Google Colab which just makes it really easy for us to kind of go cell to cell and play everything. At the beginning of the notebook, we have some context for what all the EPA program acronyms are and what the EPA is doing on their end. And then also some instructions on how to run the Jupyter Notebooks. So here we can begin our first cell. I've gone ahead and run them beforehand just for the sake of time, but some of them take a few seconds to run. This first cell has a dropdown bar. So here we can choose whether we want to be in facilities by state, county, congressional district or zip code. Here I've selected congressional district. Then I can select my state of interest say I want to look at Massachusetts and I want to look at district four. So again, I can select that here. And then I can take a closer look at the top bilators for the region in Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and RICRA. That's down here. And here we can see the top 20 facilities with the most non-compliant quarters in Massachusetts district four. This is Clean Air Act. This again is Clean Water Act. So here we can see there is a lot more and then Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. After that, we can get program specific data for all the facilities in the region. So that means we can look at air, water, drinking water and has to diswaste. And then also we can take a look at the type of data. So either emissions, violations, inspections or enforcements that we want to explore. We've linked all, what if the EPA says about each of these? So you can get some more context on what exactly they're looking at and measuring. And then below that, we can create datasets for the facilities in the region. So here we can again look at any of these. So Resource Conservation Recovery Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and then we can look at exactly what we want to. So here I've looked at Clean Water Act violations in MA4 and this gives us a handy table, which again, we can see the facility names in and the addresses. So it's a little more close up into the facilities. And then for the actualization sake, we thought, okay, let's create an interactive map so that users can kind of look around and see where in the district these facilities are located. So here we use the Geopandas and Folium Libraries to take a look at the congressional district as a whole. So here I can zoom out and take a look at the district as a whole. And then if I want to look at any facilities in particular, I can also zoom in on any of them. So let's say I want to look at this, I can click on it and it allows me to also see the Acro Detailed Report. Below the map, it allows us to save the data that we've just looked at to our computer. And this is really handy for if we wanna go back in the future and refer to all this data we've just looked at or create any more reports with that. And once we run this, it saves the data to our computer. And in the future, if you ever want to look at that data again, you can go into files right here. It's this little folder button on the left and then click on CSVs. And whatever you've chosen to look at will be right there. And then you can click on the little three dots and download it to your laptop. And you can have that with you. So this is generally our cross-programs notebook and I will hand it off to Megan to show everyone our report cards we've worked on. Thanks, Malvika. Yeah, like Casey Malvika said, my name is Megan. I'm gonna go ahead and start sharing my screen to show you what we've been talking about. So just a reminder, you can access the report cards on the website. So I'm gonna look at Illinois too and just sort of walk us through the report. So on the cover here, you have the same map that you just saw Malvika look at in the notebook. So this is showing us an outline of the district and then these little circles are showing us the distribution and number of facilities in that district. And then this first page is giving us a little bit more about ECHO, why we're looking at these committees and why we decided to do this project, which I hope you have a little bit of a better sense of now. And then this graphic just really briefly shows how a facility might be regulated under the three acts that we're looking at. So just a reminder, this report card looks at Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and RICRA, Research Conservation and Recovery Act. And then so this page is the first page that we really see some data. This is our page that we use to compare all the districts and states. And so if you look at this dot plot, you can see Illinois second district has 182 Clean Water Act violations per 100 facilities in 2019. And that's a little bit higher than average. So that means on average, there's more than one violation per facility here. And then if you look here, you can see that there has been a 24% increase in violations over time within the district itself. And that's a long set of 28% decrease in action. So while there've been more Clean Water Act violations as a whole, there's been less attempts to ameliorate those violations. So then this page is highlights for Illinois second district. I just wanna draw a quick difference between these metrics. So if you see these metrics here comparing the previous 16 years, so both Bush and Obama administrations to the Trump administration, and then the metrics you'll see here are comparing the first three years of the Obama administration to the first three years of the Trump administration. So looking at that timeframe, we can see that in this district, there's been a 61% decrease in inspections alongside almost a 100% decrease in fines and a 2% decrease in enforcement actions. And then under the Clean Water Act, 24% of facilities in the district have been in violation for at least nine months of the last three years. So then taking a look at these four plots, I wanna quickly point out something that you'll see in figures throughout this report, which has to do with transparency. So you can see the Clean Water Act violations