Hacker News

The EPA Is Quietly Killing Its Web Archive(motherjones.com)

308 points by robtherobber 3 days ago | 58 comments

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.

[–] brightball 3 days ago

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

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

[–] nomel 3 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.

[–] Grombobulous 3 days ago

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

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

[–] stuaxo 3 days ago

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

[–] parineum 3 days ago

The epa doesn't have access to the federal budget

[–] Grombobulous 3 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.

[–] kulahan 3 days ago

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

[–] Ntrails 3 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)

[–] Grombobulous 3 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...

[–] xtiansimon 2 days 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.

[–] pestat0m 3 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.

[–] ninjagoo 3 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.

[–] Ntrails 2 days 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".

[–] blurbleblurble 3 days ago

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

[–] mnky9800n 3 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.

[–] no-name-here 3 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.

[–] expedition32 3 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.

[–] pfisch 3 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...

[–] Grombobulous 3 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.

[–] nomel 3 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.

[–] kolinko 3 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.

[–] fooqux 3 days ago

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

[–] unholythree 2 days ago

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

[–] baggachipz 3 days ago

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

[–] amelius 3 days ago

We have alternative facts now.

[–] schiffern 3 days ago

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

[–] gkrimer 3 days ago

Climate change was such a downer. Good riddance!

[–] toomuchtodo 3 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

[–] icantevenhold 3 days ago

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

[–] toomuchtodo 13 hours ago

Maybe not what you're looking for, but check out https://wayback-labs.sf.archive.org/epa/

[–] dannyobrien 3 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/ )

[–] arjie 3 days ago

Has anyone scraped this already for offline use?

[–] gs17 3 days ago

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

[–] arjie 3 days ago

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

[–] totetsu 3 days ago

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

[–] Madmallard 3 days ago

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

They shouldn't be.

[–] jacquesm 3 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.

[–] lincon127 18 hours ago

I mean, if they want to kill everyone in the extreme heat belt, so be it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] vfclists 3 days ago

Where are r/archiveteam when you need them?

[–] pstuart 3 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.

[–] dyauspitr 3 days ago

Everything bad is good for this administration.

[–] 40four 3 days ago

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

[–] amclennon 3 days ago

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

[–] KETHERCORTEX 3 days ago

Or Rollerball

[–] rtuin 3 days ago

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

[–] icantevenhold 3 days ago

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

[–] paimapi 3 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.

[–] OnlineTux 3 days ago

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

[–] Kapura 3 days ago

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

[–] mahboi 3 days ago

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

[–] jimmiles 3 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...

[–] cucumber3732842 3 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.