The EPA Is Quietly Killing Its Web Archive

Posted by robtherobber 2 days ago

Comments

Comment by mike_bob 2 days ago

Take note Republicans (which I'm doubting many even care anymore), your party thinks short term profits for a few are more important than science and the environment for all.

Comment by brightball 2 days ago

EPA planned to do the same thing in 2022...

https://web.archive.org/web/20220124192618/https://archive.e...

Comment by nomel 2 days ago

Relevant text from TFA:

> This isn’t the first time the environmental agency has tried to shutter the online web archive. In late January 2022, the Biden administration EPA announced plans to discontinue the online repository, citing burdensome financial upkeep; through a Freedom of Information Act request, Gehrke was able to determine that the agency spent roughly $2 million a year to maintain it. A coalition of environmentalists, historians, and librarians swiftly condemned the decision, with groups like the EDGI and American Society for Environmental History calling the announcement “alarming” and cause for a “tremendous gap” in the historical record.

> After five months of public backlash, the EPA acquiesced, in part by announcing it would delay the web archive’s retirement by one year to July 2023.

Comment by Grombobulous 2 days ago

$2 million a year is wildly insignificant for the federal government.

Less than one cent per year per person in federal taxes.

Comment by stuaxo 2 days ago

Its tiny, setting up traffic lights on some road junction might cost similar.

Comment by parineum 2 days ago

The epa doesn't have access to the federal budget

Comment by Grombobulous 2 days ago

That’s not really the point, the point is that $2 million isn’t a lot of money for a service that is for the benefit of over 300 million people.

Comment by kulahan 2 days ago

It serves a lot more than just the citizens of the US, for what it's worth.

Comment by Ntrails 2 days ago

And yet the number of projects with similarly insignificant costs is large, and they do add up.

The argument cannot be "this money doesn't matter", it has to be "this represents good value for money" (imo)

Comment by Grombobulous 2 days ago

They literally don’t add up. Just look at a pie chart of the US government budget. The administrative state is a bargain.

Departments like the EPA are so small that they have to be put in the “other” umbrella that makes up 1% of federal spending (go to the Agency tab):

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

Comment by xtiansimon 1 day ago

Just a note that pie charts are not well regarded in this application.

Stephen Few, “Save the Pies for Dessert” (https://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_inte...)

Edward Tufte, “The only worse design than a pie chart is several of them.”

The “1% other” is more compelling.

Comment by Grombobulous 1 day ago

The link I shared wasn't even a pie chart, so when I said "pie chart" I was speaking in a colloquial sense.

Comment by pestat0m 2 days ago

sad, the spending chart doesn't load in my version of firefox, and both links in the caption also have page-load issues. very sad.

Comment by Sabinus 2 days ago

Works for me on 158.0.1

Comment by ninjagoo 2 days ago

> "this represents good value for money" (imo)

Wouldn't you say this archive represents good value for the money?

A nation that forgets its past is a nation that repeats its mistakes.

Comment by Ntrails 1 day ago

> Wouldn't you say this archive represents good value for the money?

Yes, that's the point. Not "this is so cheap it's irrelevant" but "this is an important resource worth funding".

Comment by blurbleblurble 2 days ago

This is so disingenuous. We all know where the money goes.

Comment by mnky9800n 2 days ago

The checks that add up are the social security checks cashed by the quarter or so of baby boomers who don’t need them.

Comment by no-name-here 2 days ago

Is the suggestion that social security (a (progressive) program where people largely pay in) should be replaced with a welfare type program? Or if we're just talking about biggest expenditures, things like the 1) Medicare, 2) other gov health spending, and 3) interest paid on the debt are far larger than the item your comment mentioned.

Comment by expedition32 2 days ago

A program that is only used by poor people will immediately be scrapped. Never underestimate the seething hatred that the middle class has for the underclass. Besides all that social security money goes straight into the economy.

Comment by pfisch 2 days ago

Ok, but I could replicate this process and archive for under $20,000k per year(probably way under) and set it up in less than 1 day with claude...

Comment by Grombobulous 2 days ago

I’ll come back in 3 days and you can share the link with your web archive. I’ll Venmo you $20 for your Claude pro subscription.

Comment by nomel 2 days ago

Looking at the 2024 to 2025 archive, it's around 1TB/year:

https://app.browsertrix.com/explore/usgov-archive/collection...

If that's true, something has clearly gone wildly wrong with the, most likely several, departments involved/created with maintaining this. I suspect if you look at the breakdown, it's 90% administrative costs, with the rest being inflated Cisco contracts, or whatever other parasite latched on.

