Ground Truth

what the public record says

the environmental recordof one address

Six federal systems, six search forms, and no way to ask any of them about one address. This asks all six and returns one report.

Browse addresses

Six systems, one address

Each of these has its own search form and its own vocabulary, and none of them can be asked about an address across all six. This asks all six with one point and a distance.

one address

Start with one of these

Public, non-residential addresses. Each was driven through this application against the live sources on 2026-09-17, and the line under it says what came back that day.

Heavy industry close by

Inside a mapped flood zone

A city centre, dense with facilities

Where the record is thin, or breaks

What the record can tell you

Four questions, and the sentences the six systems actually answer them with. Every one opens to the field it was read from.

  • The air here

    • Today's index for the reporting area AirNow names, and the pollutant it is for.
    • Recorded annual summaries from every monitor within 50 km, from EPA's Air Quality System.
    • How far each monitor is, and that it measures its own location rather than this address.

  • Water and flooding

    • The flood zone letter FEMA maps at the point, and its subtype, shown in FEMA's own words.
    • Whether the point sits inside the Special Flood Hazard Area.
    • Which layer answered: FEMA's own, or the reduced-set copy, named on the card either way.

  • Land once contaminated

    • Superfund sites EPA's inventory lists within 5 miles of the mapped point.
    • Which of them are on the final National Priorities List, and which are not.
    • How far each one is, measured from the point rather than reported by the source.

  • Industry next door

    • Regulated facilities EPA ECHO lists within 5 miles, and how many there are.
    • Which carry a violation in ECHO's twelve-quarter compliance history.
    • Formal enforcement actions, their dates, and the penalties on record.

What it does not do

  • It does not grade the home

    Six sources with six meanings do not add up to one number, and a number would be the first thing a reader trusted and the last thing we could defend.

  • A source that fails says so

    It is never quietly replaced with a cached or recorded answer. The card names what could not be reached and offers a retry.

  • Nothing found is not nothing there

    No matching records means the source returned nothing within the boundary it was asked about, which is a fact about the search and not about the address.

Where every answer comes from

The host that gave each reply, the boundary it was asked within, and what every query parameter means. Read off a live report rather than from documentation, so it says what this application sends and not what it is supposed to send.

  1. 01

    US Census Geocoder

    Which mapped point an address resolves to, and how precisely.
    Host
    geocoding.geo.census.gov
    Within
    the street block the address falls in, never the parcel

    Query parameters

    address
    the one line a reader typed, sent here and to no other source
    benchmark
    which vintage of the Census address file to match against
    vintage
    which vintage of the geography to return with the match
    The agency's own documentation
  2. 02

    EPA ECHO

    Regulated facilities, their compliance status, violations and enforcement.
    Host
    echodata.epa.gov
    Within
    5 miles

    Query parameters

    p_lat, p_long
    the mapped point the search is centred on
    p_radius
    the search radius, in miles
    qcolumns
    which columns to return, by index, including the longitude ECHO omits by default
    The agency's own documentation
  3. 03

    EPA FRS

    Facility identity: the name, the coordinate, and the programme systems that track it.
    Host
    services.arcgis.com
    Within
    the registry IDs this report looked up

    Query parameters

    where
    a filter on REGISTRY_ID, so only facilities already named by another source are fetched
    outFields
    which attributes of the facility record to return
    The agency's own documentation
  4. 04

    EPA SEMS

    Superfund assessment and cleanup sites, with their NPL status.
    Host
    services.arcgis.com and ofmpub.epa.gov
    Within
    5 miles

    Query parameters

    geometry
    the mapped point, as longitude and latitude
    distance, units
    how far from that point to search, and in what unit
    epa_id
    the site identifier used to join the layer to the Envirofacts status row
    The agency's own documentation
  5. 05

    FEMA NFHL

    The flood zone designation at the mapped point.
    Host
    hazards.fema.gov, with services.arcgis.com as the named fallback
    Within
    the mapped point

    Query parameters

    geometry
    the mapped point, as longitude and latitude
    spatialRel
    esriSpatialRelIntersects: return the polygon the point falls inside
    outFields
    FLD_ZONE, ZONE_SUBTY, SFHA_TF and the study identifiers shown on the card
    The agency's own documentation
  6. 06

    EPA AQS

    Recorded annual summaries from the monitors nearest the point.
    Host
    aqs.epa.gov
    Within
    50 km

    Query parameters

    param
    88101 is PM2.5, 44201 is ozone
    bdate, edate
    the start and end of the summary year, which AQS requires to be one year
    minlat, maxlat, minlon, maxlon
    the box around the point that AQS searches
    email, key
    the credential, held server-side and redacted everywhere it would otherwise be shown
    The agency's own documentation
  7. 07

    AirNow

    Current preliminary air conditions for the reporting area.
    Host
    www.airnowapi.org
    Within
    the reporting area AirNow names

    Query parameters

    latitude, longitude
    the mapped point AirNow resolves to a reporting area
    format
    application/json
    API_KEY
    the credential, held server-side and redacted everywhere it would otherwise be shown
    The agency's own documentation