EPA weakens public right-to-know laws for toxic releases
In December 2006, EPA struck a blow at a public right-to-know law by relaxing toxic chemical reporting requirements for businesses under EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). EPA’s December rule (published to the Federal Register on Friday, December 22, just before a long holiday weekend) changed the TRI reporting requirements for facilities storing, transporting, or releasing certain chemicals into the environment to increase the threshold amount of toxics that can be released by a facility before more detailed reporting to EPA (and the public) would be required. Basically, the reporting changes mean that a facility may quadruple releases, emitting up to 2,000 pounds annually, before the public would have a right to know the details of just how much and which chemicals were in their neighborhood. The new rules allow facilities to use the less detailed “Form A”, which doesn’t require chemical volume or details on releases to land, air, or water, if the facility creates less than 5,000 pounds of waste annually and release less than 2,000 pounds to the environment. EPA’s rules went further to, for the first time in TRI’s history, allow the use of the simpler reporting form for persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic substances (PBTs) such as mercury compounds so long as the facility recycles and treats no more than 500 pounds of that waste in a year and eliminates releases.
As usual with government actions on the environment, the plot thickens, with allegations of senior management efforts to modify the draft rule late in the game and to then expedite impact analysis…. In February, GAO (the Government Accountability Office, which sometimes refers to itself as the “congressional watchdog”) released a report that blasted the TRI reporting changes, saying that EPA’s changes “will likely have a significant impact on information available to the public about dozens of toxic chemicals from thousands of facilities in states and communities across the country”. GAO went further to state that “EPA did not adhere to its own rulemaking guidelines in all respects when developing the proposal to change TRI reporting requirements”. (You can find a one page abstract of the report here <http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d07464thigh.pdf>; or read the full GAO report at this link: <http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07464t.pdf>.
Now, some in congress have proposed a bill to reverse some of this administration’s weakening of TRI and to protect TRI – and the public right to know about toxic releases – in the future. According to a statement from Representative Frank Pallone’s (NJ) office, the bill would codify the stronger reporting requirements that were in place before the Bush administration weakened them late last year, and would additionally prevent this or future administrations from changing the reporting guidelines without congressional approval. Track changes to the house and senate legislation here (search for the “toxic right-to-know protection act”, or H.R. 1055, or S. 595).
It is important to be aware of this bill and others relating to changes in TRI. The toxic chemical release inventory is a provision of EPCRA (Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act), which was passed in 1986 as a response to the Union Carbide methyl isocyanate leak in Bhopal, India that killed and injured thousands of people. (A month after the disaster in Bhopal, it was disclosed that a similar Union Carbide facility in West Virginia had leaked the same chemical, which is used to make pesticides, at least 28 times. Eight months later 3,800 pounds of the chemical leaked in West Virginia, this time sending dozens of people to hospitals. Congress passed EPCRA to make sure people had access to information on hazardous chemicals in their communities.)
The National Environmental Trust released a report in October 2005 that used TRI data from 2003 to analyze the impact of EPA’s then-proposed rule. Here in Illinois, NET’s data showed, 7% of Illinois zip codes would lose data from all reporting facilities within their area if EPA followed its proposed changes for short-form eligibility and 46 Illinois zip codes (12%) would lose data on half of the releases in their area. As you can imagine, popular sentiment rose up against EPA’s proposed TRI changes — the Agency received over 120,000 comments from the public, of which over 99% opposed the proposed changes, according to OMB Watch (see “Against the Public’s Will” at http://www.ombwatch.org/article/archive/241).
In addition to being used by concerned community members and neighbors, some groups rely on TRI data to look for environmental justice trends in facility siting or emissions. For example, on February 17 the Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community at University of California Santa Cruz released a report that used TRI and census data to document the disproportionate burden of environmental hazards that is placed on poor and minority communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Even EPA’s own analysis of the proposed rule estimated that minorities comprise 31.8% of the U.S. population and 41.8% of the population living within one mile of facilities that filed at least one long form for TRI in 2003. (EPA also estimated that within a mile of a detailed TRI-reporting facility, the percentage of individuals living below the Census Bureau poverty level is slightly higher than the U.S. average. See EPA’s “Response to Comments” in the final rule.)
Related links and sources for this post
EPA’s “Toxics Release Inventory Burden Reduction Final Rule” (published in Dec 22 Federal Register):
http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-TRI/2006/December/Day-22/tri21958.pdf
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on EPA’s implementation of the TRI rule: here http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-07-464T
GAO’s preliminary report: http://www.gao.gov/htext/d07464t.html or http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07464t.pdf
OMB Watch news and articles on TRI: http://www.ombwatch.org/article/archive/241
OMB Watch Report, “Against the Public’s Will”, released December 2006 and summarizing TRI comments: http://www.ombwatch.org/info/TRICommentsReport.pdf
National Environmental Trust TRI news and analysis site: http://www.net.org/health/tri.vtml
Presidential executive order exempting federal facilities from reporting: here or http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20071800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2007/07-374.htm
And finally, use the data while it’s still there!
The following URLs link to sites that use TRI data and let anyone plug in their zip code or look up a facility to find out about its emissions or to calculate environmental and community health risk:
EPA’s TRI website (contains info on the new rule as well as searchable data for communities): http://epa.gov/tri/
Scorecard (get information on pollution and risk in your zip code): http://www.scorecard.org/
EPA’s own Risk Screening Environmental Indicator (RSEI) site — compares toxic chemical released from industrial sources and allows communities to set risk-based priorities for further action and analyze geographic trends: http://epa.gov/oppt/rsei/
By the way, it should come as no shock, but this administration and corporate interests’ assault on the environment is relentless…. while EPA and the public and Congress battle it out over TRI, the whitehouse is also quietly changing other requirements using the fine print of executive orders. One recent example is President Bush’s January 26 executive order, E.O. 13423, “Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management”, which at quick glance does _appear_ to promote environmental improvements. However, this new executive order also rescinds several previous executive orders relating to environmental improvement in the government, including E.O. 13148, “Greening the Government Through Leadership in Environmental Management”, which had maintained the Clinton-era requirement that federal facilities (like Department of Defense sites), must report releases under TRI. This is significant because according to analysis of TRI data by the National Environmental Trust, DoD sites stand to benefit greatly from the weakening of TRI. In my opinion, the community’s right to know about the release or disposal or storage of significant amounts of toxic chemicals should not vary depending on the source of those chemicals — impacts to health and the environment don’t lessen just because the toxic exposure originates somewhere else.
