United States Environmental Protection Agency: MyEnvironment

The MyEnvironment search application is designed to provide a cross-section of environmental information based on the user’s location.

The desired location is keyed in from the EPA Home Page (www.epa.gov) under the section called MyEnvironment.

The next page to appear contains the results of the search for that geography, e.g., Baltimore, MD. You can use a variety of locational search terms, such as zipcode, street address, county name, waterbody name, National Park name – or any placename that you might see on a roadmap.

The top part of the page contains a map with the EPA regulated facilities for that area (and air and water monitoring stations will be added soon) and the bottom part includes the following set of information (pertinent to that specific geography, or to the county or state – depending on the lowest level of aggregation for which those data are available):

MyAir
UV index – This reports the predicted UV light intensity for today
Air Quality Index for the US (AQI)
Radon level maps
Today’s Ozone Forecast
Today’s Particulate Matter Forecast
Another Ozone Map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

MyHealth
EPA Cancer Risk for Air Toxics Estimates by County
Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Infant Mortality Rates by County
HRSA Low Birth Weight Babies Rates by County

MyLand
Superfund Information links
Brownfields Information links
Cleanups in my Community – takes you to an application that shows a map of cleanup activities in your neighborhood – like Superfund, RCRA and other.

MyWater
US Geological Survey Streamflow Levels data for stream gauges
Water conditions for local waterbodies based on EPA Water Quality and Impaired Stream data
EPA Local Drinking Water Provider information and Community Water System information from Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS)
Monitoring Stations by Pollutant – The ability to identify monitoring stations in your neighborhood by the pollutants they measure – is coming soon.
New/expiring facility permits in my area – this feature reports new and expiring permits (from EPA’s Permit Compliance System database) given to facilities that emit pollutants to water in your neighborhood.

Watershed – This feature shows you your watershed and connects you to the EPA Surf Your Watershed Web site which provides a variety of links to citizen-based groups at work in your watershed, water quality data, and more.

MyEcological Conditions – this area displays reports that describe the state of ecological indicators in your area. Additionally, up in the right-hand corner of the map (above the map’s legend) we offer a refined search capability. In the refined search box you can select by pollutant which will yield a map with only those facilities emitting that pollutant plus a federated search of materials pertinent to that pollutant, including:
EPA Library Collection Search for mostly scientific documents and PDFs;
EPA Substance Registry System Search for lots of pollutant-specific information including factsheets about health impacts;
National Institute of Standards and Technology chemical breakdowns;
EPA Web Site Search for any web pages pertaining to that pollutant;
EPA Frequently Asked Questions Search for any FAQs pertaining to that pollutant; and
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) Chemical Factsheets (if available).

Select by industry which will yield a map with only the facilities in that industry (e.g., manufacturing) and as above – below the fold will show search results with web pages, factsheets and references particular to that industry as a search term.

Select a New Place will let you key in a new location into the search box and result in a wholesale refresh of the map and below containers for information about air, water, land, etc. pertinent to that newly specified geography.

Finally, there is a MyCollaboration area in the bottom right-hand corner of the search results page (this is not available from any refined search results page – but instead only from a geographic search). MyCollaboration include three means for communicating either to EPA or the web community:

1. Email is available to send comments back to the EPA developers of this Web site and we can field a wide range of questions that you may have – such as requests for additional resources, comments about the MyEnvironment application or any other comments.

2. Comment Form is available to report back to your community your environmental concerns about your neighborhood. We will collect your comment and report it back out on the website for anyone else who navigates back to that community location. With this feature we were hoping to allow an exchange of concerns about particular neighborhoods. Eventually we will add a blog to this Web site so that this can turn into a dialogue where EPA can highlight and bring resources to the environmental concerns for a particular geography that are most on people’s minds.

3. Finally, since this application puts a strong focus on the regulated facilities that may operate in your community, we include a link to the official channel where the public can Report Violations.

This is a great source for general knowledge, as well as gathering information for reports and grant proposals.

http://www.epa.gov/myenvironment/