With government data available on everything from endangered birds to the quality of the air through which they fly, there's no limit to the enterprise stories an environmental reporter can craft. Some reporters say that because of the amount, variety and accessibility of these databases, the environment is better suited for computer-assisted reporting than any other beat. Their consistent success in using environmental databases shows they're probably right.
Toxic waste spills
Dave Davis asked to cover the environment when he joined the Plain Dealer in 1990 because he knew the beat would give him plenty of chances to do CAR stories. One of his first CAR stories for the Plain Dealer, "Spills Chill Regulators," took about two weeks. Using XDB database manager software, Davis analyzed the 1991 Ohio emergency response database, which comprises 5,589 records on chemical spills. (NICAR has the U.S. emergency response database, ERNS, in its library.)
The database combines numerical fields with variable-length text fields. This mix helped Davis to flesh out statistics with colorful narratives.
"This was a perfect database for us because Ohio has a lot of chemical emergencies. A lot of plants blow up," Davis said.
For instance, one record explained how a railroad switchman lost communication with an engineer when batteries failed in their two-way radios just as the train was switching tracks. The engineer backed the car into a storage tank, which spilled 800 gallons of a toxic chemical. The chemical ended up being flushed into the city's sewers.
Davis discovered that 121 of the chemical spills in Ohio had been severe enough to threaten lives and property. Rarely did the companies report the spills to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, as is required by law. Instead, mostly police or fire officials called in the accidents. Sometimes residents blew the whistle.
Endangered species
Fresno (Calif.) Bee reporter Russell Clemings recommended that when reporters "cast their net" for environmental stories, they should cast it wide enough to include computer data. When Clemings was researching "Struggle to Survive," a series on endangered species in California, he heard the 1987 amendment to the Endangered Species Act required the federal Fish and Wildlife Service to compile a list of how much money was being spent to preserve each endangered species. He asked for a copy of the report.
"I realized that what I was looking at was a computer printout," Clemings said. "So I asked, 'Can you send me the disk, too?'"
Using a 286 computer and a DOS version of Paradox, Clemings grouped federal and state spending on each class of endangered species. He found that most funding went to birds or mammals that are attractive and well-known, such as bald eagles and gray wolves. Preservation efforts discriminated against bugs, crustaceans and snails. Officials were particularly short-shrifting plants. They spent an average of 66 times more per species on birds than plants - an average of $604,260 and $9,050, respectively. Spiders had it the worst of all. Officials spent an average of $500 per endangered spider species.
Clemings said this database could be adapted for any state or region. Reporters could find out from their states' wildlife departments which species on the list inhabit their areas. The reporters then could focus on the species within the reporters' states or regions.
Water pollution
Before joining the Plain Dealer, Davis was a reporter at the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, whose readers live near the banks of the Great Miami River and its tributaries. Davis acquired a U.S. EPA database on water pollution discharge permits to find out how much sludge was being pumped into the waterways.
Not only was it a whole lot of sludge, it was a whole lot more sludge than the factories could legally dump under their National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permits.
The records, compiled in the Permit Compliance System database, showed that state environmental regulators knew of the facilities' chronic violations but did little to punish the businesses. Some of the violators were dumping up to several thousand times the amounts that their permits allowed. Many companies racked up hundreds of violations without penalty.
To see if the computer data were reflected in the quality of the river's water, Davis canoed 110 miles of the Great Ohio. What he saw and smelled confirmed what the numbers were telling him.
"We were going by one factory, and this shocking pink water was coming out of the pipes, turning the river pink," he said. The wastewater from the factory near Hamilton, Ohio, altered the color of the river for a mile. Further downriver near Franklin, Ohio, a mix of black incinerator ash and detergent ran down a trough into the water to turn it into a sickly green.
Databases in dailies
Scott Thurm, a reporter for the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, says environmental databases can be as handy for dailies as they are for enterprise stories. During the early morning on July 25, 1993, General Chemical Corp. in nearby Richmond, Calif., developed a leak in a tank containing sulfur dioxide. More than 2,000 people sought treatment at hospitals for stinging eyes and sore throats.
