EPA's Online Tool Offers Facility's Compliance Information
In a move that will help ordinary citizens monitor compliance with environmental laws, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched an innovative information tool that gives the public and industry direct access to the current environmental compliance record of more than 800,000 regulated facilities nationwide.

Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) was developed in partnership with the Environmental Council of the States, a national association representing state and territorial environmental commissioners. ECHO provides users detailed facility reports, which include:

John Peter Suarez, EPA's Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, remarked, "ECHO will significantly increase public awareness of information about environmental compliance." In addition, ECHO provides an online error reporting process to ensure continued public participation on data quality. Other ECHO benefits include:

The easy-to-use Web tool integrates EPA and State compliance information for facilities regulated under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Data reports are updated monthly and cover a two-year period. The system retrieves information from federal and state data entered into EPA databases: the Air Facility System, which provides information on compliance with air permits for various stationary sources of air pollution; the Permit Compliance System, which provides information on companies issued permits to discharge waste water into rivers; and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Information System, a national program management and inventory system about hazardous waste handlers. Moreover, ECHO includes links to additional State enforcement and compliance information. EPA has field-tested ECHO's approach and data through the Sector Facility Indexing Project (http://www.epa.gov/sfipmtn1/), which presents data for a limited number of industrial sectors, and through a recent four-State pilot in the Pacific Northwest. Public feedback and lessons learned from these projects contributed to ECHO's development. To ensure that ECHO's data is of high quality, EPA and the states also conducted a comprehensive data review and established an EPA-State network of "data stewards" to manage, research and correct reported errors, as appropriate. Furthermore, ECHO includes an online error reporting process that allows users to alert EPA and the States to possible errors. For more information, visit http://www.epa.gov/echo/.

Book Addresses Access to Justice in Environmental Matters in EU
Access to Justice in Environmental Matters in the European Union, edited by Jonas Ebbesson, addresses a topic of increasing importance for citizen enforcement. European Community (EC) law on access to justice is being drafted and changes can be observed in the laws of the European Union (EU) member states in the wake of the 1998 Aarhus Convention. The convention acknowledges that environmental protection can only be achieved through the involvement of all stakeholders. This book is a state-of-the-art guide to access to environmental justice matters in the European Union. It provides a thematic and comparative introduction of the topic, followed by thorough descriptions of EC law and the law of each EU member state. This book is the third volume in Kluwer's Comparative Environmental Law and Policy Series and can be ordered at http://www.wkap.nl/home/topics/8/3/?type=Books.

Index Ranks Environmental Performance of Australia's Largest Corporations
A new corporate reputation index may prompt companies to improve their environmental practices. A coalition of environmental groups, a state agency and a corporate sustainability ratings service released the 2002 Good Reputation Index on October 29th, which assesses how key stakeholders perceive Australia's 100 largest companies. They are judged on several criteria, including environmental performance, which was made by three environmental groups (Greenpeace Australia, the Australian Conservation Foundation, and the Wilderness Society), the Environment Protection Authority of Victoria, and the Monash Center for Environmental Management. Such ratings are widely touted as cost-effective tools for leveraging public opinion in order to encourage corporate compliance with environmental regulations. IBM, Coca-Cola, and Toyota were among the top ten. The survey results can be downloaded from http://www.reputationmeasurement.com.au/reputation.html.