EPA clearly made a substantial leap forward in providing the public access to its core operational databases with Envirofacts . Ironically, though, the success of the Envirofacts initiative to date points out a number of glaring omissions. IRIS documents also include full bibliographic references for those who wish to explore a subject in more detail. It contains a large volume of geographically referenced EPA and U.S. Bureau of the Census data. It also contains 1990 demographic and economic data, including population and housing characteristics drawn from Summary Tape Files 1A and 3A, two census databases.
Users can display, search for, identify, and map objects and locations.
They can also choose and thematically display information or identify population characteristics for any radius around a point and print custom maps and reports. If you can not afford a personal copy, ask the local federal depository library if it has a copy or is willing to order one. The database is available to depository libraries free of charge. Many, if not most, environmental decisions occur outside the federal government's jurisdiction. In these cases, the government needs to help ensure that individual stakeholders have ready access to reliable sources of information upon which to base their policy decisions.