A government-funded programme (2007–2011) that aimed to centralise environmental monitoring, public health records, and corporate compliance data into a single searchable system. At its peak, the CDI employed forty data scientists and had access to monitoring data from hundreds of sites across the region.
Before it was shut down, the CDI’s environmental monitoring team identified early signs of groundwater contamination at several sites in the valley. The data suggested a pattern — multiple sites showing similar chemical signatures, pointing to a common source or method.
The findings were never published. The initiative was defunded in 2011 following lobbying from industrial interests, and all staff were offered severance packages contingent on signing non-disclosure agreements.
Most CDI staff signed and moved to private sector. A handful refused:
Kai was investigating the CDI shutdown when his editor killed the story. The experience ended his journalism career but left him with contacts — including Ruth Gallegos at the EPA — and a deep suspicion that the CDI was shut down precisely because it was working.
The CDI’s unfinished work appears to have continued, unofficially, as Project Loom.
Referenced in The Archive and The Source.