As others have said, it's been archived already.

Comment by kolinko 2 days ago

Did you set up a working backup with Claude? It is still extremely difficult to do right.

If you did please, please share your setup. And how you audited it.

Comment by fooqux 2 days ago

You've obviously never worked in government before. The technology is likely not the issue; the bureaucracy is.

Comment by unholythree 1 day ago

Would have been nice if DOGE had worked on stuff like this instead of performative cruelty.

Comment by kfkickdcimdvisi 2 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by SetTheorist 2 days ago

Only one party is systematically attacking research and destroying irreplaceable archives.

Comment by 9dev 2 days ago

Don’t make this a Both-sides thing please. There’s a clear difference between those who are working hard to void any environmental protection we have, and those who oppose that.

Comment by Kodiack 2 days ago

Why yes, 10-minute-old account with random letters for a name and one single comment, both sides are absolutely the same and people just shouldn’t feel encouraged to vote am I right?

You’re not even remotely subtle smh

Comment by baggachipz 2 days ago

Wouldn't want any of that pesky true climate-change-proving data available, now would we?

Comment by amelius 2 days ago

We have alternative facts now.

Comment by schiffern 2 days ago

"There'd be fewer cases if you stopped testing..."

Comment by gkrimer 2 days ago

Climate change was such a downer. Good riddance!

Comment by toomuchtodo 2 days ago

https://web.archive.org/*/https://archive.epa.gov/

The EPA plans to sunset its online archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30795719 - March 2022

Comment by icantevenhold 2 days ago

A “proper” mirror alongside archive.org would be good too

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by dannyobrien 2 days ago

I'm presuming this is all preserved in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_Term_Web_Archive (though making that more easily available would be great -- another project for https://wayback-labs.sf.archive.org/ )

Comment by arjie 2 days ago

Has anyone scraped this already for offline use?

Comment by gs17 2 days ago

I think Archive Team might have scraped it, but their site is down due to PHP-related reasons at the moment.

Comment by arjie 2 days ago

Thank you. I'm going to scrape for now but I hope there's a bulk download available somewhere eventually.

Comment by MadrasThorn 2 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by totetsu 2 days ago

Next thing the moon landing hoax will become part of Americas curriculum ala Interstellar

Comment by Madmallard 2 days ago

Why are companies allowed to remove themselves from the web archive?

They shouldn't be.

Comment by jacquesm 2 days ago

They're not. Someone on HN said that they just mark it as unavailable but they still keep it, I don't know what the expiry is on that though, or if they could be forced to actually delete something 'for real'. Nor do I know how you'd verify that beyond doubt.

Comment by vfclists 2 days ago

Where are r/archiveteam when you need them?

Comment by pstuart 2 days ago

If they weren't afraid of the data being public they wouldn't be removing it.

The only saving grace of this administration is that their incompetence helps to slow down their evilness.

Comment by dyauspitr 2 days ago

Everything bad is good for this administration.

Comment by 40four 2 days ago

This isn’t really a Trump thing. It says they’ve been trying to shut the thing down since 2022

Comment by amclennon 2 days ago

I hate to say this because it's so overused, but this move is certainly veering into 1984 territory

Comment by KETHERCORTEX 2 days ago

Or Rollerball

Comment by rtuin 2 days ago

Wiping and rewriting history is straight from 1984 (novel). It's insane US let this happen.

Comment by dwright333 1 day ago

[flagged]

Comment by LW2026 2 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by icantevenhold 2 days ago

The adverb “quietly” has become such an AI smell to me, even if it’s probably not one in this instance.

Comment by paimapi 2 days ago

Pangram v4 shows 100% human written: https://www.pangram.com/history/aa7e5cb1-0070-4bcc-8694-6180...

Don't let AI tells ruin professional writing for you.

Comment by OnlineTux 2 days ago

That must be why the kids are always saying "lowkey".

Comment by Kapura 2 days ago

well, they certainly aren't advertising it, are they?

Comment by mahboi 2 days ago

Well, they didn't call the archive load-bearing

Comment by jimmiles 2 days ago

I hate the click-bait smell of "quietly". For me it's in the same category as "eviscerated." The hyperbole factory rolls ever onward...

Comment by cucumber3732842 2 days ago

There's this whiff of snooty superiority all over the word "quietly" that I just don't like. I can't quite put my finger on it but it's like I'm being talked down to.