Refinery Air Watch: Enhancing Data Infrastructure for Environmental Justice

Abstract

Regulations requiring ambient air monitoring at oil refinery fencelines have resulted in new data about air quality in fenceline communities. However, these data do not fully address environmental injustices unless communities can create and access interpretations that meaningfully represent their experience. The Refinery Air Watch website (refineryairwatch.org) further promotes environmental justice by making fenceline monitoring data readily available for download, offering metrics that highlight, rather than minimize, the impact of pollution on communities, and illustrating the systemic problems of refinery pollution through comparisons of facilities, corporations, and states. Refinery Air Watch has yielded insights useful to community members in their advocacy on local issues, as well as the recommendation that policies for fenceline monitoring include requirements for data infrastructures, such as application programming interfaces for all data and websites that offer users the ability to download data.