Question for Monday

[Judy Duncan <Judy.Duncan@deqmail.state.ok.us>]

Hello to everyone!  I guess that you could say that I represent the voice of state environmental agencies on the Panel.  I've been involved in Oklahoma's environmental agency, the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), for 26 years and my current assignment involves assisting folks who need to access the services and information of the DEQ.

Steve's question for the day asked how much and what types of information people need to be able to retrieve over the internet via libraries and what is the right quantity and quality to respond to needs.

First of all, I believe that an individual should be able to access information about the environment in his/her own specific area. That could include such things as the quality of drinking water, air quality in the community, information about whether rivers and streams are suitable for uses such as fishing and swimming, where to go to dispose of solid waste or household hazardous waste in approved facilities, opportunities for recycling in the community, etc.

Also needed is general information about who regulates the environment and how does this regulation take place. Phone numbers and points of contact for the state and local environmental agency should be readily available, especially any toll-free phone numbers. If there are such things as complaint hot lines, these numbers should be readily available and an individual should be able to file a complaint on-line.

Information about permitted facilities is also helpful. It is particularly important when new permits are proposed or when there are proposed revisions to environmental rules and the public's comment is invited.

Ideally raw data about monitoring of the environment would be of interest to many although this is not always currently available in a usable format. At a minimum, there should be a description of the data that is routinely collected and a place to go to ask more about it.

One issue that environmental agencies face with regard to the quality of the information is that of finding the balance between only providing interpretations of data (which are of course biased by the purpose for which the data is being used) and having data in a user-friendly form that is not too technically complex.

I am looking forward to the dialogue over the next two weeks and welcome any direct questions or comments.