
U.S. EPA orders turn-off of opendata.epa.gov on April 28, 2017 - danso
https://medium.com/@BernHyland/us-epa-orders-turn-off-of-open-data-service-on-28-apr-2017-586cd65fdb14
======
danso
Note: I'm not really sure what's being shut-off here. The linked-to post has
the details from the contractor that built the EPA Open Data site and launched
it in 2016, but I'm not sure if that launch included data that is not found
anywhere else on EPA's many other sites.

From the post:

> _The EPA Open Data web service includes detailed toxic chemical information,
> a 30 year history of toxic chemical releases reported by industrial and
> federal facilities, collected and curated by the EPA’s flagship Toxics
> Release Inventory Program. Per the EPA, “TRI data supports informed
> decision-making by communities, government agencies, companies, and
> others.”_

Note that other federal open data sites are being shut down because they are
seen as redundant, i.e. the data can be found elsewhere. The most notable
example is the White House announcement that it would end the contract for
open.whitehouse.gov:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/us/politics/visitor-
log-w...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/us/politics/visitor-log-white-
house-trump.html)

> _The White House also said Friday that it was ending the contract for
> open.whitehouse.gov, the government disclosure site that contains the
> visitor log data as well as financial disclosure and salary information for
> White House employees._

> _The information is available elsewhere, the White House said, calling the
> site a waste of taxpayer money. Ending it would save $70,000 by 2020, it
> said._

~~~
brudgers
The only alternate source I could find on Google News was a vaguely sourced
article at the _Independent_ that covered several topics and referenced
Reuters. A search of Reuters for "epa open data" did not have anything to
support the story.

~~~
danso
There are some news/opendata folks talking about working on mirroring the
sites:

Steven Rich from the WaPo:
[https://twitter.com/dataeditor/status/856466954491748353](https://twitter.com/dataeditor/status/856466954491748353)

Discussion thread on r/datahoarder:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/6771x1/opendat...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/6771x1/opendataepagov_is_shutting_down_on_0428_anyone/)

Update: looks like the warning message relates only to the upcoming government
shutdown. Not sure why the contractor behind the site wouldn't know that...

[https://twitter.com/Timothy_Cama/status/856480767815421952](https://twitter.com/Timothy_Cama/status/856480767815421952)

[https://twitter.com/waldojaquith/status/856470862412886016](https://twitter.com/waldojaquith/status/856470862412886016)

~~~
brudgers
Thanks. I know that there has been an ongoing effort to backup environmental
data. My curiosity was whether or not the blog post is credible, exaggerated,
or misleading.

~~~
danso
@EPA says it is false

[https://twitter.com/EPA/status/856508545805758464](https://twitter.com/EPA/status/856508545805758464)

> Rumors about the website
> [http://opendata.epa.gov/](http://opendata.epa.gov/) are wrong. It's open,
> working & not going anywhere. This website & the EPA belong to you.

~~~
brudgers
That was my intuition.