figure is really vibrant and that's because it's completely opaque. And you can see these figures below, the colors are a little less opaque, more transparent. And we do that throughout the report to sort of visualize our confidence in the data. So we know, for example, that Clean Water Act violations are relatively well reported in ECHO and we trust that data more than some of the other data that ECHO reports like inspection. So you'll see that different in transparency as well as these subtitles throughout the report. So mostly complete data, potentially incomplete data. And then you'll also see very incomplete data. So looking at Illinois too, we can see this sort of uptick in violations under Bush and Obama and then this little decrease during the Trump administration, which is actually something we don't see very often. Usually violations have continued to increase. And then that's alongside this sort of steady decline of the inspections across all three programs and relatively few actions and almost no fines under the Trump administration. So then this page is making a comparison between Illinois second district, Illinois and then national level numbers. So this first figure is showing us inspections per 1,000 facilities. And you can see across the board for all three programs and all three geographies, there are really low rates of inspection, right? So this dotted line is showing us the average of one inspection per facility. And we're nowhere near that on any fronts. But you can see specifically for Illinois and Illinois second there's significantly less inspections under the Clean Air Act than at the national level. And then looking at violations across the board, Illinois and Illinois second are quite a bit higher than national level. But I also just want to flag that even at the national level on average, there's more than one violation per facility. So then this page sort of goes back to what Malvika was showing us in the notebook. So this is showing us recent non-compliance, what we call bad actors. So you can see under the Clean Water Act in Rickra, the top 10 facilities in these programs have been in violation for the entirety of the last three years. And then these bullet points on the side here will take you to that ECHO facility report that Malvika mentioned. So that's all the information that ECHO has about a specific facility and what type of violation that's occurred. So then the next three pages are program specific information. So starting with the Clean Air Act, we can see there are a little of 800 facilities in Illinois second that report under the Clean Air Act. And with over 800 facilities, we can see there's never even been 80 inspections annually under the Trump administration. So it's pretty unlikely that you're gonna be inspected. And that's alongside pretty low rates of violation. So under the Clean Air Act, it's unlikely that a violation is going to be identified unless there's an inspection. So that's probably why we're seeing low levels of violation. And then there's also pretty low levels of enforcement and there's been no fines during the Trump administration. So then looking at Clean Water, there's about 300 facilities. Again, pretty low levels of inspection. And then like we saw earlier, this increasing level of violations and then a drop off during the Trump administration. But just wanna highlight that even under the Trump administration, there are about 600 violations annually, which is again still more than one violation per facility. And that comes with almost no enforcement action. So you can see 2017, 2018, 2019, there's two non and then two enforcement actions and very, very few fines. So then looking at RICRA, there's a little over 1,000 RICRA facilities in Illinois too. And pretty consistently, there are more RICRA facilities than Clean Air, Clean Water, just because the vast, like the number of facilities that have to report under RICRA is much higher. Like your local Walmart might have to report under RICRA. And with over 1,000 facilities, there's very, very few levels of inspections in this district. So like not more than 30 inspections annually, the last three years. And RICRA is similar to Clean Air and that we're not likely to find a violation unless there's an inspection. So again, that's probably why you're seeing such low numbers with so many facilities. And then again, low enforcement actions and almost no fines. And so then we have a page, a legislative information page for every report that gives a little more information on the house or the senator that serves that district or state. And then we also have a list of the relevant subcommittees that they serve on. And then the next few pages have a little bit more information about the Echo database itself and some known data problems with Echo. And then here you can see this table that references what I mentioned earlier about the different transparency of figures throughout the report and sort of gives a better explanation of why we do that and where specifically we do that. And then these two pages explain exactly how we calculated each of the metrics that you see throughout the report. So if you have a question about that, it's probably here. That's these two pages. And then finally, there's some more about you, Edgy and why we took on this project. And then I wanna flag some really useful links here. So you can download a PDF version of this report. You can access both the notebooks that generate the data that we use to make these reports. And then you can also access the GitHub repository where we store all the code that produces these reports in R. So I'm assuming I hope y'all have some questions from that. That was very speedy, but that's all I have. So I will give it back to Casey. Thanks Megan and thanks Melvika. So yeah, we do have some great questions in the chat and the Q&A. And I'd love to invite all the members of Edgy back. And so whoever feels moved to answer these questions can do so. The first one which goes back to some of the conversations we were having about the problems with the