The Environmental Protection Agency has launched a new Web site, Rulemaking Gateway, intended to make its rulemaking process more transparent to the public.

Launched last week, the site — http://www.epa.gov/rulemaking — "provides an easy way for the public to find out about the rules moving throughout the agency and it provides an opportunity for the public to comment," said Lisa Heinzerling, associate administrator of EPA's Office of Policy Economics and Innovation.

"It allows a person who spends a bit of time with the Web site to really get a nice picture of what the agency is working on now, in the coming months, and even coming years," Heinzerling said.

Citizens' comments on the site "go into a public docket, and the agency responds to the public comments it received when it issues the relevant decisions or rules," Heinzerling said.

Heinzerling thinks the Web site will "broaden the conversation on environmental protection."

The Rulemaking Gateway was designed with the general public — and not EPA's traditional shareholders — in mind, Heinzerling said.

"For some organizations that are already knowledgeable about our work, the largest organizations, the best financed organizations, this won't change their understanding that much," she said. "But for the general public — for the people who don't come to EPA all the time and tell us where their interests are, and are not as knowledgeable and financed — I think this Rulemaking Gateway will make a difference."

Work on the Rulemaking Gateway began last summer and is in line with the Obama administration's order to make agency activities and information more transparent, Heinzerling said.