U.S. EPA trims the public’s right to know
Toxic-chemical reporting requirements are relaxed for one-third of U.S. companies, triggering congressional action.
The U.S. EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), which reports the amount of chemicals companies release to the air, land, and water, has been expanded over the years to cover more substances and more industries. Now, EPA has reduced the amount of information that will be made public in the popular database, allowing companies to use a short reporting form, which does not disclose the pounds of chemicals released. Critics say the cuts are an attempt by the Bush Administration to curtail citizens’ right to know about the activities of their industrial neighbors.
The critics’ claims are supported by a new analysis (2.6MB PDF) by the congressional investigative group the Government Accountability Office (GAO), released on February 6, showing that the TRI reporting changes “will likely have a significant impact on information available to the public about dozens of toxic chemicals from thousands of facilities.”
TRI is a key provision of the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA), approved by Congress in 1986 to help communities protect public health and the environment from chemical hazards. In addition to releases to air, land, and water, companies report the waste shipped off-site for recycling, treated, or recycled on-site. In a number of cases, pressure on companies from community groups armed with TRI data has led to changes in manufacturing processes and the installation of better pollution controls, says Tom Natan, with the National Environmental Trust, an environmental group.
EPA finalized a rule in December that allows TRI reporters, beginning this year, to switch from the 5-page form R to the 2-page form A if they release less than 2000 pounds (lb) of a listed chemical, compared with 500 lb under the old guidelines. Form A merely certifies that waste was generated, whereas form R details the pounds of each listed chemical treated; recycled; transferred on-site; and released to air, water, and land.
If the substance in question qualifies as persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic (PBT), such as lead, the old rules would have required form R reporting regardless of the amount of waste managed or released. Now, for the first time, facilities will be able to report PBTs on form A as long as they manage less than 500 lb of waste and have no releases.
The Small Business Administration applauded the new rule, saying it will reduce the burden for small companies. The new system will benefit about one-third of the 24,000 facilities that report to TRI, saving businesses $6 million per year, yet affecting only 1% of the releases reported each year across the country, EPA calculates.
However, critics say the reporting changes could leave communities without information on some of the most toxic chemicals, according to Sean Moulton of OMB Watch, an advocacy organization. GAO found that states could lose all quantitative information about releases of some chemicals, ranging from 3 chemicals in South Dakota to 60 in Georgia. And about 3565 facilities would no longer have to report any quantitative information to the TRI.
The TRI office in Washington State’s Department of Ecology evaluated data from companies eligible to switch from the long form R to the short form A and found that “we would lose information on a fair number of facilities or on chemicals that were highly ranked in terms of risk,” says Idell Hansen, TRI coordinator at Washington State’s Department of Ecology.
The companies still have to do all of the calculations required for form R to prove that they are eligible to report on form A, Hansen says. These include calculating the number of pounds used for each process; the amount that went into the product; how much was released to air, water, and land; and how much was recycled or treated. According to EPA’s data, reporting companies will only save $400–800 for each chemical, less than $2 per day.
The GAO report notes that top EPA officials inserted the proposal to reduce the reporting burden by making it easier to switch to the short Form A, even though groups charged with recommending TRI reporting changes had rejected that idea. Two groups, the National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology and an internal review by EPA staffers, suggested TRI modifications over the last decade, says Natan. The agency also turned a deaf ear to the outcry over the changes: more than 99% of people who commented on the rule change strongly opposed it, according to an analysis by OMB Watch.
In the end, the rule removes a great deal of TRI data from the scrutiny of the public and from the press, says Joe Davis, a reporter who follows this issue for the Society of Environmental Journalists. Over the years, media coverage of TRI data has been interpreted by businesses as very bad public relations, Davis says.
