EPA should publish notices

Admittedly, this isn’t something on our readers’ radar, but trust us, it’s an important issue.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced it would stop running public notices of its Clean Air Act permits in newspapers, opting to post the notices on their website only. For a state as distrustful of the EPA as Wyoming, this is a problem.

The EPA’s move inherently shrouds the agency’s business in secrecy. Residents curious about what the EPA is working on in their backyard will have to keep their eyes posted to the EPA’s website, something that is a major inconvenience for anyone. Worse yet, how would anyone impacted by an EPA ruling know the EPA is considering an action in the first place?

“Come to our website and look for it,” is their answer.

While Wyoming is distrustful of the EPA, the same could be said of residents’ attitudes toward the federal government as a whole. The EPA, by moving away from publishing its public notices in newspapers, is only adding to the growing cynicism toward the federal government. People look at decisions like these and rightfully accuse an agency in working against public transparency.

Public notices aren’t just a means of making money for a newspaper. What they represent is a governing body’s conscious attempt to reach out to and engage the people they represent. Public notices are published by governments that need and want public participation in the process, to allow for the best decision for the people it represents. Any government seeking to slowly cut out this means of alerting people and forcing them to visit a website on their terms, isn’t one with the best intentions of its constituents in mind.

Published legal notices also form a historical record of government action.

Anyone interested in what Green River’s governing body did 50 years ago can easily find that information. The Sweetwater County Library System maintains a microfiche collection that goes back decades. We also maintain an archive of newspapers dating back to the early 1940s. The Wyoming Newspaper Project, a service of the Wyoming State Library, has collections of scanned newspapers dating back to before the state was founded.

“For the sheer volume of information they contain, newspapers are the single most important printed record of human activity,” the project’s website states.

The EPA should continue posting its notices in newspapers. If they don’t, the only result is further trust in the federal government eroding away.