Greetings & some thoughts

[Jeff Brown <globallearning@att.net>]

I'm pleased to participate in this dialog as the director of a nonprofit educational organization.  We're currently partnering with the American Library Association in a 2 year project, "Libraries Build Sustainable Communities."  Our purpose is to assist all kinds of libraries to take one or more steps toward promoting sustainable practices in their respective communities, as well as to see how they are linked with communities around the world in the search for a more sustainable future.

We've greatly appreciated a variety of environmental information currently available from EPA via the Internet for use in this project. We've also used EPA information in curriculum develpment projects for middle and high schools.

I don't think the question is how much is too much information for the public, but rather how to organize it so people can gain access to as much as they need.

I think libraries could provide users with a local website that contains a load of links to local EPA data for their community, e.g., re watershed, airshed, emissions etc. info. I think this would interest people & get them to look further. The library could also do the same for regional and state info.

It would also be great for EPA -- or the wider environmental community -- to develop a reliability index on controverted information. e.g., the degree of scientific consensus on issues such as global warming or hazards of genetically modified crops...