At a minimum, we ask that you contact your Congressional Representative and United States Senators and express your concern over what Congress is doing to our nation’s environment and the EPA.   Please give your elected representatives a call, write an e-mail, send a letter or better yet personally visit their office and express your concerns.

How Do I Contact My Representative and Senators?

AFGE Council 238 asks that you contact your Congressional Representative and United States Senators and express your concern over what Congress is doing to our nation’s environment and the U.S. EPA.  Please give your elected representatives a call, write an e-mail, send a letter or better yet personally visit their office and tell them that express your concerns.

• Find Your Elected Officials Not sure who represents you? Click on this link and enter you zip code to find your Congressional Representative and United States Senators.

• Here’s another link: USA.gov Contact Elected Officials

Take Action: It’s Time for Congress to Face Facts

As Congress debates the FY 2012 Budget, the 2012 Defense Authorization Bill and specific 2012 Appropriations bills, it’s time for Congress to face the facts.

We, the undersigned believe the facts speak for themselves. Congress needs to make the very rich and tax evading corporations like Exxon Mobil, Bank of America, Chevron, Citigroup and General Electric pay their fair share. And Congress needs to create good jobs. Those are the real deficits that our country faces. Congress doesn’t need to further reduce the standard of living of federal employees, cut or outsource federal jobs and further slash the critical services that insure the safety and well-being of all Americans.

Take Action – Send a Letter to Congress Today.

We also suggest that you consider contacting the following members of key committees for funding the U.S. EPA:

United States House of Representatives

• Members of theUnited States House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations
• Members of the House Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies

United States Senate

• Members of the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations
• Members of U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies

How’s My Neighborhood?

• Air Quality Index: Check the current air quality for ozone or particulates before you go out.

• Cleanups in my Community: Find Superfund, Brownfields, or RCRA corrective action sites, properties, or federal facilities where pollution is being or has been cleaned up.   Use Cleanups in My Community to map and list areas where pollution is being or has been cleaned up throughout the United States. You can also add tribal lands, Brownfields grant areas and water monitoring stations to your map, and drill down to further information about grants and water quality.  Find your community and drill down to cleanup specifics about Sites, facilities and properties under EPA’s Superfund, RCRA and/or Brownfields cleanup programs, and Federal facilities under EPA’s Superfund and/or RCRA cleanup programs.

• Envirofacts: Pollution, hazardous waste sites, and other regulatory information.  The initial 2010 TRI dataset is now available. The dataset is approximately 95% complete, and will be updated several times this fall as more facility reports are processed.

• Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO): Find facility inspections and any enforcement actions.  ECHO provides fast, integrated searches of EPA and state data for 800,000+ regulated facilities.  ECHO integrates inspection, violation, and enforcement for the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and hazardous waste laws. ECHO also includes Safe Drinking Water Act data, Toxics Release Inventory data, National Emissions Inventory data, and Water Quality Data.

• Facility Registry System: Search for facilities, sites or places subject to environmental regulations.  Allows you to retrieve a list of selected organizations. The organizations are pulled from our regulatory program systems, which use terms such as owner, operator, permittee, responsible party, establishment, parent company, parent corporation, and ultimate parent to describe their relationship with facilities. For facilities that have no related organization data, the facility name itself is included and indicated in the search results. Specify organizations by using any combination of search terms and geographic location.

• MyEnvironment: A wide variety of environmental information by location and maps.

• Radon Information: Exposure to radon in the home is responsible for an estimated 20,000 lung cancer deaths each year. Radon is a health hazard with a simple solution. Find your state government contacts and links.

• Surf Your Watershed: Environmental conditions and activities in U.S. watersheds.  Find your watershed using the form below. Once you locate your watershed, simply click on the first link, “citizen-based groups at work in this watershed,” to find a listing of organizations that are working to protect water quality. You may wish to contact one of these groups to find out about cleanups, monitoring activities, restoration projects and other activities.

• Toxics Release Inventory (TRI): Information about toxic chemical releases in your neighborhood.

• UV Index: Get a forecast of the expected ultraviolet radiation from the sun.  The SunWise Program is an environmental and health education program that aims to teach children and their caregivers how to protect themselves from overexposure to the sun through the use of classroom-, school-, and community-based components.