The State of the Environment—An Overview - Exposing Polluters To Public Pressure

In 1997 the Clinton administration and the EPA initiated the Sector Facility Indexing Project (SFIP), an effort FIGURE 1.4
Environmental Protection Agency criminal enforcement program (fiscal year 1999–fiscal year 2003) to keep the public informed about industries that pollute the environment. The latest in an ambitious campaign to expand "right-to-know" initiatives, the SFIP publishes "pollution profiles" online (http://www.epa.gov/sfipmtn1/) on five industrial sectors—oil production, steel, other metals, autos, and paper—in hopes of exposing polluters to possible pressure from an informed public. The profiles include the number of federal inspections, episodes of noncompliance, penalties imposed in recent years, releases of pollutants, pollution spills, injuries and deaths, toxicity of chemicals released, ratios of pollution to production, and demographics (racial and income breakdowns) of the population within a 3-mile radius of a plant. As of 2004, the SFIP had profiled approximately 864 individual facilities.