data itself in Echo is one person asks, I may have missed it, but I thought earlier we heard that there isn't historical data available. So how are these cross administration comparisons being made? Would anyone like to take that? I can chime in here. So yeah, let me just try to clarify that for everybody. So if you go to echo.epa.gov you can get the last three to five years on that interface for any individual facility. You can also download all the data dating back to the 1970s, okay? So all the data that EPA has, you can get that. So that's what we did and we copied that data. We copied it on a weekly basis to a server that we set up at Stony Brook University that Malvika was mentioning. And so we have that historical information. For instance, we know how many violations were reported on the Queen Air Act in 2005. What we don't know is how many facilities were actually active in 2005. So we can't say that there were 100 violations per 500 facilities or whatever. Thank you, Eric. So another question we have here is asking, do we know of any reports that compile the historical data across time for California specifically? Does anybody know? It's okay if not. And perhaps we can get back to them. Can you say that again, Casey, I'm sorry. Yeah, the question is, do we know of any reports that would compile the historical data across time for California specifically? So we don't have a report for California right now because their senator doesn't serve on that committee, but theoretically we can make a report for California. Yeah, and I think I would answer that question too by saying we do have that Jupiter notebook that Malvika showed. You can look for California. You can see all of the data for that. So this next question is, if I were looking for some type of measure of a US state's commitment to the environment for the last 30 years, could you make a recommendation? Maybe Eric or Megan. If I can chime in here, this is Sarah. Sorry, I can't turn my video on because I've got a four year old in the background. But this goes back to those data reliability questions that Eric raised where we can look at data all the way back to the 1970s, but it has a different reliability across that whole period of time. So it's very difficult to look at trends over time because you don't know how comparable the data is across those years. This is why we focused on 2001 onwards based on EPA's recommendation, but others might have different ideas. There might be some signal within that time period that is strong and can be analyzed across different years. Thanks, Sarah. Another question we have is, do we have data not just on violations but on enforcement spending and or staffing? So this is Sarah again. There is data available on spending and staffing. I'm not sure it's available through Echo though. Maybe I can pass this over to Eric. That's exactly what I'd say. I don't believe that's available through Echo, but certainly that's supplementary info that would be good to look up and compile. I have a link to an EPA report. I'll drop it in the chat. Thanks, Cole. So I really like this question and this might be, this is more of a theoretical one, but do you think that we need to replace Echo and is this a call to action? I answered this one already a little bit in the chat, but my feeling was no. I mean, Echo is such an important tool. It's really a pioneer in its field in developing transparency, particularly around enforcement and compliance data, where historically under TRI, the Toxics Release Inventory. Sorry for all the noise in the background here. We had data on what hazardous waste is stored where and what Toxics might be being released, but it's also crucial to supplement that with enforcement and compliance data. So our call is absolutely not to get rid of Echo. It's to say, how do we build strong community researcher, regulator collaborations to really bring this tool to life, to make it part of our civic engagement and that's what we're aiming for with this kind of project to create spaces where we can bring people together to look at this data that's so important to our lives and we really do commend the work of EPA's Echo staff for developing this project. And what we're hoping is that open source tools like the ones we've developed can complement and augment their really great work. And I know Kelsey has something to say here too. Thanks Sarah. Yeah, just starting on to what Sarah was saying, she's absolutely right. Like Echo is extremely valuable. It's a huge step towards transparency. I come from a technical background and I can tell you we can go a lot further with the technology we have and what Edgy would really like to advocate for is to have stronger transparency and openness of this kind of governance to help people be more involved with their own, with the governance in their own communities. So this is really not like a shame on EPA, shame on the legislators. That's not the message here. So this has been a very challenging time for EPA. It's gone through some pretty rough cutback through this administration and we've got some blog posts on Edgy's site that talk about this. But we'd really like to support a stronger EPA and I think Echo is a really good start for that. And when we critique, we critique with the intent to build stronger. Thanks so much for that Kelsey. I think that's a really great takeaway. So we have a couple more questions and we have about six more minutes to get through them. So what are the chances that even with the low numbers of inspections, the entities still know ahead of time when the inspectors are coming? Does anyone on our team have a sense of that? Yeah, I attempted to answer that question. I don't know if I did it well. I don't know that we know is the answer. I think each state level version of EPA has their own relationship with industry and to say that it's unheard of, I think is wrong, but to be able to predict how likely that is, I don't know that we can do. Thanks, Megan. Also, I accidentally moved a question that Tracy had into the answered questions in the Q&A, but