The EPA Gets Interactive: Find a Polluter Near You

Want to know if there are any EPA violations near you? How clean the air and water is near your home—or near your favorite reconnect-with-nature getaway spot?

Check out the EPA's interactive map, which shows information on enforcement and ongoing cases from 2009. If you can work a Google map, you can work the EPA map, which includes civil enforcement actions, criminal cases that have been prosecuted under federal law, and cases prosecuted under state laws where the EPA provided significant support.

The map is exciting not only because it shares more information with interested citizens about the state of their environment than the previous administration or the EPA under it was willing or even able to do, but because it is indicative of the current EPA's exponentially more proactive approach to doing its job of protecting the environment and bothering to uphold its own regulations.

According to Grist, the EPA said it filed 387 new criminal cases in fiscal 2009—the most in five years—and reached settlements that will cost polluters $5.4 billion to comply with environmental laws.

You can look up violations by category: Air (Clean Air Act violations), Water (violations of the Clean Water Act and Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act), Land (Superfund sites and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act violations), Criminal violations, and "Cross-media" sites, which they identify as Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, Toxic Substances Control Act. You can also specify federal facilities if you like. Safe Drinking Water Act Enforcement Actions were not included on the map because of "Homeland Security concerns," but those are available as a separate download.

The map doesn't provide detailed information or background about violations at every site on the map, but it's a start, and you know at least what questions to ask next.