Chris Campbell is the VP for information Technology at EWG, and he's the guy behind the amazing EWG farm subsidy databases, including this new one--not to mention all of our other computer investigations and tools. Our ED, Richard Wiles, likes to say that Chris is one of the most important players in the environmental movement. No argument from me. He also makes the best beer.

The Google Maps feature was implemented by EWG's renowned Institute For Intergalactic Geospatial Analysis Consisting of One Guy With A Computer Somewhere In Connecticut. The guy is EWG Senior Analyst Sean Gray. What took him so long I couldn't say.

Carrie Gouldin handled graphic design of both the database pages and Mulch, though frankly if she'd started on it earlier she'd be a lot happier with the result. Personally, I think it's great.

The first outsider we showed it to is our former EWG colleague Clark Williams-Derry, now head of research at the Sightline Institute in Seattle. Clark got the database to work on the Web during breaks between Marathon levels, and he also added in the names, as I recall, after they became available to the world following the Washington Post FOIA court case in 1996. Clark's squeals as the Google maps loaded were worth the whole project.

Andrew Art, now a lawyer here in town, was the guy who got the database to the point where, one Friday night back in the mid-1990s during beer #2.5 (estimate), he was able to ask me: What do you want to search? I said 90210, and back then the list that popped up was, in its way, every bit as exciting as what you see when you type in that ZIP code now--that is, if it will load under the traffic we're now experiencing. (Sean has implemented a "link to map" feature above the map windows throughout the site. Please link responsibly.) It was also Andrew who came across the Washington Post's 1996 court victory under the Freedom of Information Act and filed our first FOIAs for the names of subsidy recipients...then filed the appeal...at which point USDA began providing the data. I can't tell you how much of our work here at EWG was shaped by Andrew's thinking about computer technology and analysis in the early days of the organization--including the hiring of Chris Campbell.

Wendy Hoffman (nee Cohen) is now (undoubtedly) doing the kind of amazing work at EPA that she did here at EWG, including doggedly, doggedly, doggedly pursuing data under FOIA (she was dogged by the way). She's the one who got USDA to cough up the original set of payment info by 9-digit ZIP code--which arrived on 40 or more mainframe computer tapes--back in 1993-94. Working with Andrew, she got this whole thing started.

As I did at the press conference yesterday, let me also pay tribute to the team of people at USDA who worked so hard to put the underlying data together that made the new EWG database possible. Not even we understand how challenging it was to get the data from the field, and then get it in shape to meet the mandate Congress set in Section 1614 of the 2002 Farm Bill--to track benefits right down to individuals. But they did it, and I hope we've done well by their efforts.

Margaret O'Dell and the board of The Joyce Foundation trusted us 15 years ago when we said this approach had the potential to change the farm policy debate in ways that would benefit conservation. Needless to say, none of this would have happened if they hadn't placed that first bet.

If I've forgotten important points or people Chris, then, as usual, change this...

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