In February 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its plans to shutter its online archive—a key resource on the work of the agency that is relied upon by researchers, legislators, policymakers, and citizens for work on everything “from historical research to democratic oversight.” Pulling the plug would instantly have made public access to a vast array of fact sheets, environmental reports, policy changes, and regulatory actions significantly more difficult.

Months of public backlash ensued—including damning public letters from prominent organizations. And just last week, the EPA announced that it would push back the demise of the archive until July 2023.

News of this welcome reprieve for the EPA digital archive raises a significant question: Why continue with plans to shut it down at all? Postponement does not resolve the eventual damage to government transparency and historical record keeping that the archive’s demise will create. And the concerns of organizations opposed to closure will not be satisfied by an additional year of operation.

Is there a case to be made that this vital resource’s reprieve should be a permanent one?

Usable but Imperfect

The EPA’s digital archive houses documents dating back to the 1990s. It provides substantive access to a trove of the agency’s toxicity reports, chemical regulation data, and monitoring data, oftentimes containing information integral to understanding localized and rural environmental issues. Indeed, an essential part of the EPA archive is its longevity, which gives researchers and the public a window into the agency’s evolving understanding of large-scale issues like climate change, natural disasters, and environmental legislation.

Sadly, the usability of the archive site has been far from perfect. Researchers encounter defunct URLs, limited search capabilities, and have no option for sorting.  But is closing it down the answer? The necessity of public access to the digital archive’s rich store of documents argues for conversations on how to improve the site, and not simply remove it. The agency could use the year-long postponement to develop plans to do so.

Obscuring the Climate Record

Imperfect as the platform might be at present, many of the hundred thousand documents on the EPA archive simply aren’t available elsewhere.

For instance, one essential record that will vanish is the 2003 Clear Skies Initiative, which was proposed during the presidency of George W. Bush. The Clear Skies Initiative aimed to create a mandatory program that would “dramatically reduce power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and mercury by setting a national cap on each pollutant.”

At the time, the initiative was one of the most significant steps proposed by the United States to cut power plant emissions, but Clear Skies was subsequently voted down in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 2005. Direct access to the archived initiative gives the public a better understanding of the Bush Administration’s record on environmental issues, and how this failed initiative fits into discussions of clean power today.

The ease with which various public constituencies can pore through thousands of archived EPA documents also makes the creation of websites like “A People’s EPA” possible. This site provides what it calls a “straightforward history” of the EPA since its creation in 1970 by assembling and presenting insights, data, and tools to explore the trajectory of the agency in greater depth.

Online repositories such as “A People’s EPA” and others will feel the aftershocks of the EPA’s decision to retire its digital archive next year, and it remains unclear how chroniclers of the agency’s history will continue to update the public, historians, and scholars once this public access to archived materials is removed.   

Usable Pasts—and Futures

Removing direct public access to the resources of the present repository next year also will have ripples for those who want to trace the EPA’s investigation and enforcement activities. Records of agency investigations give the public an extensive overview of how violations of environmental laws pose significant threats to human health and the environment.

In 1989, for instance, the EPA listed Marine Corps Base (MCB) Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) New River (also known as Camp Lejeune or “the Base”), on the National Priorities List (NPL) after an investigation showed military operations contaminated the soil, sediment, surface water, and groundwater. The EPA, the U.S. Navy, and the North Carolina Department entered into a Federal Facility Agreement (FFA) that included further site conditions assessments, site cleanup activities, and increased monitoring of soils and groundwater.

Accessible documentation of the EPA’s decades-long investigation, progress reports, and site evaluations for Camp Lejeune helped nearby residents not only overcome doubts of the agency’s effectiveness, but also enabled them to better understand the chemical exposures there.

Yet the power of the EPA archive rests not only the resources it provides to reflect on the past. This public portal also provides a meaningful context to look forward on multiple fronts—including pathways to legal action.

