Environmental journalism has always been a hotbed of computer-assisted reporting. A reporter who wants to analyze thousands of toxic chemical emissions better learn CAR or face spending a couple of years with a notepad and calculator. A newspaper that wants to give its readers the locations of hundreds of hazardous waste dumps might never get the story in print without a database manager and mapping software.
Russell Clemings of The Fresno Bee recently conducted a quick survey on the Society of Environmental Journalists' mailing and found that environmental CAR is alive and well.
CAR growth
My own experience with environmental CAR dates to 1991, when I first came to the Gazette. At the time, we had only one (old) computer with a decent-sized hard-drive. I learned to do a few crude searches on the National Library of Medicine's ToxNet service and put together the standard "Top 10" polluters stories. Later, I used ToxNet to compare the potential emissions from a pulp and paper mill proposed here to similar mills across the country.
Back then, I used a copy of dBase that I borrowed from Gazette CAR expert Paul J. Nyden. With a little help from Paul, and a lot of time spent trying to understand the manual, I taught myself how to use it.
My CAR work got a major boost in the last year. The Gazette bought decent computers for four reporters, including me. Then, I attended the NICAR national conference in Indianapolis in March 1998. There, I got training in spreadsheets, database managers, and the Internet. I also learned a lot more about how other reporters are using computers to improve their environmental journalism.
Since then, I've produced a variety of CAR stories - from daily stories with "computer-assisted paragraphs" backing them up to a lengthy investigation of the coal industry's strip mining in West Virginia.
For example, this summer there was a toxic tort case in federal court in Charleston filed against a Rhone-Poulenc chemical plant for a chemical leak a few years ago. The jury found for the company. But when the verdict came out, the plaintiffs' lawyer - who represented folks who live near the plant and believed they were hurt by the leak claimed his suit had forced the company to clean up its act and operate more safely.
I was skeptical. So, with a few hours of research on the EPA Emergency Response Notification System Web site (http://www.epa.gouldoos/ERNSI), I downloaded local chemical accident reports and showed that the company had continued to have leaks - some even bigger than the one that prompted the lawsuit. The lawyer was just plain wrong. This story wasn't a huge investigation, but it did add punch to our coverage of the trial, and our afternoon newspaper competition didn't have it.
Strip mining bared
I have also found that CAR is the only way to really do long-term environmental reporting projects in any manageable or timely way. Since March, the Gazette has been publishing a series of articles called "Mining the Mountains" that examines mountaintop removal strip mining.
Unlike old-time strip mining, mountaintop removal doesn't chip away at hillsides to uncover coal. Instead, it blasts away entire mountaintops to reach coal. Normally, strip mines must be reclaimed to their "approximate original contour," or AOC. If they submit concrete plans for how the flattened land will be used for future economic development, mountaintop removal mines are allowed to ignore that standard and flatten out the land.
Having talked to environmentalists who follow mining, I suspected that most mountaintop removal mines did not have plans for future development.
I asked the state Division of Environmental Protection what the stated post-mining land plans were for all mountaintop removal mines. They said they didn't know but would have field inspectors go through permits to try to find out. However, they would have to go through dozens of paper files, an exercise that could take months.
Missing data, missing plans
In the meantime, I huddled with a couple of guys in the DEP computer record-keeping section. They told me they had a computer system that maintained information about surface mines with permits in the state. I got a copy of parts of their database and started doing my own research. I found a number of disturbing trends. First of all, the state didn't even know how many mountaintop removal mines it had authorized. Permit writers and inspectors never bothered to fill in the computer database field that indicated what type of mine they were granting a permit. Even when the state came back to me with the list of mines from paper files, a lot of mines that I found in the computer system were missing.
Second, I analyzed permitted area and production numbers to determine whether, as environmentalists had told me, mountaintop removal was increasing. Industry officials had argued this wasn't true. But, by simply running a few queries in FoxPro on a state database, I could write a story explaining which side was right.
Most important, of the 134 mountaintop removal mines I identified, most did not submit post-mining development plans when they were given permits by the state.
The results of my work were two lengthy Sunday features published in May and in August. The articles prompted investigations by the U.S. Office of Surface Mining and by at least one congressman, Rep. Nick J. Rahall, D-W.Va. Already, the state DEP is modifying its database and completing a project to fix its record-keeping problems.
In September, Gardiner Harris of the Louisville Courier-Journal conducted a similar investigation of mountaintop removal mining in Kentucky. Harris, who used CAR to produce a landmark series earlier this year on black lung disease among coal miners, examined computerized state mining permit databases. He found similar problems, prompting an investigation by OSM officials in Kentucky.