When it Comes to Information Sharing, More is Good

There is a new community tool from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. The Contaminated Sites Explorer is an online mapping tool that allows users to zoom in to their community and search for known contaminated sites. The sites appear as red stars on the map and when clicked on, basic information about the site pops up on the screen. Sites might range from auto repair shops and gas stations to dry cleaners to community spaces contaminated with historic fill.

Once you scan the basic information about the site, there are links that bring you to more detailed reports about the status of cleanup at the site, timeframes, and contact information for the person responsible for overseeing the cleanup. Before this mapping tool, you would have to search for sites through NJDEP’s extensive DataMiner database. Now, you can more intuitively search for sites and the mapping tool gathers up these reports for you. Also new is the ability for residents to see consolidated data on known contaminated sites for their municipality.

While it can be alarming to zoom in on your neighborhood and see many red stars, providing this information in a more user-friendly way is critical for residents to better understand what is happening in their communities and accessing critical public health information.