On August 3, 2015, the Obama Administration announced a Clean Power Plan that would take significant action on climate change by reducing carbon pollution from power plants. This plan was blocked by a Supreme Court ruling in 2016. Today’s archive users can access summaries and timelines of the plan, adaptations to the plans for tribal areas and U.S. territories, and information regarding the Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling. The information in the digital repository provides the public with a new lens to understand the current degradation of environmental regulations being decided in our own moment in the U.S. Supreme Court.  

And the loss of information from the planned closure is found not only in tracing the EPA’s big picture initiatives and assessments, but also in the granular work of the agency.  For instance, the online archive provides a means to freely access thousands of Toxic Release Inventories (TRIs) for communities throughout the country, as well as catalogs of environmental programs, Environmental Radiation Data (ERD), State and Local Climate Energy Tools, and Community-Focused Exposure and Risk Screen Tools (C-FERST).

A Temporary Victory for Organized Push Back

When the EPA first announced the closure of its digital archive back in February, several historical and environmental organizations quickly expressed outrage over the agency’s decision. The reprieve announced last week is certainly a partial victory for their efforts.

In an open letter addressed to EPA Administrator Michael Regan, the American Society for Environmental Historians (ASEH), along with the American Historical Association, Environmental Historians Action Collaborative, and the World History Association, addressed the importance of the site for historians, as well as scholars in disciplines including geography, law, sociology, political science, and public health. These groups cited the EPA’s stated priority of providing online accessibility for those “living in more marginalized or environmental justice communities,” and also pointed out that the future of the agency itself “hinges on greater public awareness of and support for what it does.”

The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) also weighed in, calling the decision to retire the archive “alarming,” especially in a moment when the public so heavily relies on digital access nowadays. This effort was joined by groups including the Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Open Government, and the joint letter underscored how the decision “reduces the public’s ability to access important information about critical environmental issues, as well as past and present agency activities, policies, and priorities.”

Walking Back Transparency

The public outcry seems to have delayed the demise of the EPA’s digital archive. But is this victory merely delaying the inevitable? Or is it a pathway to saving the online depository?

The EPA’s initial decision to close the archive came nearly a year after EPA Michael S. Regan published an open message to employees about the agency’s commitment to operate “in a fishbowl.” In the letter, Regan reiterated the EPA’s “dedication to open communication, fairness, and transparent engagement with the public,” as well as providing the public with the “fullest possible participation in decision-making.”

Shutting down the repository seems at direct odds with such sentiments. And in the months after the initial announcement, a number of organizations scrambled to embrace the messy task of scraping the EPA’s archive for documents. The Internet Archive, a nonprofit library, successfully archived over 430,000 unique URLs from the EPA’s online archive via its Wayback Machine. The downside of their work is that there is no landing page for these preserved URLs, so users will need to know the exact address to find any given content.

The Internet Archive’s efforts to preserve nearly a complete copy of the whole of EPA’s online archive was followed by the work of Policy Commons, an organization that indexes documents from NGOs, IGOs, think tanks, and government agencies. Policy Commons saved upwards of 40,000 documents from the EPA’s digital archive, citing its fears that documents would be “scattered” or lost altogether. Yet the Policy Commons documents are accessible only through paid subscription.

In its initial announcement, the EPA noted that some resources, including news stories and press releases, will remain on its main website. Most documents, however, will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis for submission to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

This is problematic for a number of reasons. First, the public can gain access to documents only through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Second, transferring documents to NARA can take years. Gatekeeping access through time-consuming, costly, and often-confusing FOIA requests will be a disservice to public accessibility and transparency.   

The EPA has yet to issue a formal statement about its decision to postpone the site’s retirement, but the agency’s newly updated banner announcement declares that the extension will be used to “assess the use of archive content and… continue to analyze, inventory, and transition key content” to their main site.  (The EPA did not provide specific comment on the initial decision or delay for this article.)

Perhaps a reprieve will turn into a lifeline. But, in the meantime, murkiness and confusion still reign. The site’s sunset announcement page continues to list July 2022 as the date for closure. And clicking on the February 2 recording of the original decision, or the new announcement of Next Steps for EPA Archive Content leads users to a 403-error message.

Come July 2023, let’s hope for fewer error messages and more answers. Or, better yet, discover that the EPA has preserved this vital resource.