Toxic Transformations:

Disclosure Conflicts

“…Writing about online interfaces for disclosing toxic release information, Fortun (2004, 283) argues that “environmental information systems operate as instruments of power, in the way they configure and provide access to knowledge, in the way they manage uncertainty, and in the way they build in and project certain modes of subjectivity.” Thus, how information is disclosed may be as important as the content of the information itself. For instance, Delborne and Galusky (2011, 64) argue that by taking “information poverty” as the main obstacle to environmental justice, many well-meaning efforts at transparency create a one-way flow of knowledge that does little to support the political empowerment of affected communities.…”

“…This legislation requires many categories of manufacturing facilities to report their inventories of hazardous chemicals and their environmental releases, making this information available to the public through a database called the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI; Graham and Miller 2001). The TRI had an impact on activism (Fortun 2004; Delborne and Galusky 2011) and contributed to decreases in toxic releases on the part of many industries (Graham and Miller 2001), but there are exemptions to the TRI that weaken its impact. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rulemakers have excluded oil and gas industry wastes from the TRI since its creation, citing the low concentrations of wastes from any single facility.…”

“…In other disclosure systems, users of the data must act as citizens and activists in order to pressure companies to change their behavior. In an analysis of websites that seek to make toxic release data available to users, Delborne and Galusky (2011) find that the design and implementation of web-based information sharing sites construct particular audiences based on geography and define roles for those audiences. For example, users are provided with toxic release information based on their ZIP code, county, and state rather than potentially more salient designations such legislative district, locally defined community, or watershed.…”

“…It seems unlikely that a disclosure system voluntarily created by the oil and gas industry would be designed to facilitate protest in the ways described by Delborne and Galusky (2011). Indeed, when oil and gas companies began disclosing information about fracking fluid on the website FracFocus, it was evident that it was meant to educate the public about the safety of fracking chemicals rather than to stimulate further activism.…”