App lets residents report pollution anonymously
As Hurricane Harvey approached Houston, oil refineries and other industrial facilities shut down, dumping hundreds of millions of tons of toxins into the air.
But as the majority of the pollution was released, local state and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency air monitors were not turned on, and residents went largely unaware of potential air quality issues, according to an EPA audit.
A pair of environmental nonprofits say such lapses have driven them to create a webbased app for residents to anonymously report pollution in their communities. Activists plan to use the data to flag incidents for authorities’ attention.
“You see how communities are being failed by authorities because these authorities are not fully capturing, they’re not fully regulating and they’re not reducing the toxic air pollution that people are experiencing where they live, where they work and where they play,” said Yukyan Lam, research director at the New School’s Tishman Environment and Design Center, during a news conference announcing the new tool. “Communities, though, they themselves hold the evidence of environmental injustice”
Nalleli Hidalgo, education liaison for the Houston-based environmental justice organization TEJAS, agreed, saying the goal was to create a “community-based network of visible incidents” taking place in communities close to industrial facilities.
“Everyone, regardless of race and income, deserves a clean environment,” she said.
The app, called EYEalerta, can be found at eyealerta.org and was developed by TEJAS and the Natural Resources Defense Council. There, people will be able to report an incident, where it occurred and any symptoms they experience. People’s identities will be kept anonymous, and, as a further precaution to preserve anonymity, locations will be approximated within a certain radius so other users will not be able to see exactly where reports originated.
Cecilia Reyes, who lives near a water treatment plant, said through a Spanish interpreter that she was excited for the app because the anonymity alleviated her fear of repercussions for speaking up.
So far, residents will be able to log into EYEalerta to view other reports, but there is not yet a function to receive alerts about nearby incidents. While the app is being launched in Houston, TEJAS and NRDC believe it will also be adopted in other communities.