Environmental enthusiasts beware, after reading this article, you may find yourself spending hours clicking around in the EPA’s new features on their website.  Some of the latest upgrades have put the environmental agency’s gigabytes of data into appealing and informative dashboards, maps, and graphs.  By providing a visual representation of the raw data, the website allows the users to understand and digest the information at a glance.

Green Book

The EPA website has included their “Green Book” for many years; however, recent upgrades have made this feature even easier to use. The digital book provides detailed information about area National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) designations, classifications, and nonattainment status. The new improvements include:

• • • • • • • an interactive map for each NAAQS page with current status information
            • a “downloads” link provides access to data exports, GIS shapefiles, and maps

To access the Green Book visit the EPA website at https://www.epa.gov/green-book.

ECHO Dashboards

The agency’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) page now has state dashboards for air and hazardous waste in addition to previous dashboards for water and pesticides. These dashboards contain a decade of compliance and enforcement data for facilities by state, EPA region, classification, and more.  They provide an easy-to-use summary of activities to answer questions like which facilities are regulated, how many have been evaluated, how many have alleged violations, how many were subject to enforcement, and which agency (federal, state, local) issued the citation. To access the EPA’s ECHO webpage click on this link: https://echo.epa.gov/, but be warned, make sure your schedule is clear for several hours as you enjoy getting lost in the details.