they asked, is there a way to make the conversations in the Q&A and the chat boxes available along with the video recording? And I just wanted to say that those will be available. Thanks, Cole. Here's another question. What capacity do we have to prevent use of chemicals that have not been studied for environmental and biological impact for commercial slash industrial use? This is a big question. There's a lot of really deep problems with the way we manage putting new chemicals on the market right now. Right now, EPA has a 90-day window in which it needs to make a decision about whether or not to allow a new chemical onto the market, which is really an impossible window to do health-based studies of their own. So they have to turn to what is available in the peer-reviewed literature or from industry. And of course, most of these things are not been studied by non-industry people because they're under patent. So there are these enormous gaps in how much we know about chemicals that are going onto the market. And we really need to think about this more like we think about the FDA and how we regulate things that go into our mouths as drugs or medicine food because these chemicals in the environment will eventually go into our mouths. They're gonna come in through our water, they'll come in through our soil, they'll come into the air that we breathe. And so we really need to start treating the release of new chemicals in the same way that we manage drugs where we require much more stringent and public testing of safety prior to things going on in the market. And that's not what Edgy's looking at in this report, but it's a really important question that needs to be tackled if we actually want to stem the tide of hazardous chemicals coming into our environments and bodies. Thank you so much, Sarah. What capacity, actually, I'm gonna ask this one. How will young people be involved in this data through education? And I like this question because I think there's a lot of space here. You know, Edgy hasn't had a whole young people outreach project yet, but I would love to see this kind of data in schools and in public libraries. There's absolutely no reason why a high school classroom or even a junior high classroom couldn't be running a Jupiter notebook looking at the congressional report cards that we've put together. One project that I've worked on that inspired this was a collaboration with Green Roots in Chelsea, Massachusetts and their youth team called Environmental Chelsea Organizers, where we built glowing lanterns for each of the Clean Water Act violations that the Seven Oil Storage Facilities had along Chelsea Creek, and we released them in a public data event so that the companies could see what all of their violations looked like in aggregate and the community could. And that was the beginning of a community conversation with those oil storage facilities. So there's just so much more we can be doing with this data to bring it to life, to remind ourselves that as I think Martha made the point earlier, that each of these violations is a change to our environment. It's a physical thing. It's not a numerical thing. And you know, I think children and youth can be so vital in bringing that to life because it materially matters for their lives and health. Thanks, Sarah. Yeah, I completely agree. And also, Megan wrote this in the chat, but earlier on in this project, we did collaborate with members of Sunrise Boston to, you know, one of the really early versions of our Jupiter notebooks was a custom notebook for the Sunrise Movement Boston. So yeah, there's a lot of space to be collaborating, especially with organizations. Next question that we have is, obviously different facilities regulated understay the Clean Water Act could have a violation for various different pollutants. This would probably be a huge undertaking, but is there any vision or interest in creating a way to visualize how many of those violations correlate with a specific pollutant or toxin that may be of concern to a particular community? Yes, I'll answer this one, which is to agree that absolutely it would be a huge undertaking, but also super important, obviously. And we note that we have attempted to do this. We did it a bit for our report on enforcement or the lack thereof during the pandemic. And we did that for the entire country for just a few months, looked at what kinds of pollutants were being released by facilities, but really we'd probably want to zoom in on particular communities, particular areas, and look at a longer period of time, what are these companies actually releasing into our waters? Thank you, Eric. So we are here at 7.30, and I just want to say, as we're closing, thank you once again for all of you for joining us, to our inspiring panelists, remarkable co-sponsors, generous funders, and the rest of the amazing U-Team. So just so you know, the recording for this webinar will be posted on our website and it'll be available through YouTube, so. And I also would love to end on this. EDGE is a primarily volunteer-led organization and I would be remiss without mentioning the countless hours of purely passion-driven work that has made this all possible. So if you're able to support our work through a donation, every little bit helps. And if you're interested in joining EDGE or partnering with us, we would love to have that. You can send us an email at envirodgi at protonmail.com, and I'm gonna share my screen as we leave. You can send us a message on Twitter at eew underscore network, and you can give us a follow as well. And in the next year, we're hoping to develop report cards for all states and districts that can be updated annually. And we would love to meet you, hear what you think, and continue this important work together. So thanks again, I'm gonna share my screen as we leave so you can see all of the links and things I just mentioned. And I hope everyone has an absolutely wonderful evening. I actually don't know if I can share my screen, but I can drop all these in the chat. Thank you so much. Have a great night, everybody.