Thurm called the California EPA to get data on the types of toxics General Chemical produced. By 11 a.m., Thurm had the entire Toxic Release Inventory profile of the company to provide background for the story.
To prepare for chemical accidents such as this one, Adam Berliant, a database editor for the Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune, set up the Toxic Release Inventory on a computer in the newsroom. Any reporter can type in the name of a company and come up with the kinds of chemicals it releases and the manufacturing process in which it is involved. Unfortunately most reporters at the News Tribune fail to see its potential, and the database setup, while easy to operate, is rarely used, Berliant said.
Thurm suggested looking for state databases rather than federal ones whenever possible. TRI and ERNS, for instance, are first compiled by states and then sent to the U.S. EPA. Therefore, state databases are usually more up-to-date than their federal counterparts. Another good reason to look on the state level, Clemings said, is that there are lots of obscure but useful state environmental databases waiting for reporters to discover them. His rule of thumb: If you get a document that looks like a computer table, ask for it on disk.
EPA sources
Federal EPA databases can provide environmental reporters with countless enterprise stories. However, reporters who have used these databases say state and local databases often are easier to get and have more recent data than their federal counterparts.
Here are some of the EPA databases environmental reporters have found useful. They can be acquired with a Freedom of Information Act request. If the cost is too high, call NICAR, 314-882-0684, and we might be able to offer it at a lesser price.
Emergency Response Notification System: ERNS contains notifications of oil and hazardous chemical spills. Fields in the database include name of discharger, date of release; material released; cause of release; amount released; source of release; damages, injuries or deaths; and incident location. Sponsoring department: Emergency Response Division. Contact Dana Stalcup. Telephone: (703) 603-8735. Information line: (202) 260-2342.
Permit Compliance System: PCS contains information on more than 65,000 industrial facilities that hold National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permits, which allow the facilities to discharge wastewater. Fields include facility name, permit limit, violation and enforcement actions. Sponsoring department: Office of Water. Contact: Mike Mundell. Telephone: (202) 564-5031. Information line: (703) 908-2680.
Aerometric Information Retrieval System: AIRS contains records on emissions and compliance data for industrial plants as well as ambient air quality data for geographical areas. Sponsoring department: Office of Air and Radiation. Contact: Andrea Kelsey. Telephone: (919) 541-5549.
"Access EPA," the source of this list, can be found at the gopher site: gopher.epa.gov.
How to deal with EPA data
With just an old XT, shareware and a free database, you can create great environmental stories for your readership area. The EPA now gives out state Toxic Release Inventory databases as if they were candy. To get a state's TRI database mailed to you, call TRI user support at (202) 260-1531. You will receive it within a couple of weeks. The data comes on 1/2-inch disks, so if you don't have this type of drive, swap the data onto 3 1/2-inch disks on another computer. Data jockeys at the EPA set up state TRI for easy import into almost any database program. If you don't already have a database program, you can get a shareware database, such as PC-File, from a computer-users group, BBS or university computing service. Once the data is imported, separate the records by zip code and add the amount of chemicals released by all the companies within each zip code. This will show you which areas in your county or region have reported the most industrial pollution. You can then look at the companies which fall within the zip code areas with the highest amount of pollution to see which companies are emitting the most and worst pollutants. Present this information in a datamap or create a list ranking the polluted areas and the biggest polluters. By calculating totals for the releases to air, water, on-site landfill, underground well injection and off-site hauling fields, you can show, in percentages, how industries in your area are disposing their waste. Each facility will have a field for its standard industrial code, which tells what sort of manufacturing they do, from making clothes to smelting metals. By totaling the amount of releases for each standard industrial code, you can rank the types of industries that pollute the most. Your reporting doesn't end with the data analysis. With the address of each facility included in the database, it is easy to find the residents nearest the factories. The companies also file the name and telephone number of a contact person with whom you can confirm the data and ask whether attempts at pollution reduction are being made.