Searching High and Low

Using data provided by the EPA’s Superfund program, terra IMS has created the U.S. EPA Superfund Site Locator. This Google Maps mashup lets people search for Superfund sites by city and state and then view the results through Google Maps.

What’s a Superfund site? According to the EPA, “A Superfund site is any land in the United States that has been contaminated by hazardous waste and identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a candidate for cleanup because it poses a risk to human health and/or the environment.*”

If that doesn’t freak you out too much give PlanetHazard a try. This site is also a Google Maps mashup, but it relies on data from the EPA’s National Emissions Inventories database. Although the data are from 2002 they are the most current. The site is organized geographically (city, county, state, & nationwide) and gives you the option to see maps showing polluters, pollutants, and industries.

Just read about weather and webcam site, Weather Bonk. It’s a mashup site that uses Google Maps to help users locate weather and traffic cams via a city map. It must have recognized my location by IP address because my city’s map was displayed as soon as I went to the site. Have a look at the complete webcam page for Pittsburgh.

I often find myself using Google Maps to locate places or to find directions and quite frequently I find myself asking “Which county is this in?” It would be nice if Google Maps had a built-in county line layer that could be enabled/disabled at will. I realize that I can turn on a layer in Google Earth to view this data, but I’m not always at a computer that has it installed.

So, I was glad to see someone produce a mashup that included a county line overlay. It’s quite simple: Enter a zip code and the system will return a Google Map with a county line boundary in red.

If you don’t know a zip code you can point and click on the map and navigate to the desired area. If you’re not a county line geek like me, then perhaps you might enjoy the zip code overlay or the city boundary overlay over at US Naviguide.