EPA's Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water wanted to know how they could distribute more broadly documents they have produced for communities about protecting the sources of drinking water. Pat Bonner asks participants to think about how EPA could better use listservs to aid librarians. A local agency librarian recommends a site like the Environmental Information Project in the California Digital Library as a starting place on the Internet. There should be a uniform Web-wide feature that allows for error corrections. The EPA Web site should have information and links to aid citizens in finding their way through the bureaucracy and in tracking down other sources of help and assistance.
Difficulties arise from incompatible data systems.
There are problems with the quality and accuracy of date in reports such as Envirofacts and the Sector Facility Indexing Report. Raised by Our Participants EPA should provide more help in searching the Federal Register. FOIA documents should be indexed online. EPA should provide descriptors with information on the required reading level and technical content of documents on the EPA Web site. Some features of the EPA site make it too time-consuming to download materials quickly.