Dear Friends:
Greetings and Happy New Year to the growing number of partners supporting E-Enterprise for the Environment (EE). As Co-Chairs of the E-Enterprise Leadership Council (EELC), we extend our heartfelt appreciation to the entire EE community, recognizing both our significant accomplishments to date and the new priorities we are energized to undertake in 2022-23. Our EE partnership is committed to working together to improve how we protect human health and the environment. EPA, states, and tribes share the unwavering responsibility as co-regulators to carry out environmental program management with excellence – and to do so efficiently and effectively.
Embarking on our ninth year together, the EELC has laid out a sound yet ambitious strategic direction:
- Focusing on two new priority areas – applying the environmental justice (EJ) lens to our collective work and supporting an information-centric environmental protection enterprise by exploring several new activities, such as exploring data standards usage and adding a PFAS component to Be Well Informed,
- Advancing existing projects in our comprehensive portfolio, including modernization of the Safe Drinking Water Information System and Integrated Compliance Information System and making the best use of community/citizen science,
- Enhancing the EE collaborative governance structure by increasing tribal EELC participation to its fullest, pursuing new funding opportunities to strengthen the EE network, and boosting utilization of the E-Enterprise Community Inventory Platform.
EELC EPA Co-Chair Janet McCabe, Deputy Administrator
I stand proudly with Myra and Kari celebrating this year’s achievements, such as streamlining the Quality Assurance Project Plan process and supporting a community/citizen science workshop that will lead to a multistakeholder roadmap. These efforts exemplify the value of the EELC as a unique forum, leveraging resources through collaborative engagement to produce innovative solutions. I am certain EE will continue to successfully deliver tools and practices we can share, adapt, and adopt that save us time and money – and serve as a great example of what a partnership can achieve in the face of persistent environmental challenges. Standing alongside EPA as the cornerstone of U.S. environmental protection, states and tribes provide a broader viewpoint informing the new EPA Administration’s priorities. E-Enterprise is transforming how EPA, states, and tribes carry out our public mission protecting the environment – confirming we work better together.
EELC State Co-Chair Myra Reece, Director of Environmental Affairs, South Carolina Department of Health & Environmental Control
I am honored to serve this year as State Co-Chair of the EELC and hope to contribute to a lasting legacy. Having worked as an air director as well as in my current role leading South Carolina’s environmental agency, I have witnessed firsthand the importance of engaging with stakeholders, particularly EJ communities, to inform how we can better meet our agency’s mission. States collect and then share information on air and water monitoring and regulated facility compliance, and we also invest in brownfields and other cleanup efforts. E-Enterprise supports the foundational networks that provide key information to our communities and that EPA, states, and tribes need to make data-driven decisions to safeguard public health and the environment. Together, the EE partners are creating a solid, information-centric enterprise to facilitate communication with one another and the people that we serve.
EELC Tribal Co-Chair Kari Jacobson Hedin, Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa
I look forward to working alongside Janet and Myra enhancing the power and effectiveness of our partnership and our attention to environmental protection goals that benefit us all. Tribes are encouraged by the overarching focus on EJ, where the considerable good that the EELC can do is plainly evident. I am optimistic about our commitment to building tribal capacity by broadening tribal participation in the EELC and in EE projects, like data sovereignty. Our focus on tribal-specific concerns such as assessing tribal software needs will ultimately help both tribes and states gain cost-effective access to the technology needed to manage modern environmental data sets. Efforts like these focused on supporting an information-centric enterprise will lessen the pain points we all experience around effectively using our data to make the best decisions to protect land, water, air, and human health.
In closing, we want to acknowledge the dedicated state, tribal, and EPA staff who make E-Enterprise a success – identifying useful projects, collaboratively designing and implementing solutions, and communicating best practices and innovative tools that lead to lasting change. We wish everyone a safe, happy, and healthy 2022, and please continue to share the good news of EE (with this video that explains who we are and what we do)!
Kind regards,
Janet, Myra, and Kari