How do laws, regulations, policies, and community science affect each other? This page is a place to collect and organize resources and stories on how community-led science can create positive change while working with the legal system and government agencies.

On this page you’ll currently find information on:

• Questions from community members on law and policy
• Evidence
• Community-sourced data and common legal issues
• Regulations within Topic areas

Some subjects that you might see included here in the future:

• How can community-sourced data be used to impact or enforce regulations at the local, tribal, state, or federal level?
• What can community members do to improve their chances of having impact through legal channels?
• How do laws and agencies enable or impair the ability of communities to collect and contribute data?

Questions on law and policy

Evidence

The posts below include discussions and information on how community-collected data can become evidence in a legal case.

Environmental Evidence Project - Introduction: beginning the conversation on how community-collected data can be used as evidence to stimulate action.

The Many Types of Evidence: outlining the different kinds of data that someone might collect as evidence and how they differ from each other.

Interview: Chris Nidel on environmental evidence in court: interview with an attorney who shares insights on what can make community-sourced data admissible in court (short answer: there is no easy answer and no guarantees).

Community-sourced data and legal issues

Each of us has our own way of thinking about and doing community science. The posts linked below describe an approach to community science from the perspective of @lenagd, an attorney with extensive experience in environmental law. Within the posts you’ll find:

A three-step approach to using community-sourced data in the legal system:

Step 1. Identifying the problem: how it should work + common legal obstacles
Step 2. Gathering the evidence: how it should work + common legal obstacles
Step 3. Turning evidence into action: how it should work + common legal obstacles

You can find the full posts on “Citizen Science Investigations: aka 'Common Legal Issues when using Community Sourced Data'” here:

Part 1: How it should work
Part 2: Why it doesn’t always work

Regulations within Topic areas

Much of the resources and activity on the Public Lab website are organized by Topic areas--for example, air quality, water quality, and land use. On each Topic’s wiki page (see an example linked below), we’re hoping to include background on what laws and regulations exist and where gaps are, plus examples and stories of how community science can interact with the regulatory world. These sections could cover:

1. Regulations related to the Topic

• Federal level regulations (e.g., set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the US)
• How to find other regulations that may exist at your state level
• What’s currently hot in the regulatory world

2. Examples and stories of what community-collected data can do with regulations in this Topic area

• Stimulate government investigation
• Be used directly by agencies in their assessment
• Be used in lawsuits

We hope that the stories will demonstrate the power of local community knowledge and expertise and inspire others who are seeking to address an environmental concern.

If you have ideas, examples, or stories to share, please comment below or consider posting a research note!

Share a research note

Indoor air quality

Regulations on indoor air quality: check out this example of what Topic pages could include on federal and state regulations and policies.

Air quality (outdoor)

US EPA standards: national ambient air quality standards set by the EPA, following the Clean Air Act.