RE: Question for 21 September: Can we trust the EPA?

[Mike Meuser <meuser@mapcruzin.com>]

TRUST AND ACCESS: I've touched on these in other posts.
I am trying to create a map that indicates all
military and DOE contaminated sites and releases in the
U.S. One of my clients for this project is a national
Native American environmental organization.  One would
think that after all these years, it would be an easy
task to get this information, along with street addresses
and even the georgraphic locators (longitude and latitude)
to do this.  This is not the case.  Even if they would
provide the geographical locators they would have to be
checked as they are frequently wrong.  I will probably
end up filing FOIAs with each EPA region to get the 
information and even then it might not be all I need.
The point is that I should be spending my time, bought
by the poorest and most toxic-burdened groups of people
in the US, doing the mapping and environmental justice
research.  Instead, I am having to spend all my time
just gathering the data.  I see more and more EPA websites
and glitzy interfaces all the time, but where's the raw
data that real people need to make health-based decisions?
It's hard to find but should not be.

Mike