2008 Woodie Awards
The EPA Wants Less Information
Michael Hawthorne
Issue date: 10/10/05 Section: News
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Americans soon could be getting less information about toxic chemicals released into the environment.
Under a proposal from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, industrial companies would be freed from reporting most chemical releases of less than 5,000 pounds, up from 500 pounds under current law. Factories, power plants, refineries and other sources of pollution also would need to report their releases only once every other year instead of annually.
A top agency official said the proposed changes would reduce the regulatory burden on industries while giving the EPA more time to review the data for trends, such as whether releases of a specific chemical are on the rise or if a certain industry or factory is having problems.
"We spend so much time receiving forms and entering the data that we don't have enough time to analyze it," Kimberly Nelson, the EPA's assistant administrator for environmental information, said in an interview.
Critics of the plan say it would weaken a 1986 law that by all accounts has nudged companies to curb pollution by giving the public more information about chemical releases. Congress created the Toxics Release Inventory in response to a chemical catastrophe at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, that killed more than 2,000 people.
The critics note that people and groups already perform their own analyses of the EPA's data. Cutting the amount of information provided and releasing it less frequently would make it more difficult to track some companies and determine pollution trends, they said.
"Now it's companies first and communities last," said Sean Moulton, a policy analyst with OMB Watch, a Washington-based advocacy group. "I can't really believe they want to do this."
The EPA's own Web site touts the chemical inventory's benefits, boasting that "communities have more power to hold companies accountable and make informed decisions about how toxic chemicals are managed."
The agency puts the data on its Web site, and with a few clicks of a computer mouse anyone can find information about specific industries and plants or about 650 different chemicals. The data can be ranked nationwide or by state, county, city and ZIP code.
Under a proposal from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, industrial companies would be freed from reporting most chemical releases of less than 5,000 pounds, up from 500 pounds under current law. Factories, power plants, refineries and other sources of pollution also would need to report their releases only once every other year instead of annually.
A top agency official said the proposed changes would reduce the regulatory burden on industries while giving the EPA more time to review the data for trends, such as whether releases of a specific chemical are on the rise or if a certain industry or factory is having problems.
"We spend so much time receiving forms and entering the data that we don't have enough time to analyze it," Kimberly Nelson, the EPA's assistant administrator for environmental information, said in an interview.
Critics of the plan say it would weaken a 1986 law that by all accounts has nudged companies to curb pollution by giving the public more information about chemical releases. Congress created the Toxics Release Inventory in response to a chemical catastrophe at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, that killed more than 2,000 people.
The critics note that people and groups already perform their own analyses of the EPA's data. Cutting the amount of information provided and releasing it less frequently would make it more difficult to track some companies and determine pollution trends, they said.
"Now it's companies first and communities last," said Sean Moulton, a policy analyst with OMB Watch, a Washington-based advocacy group. "I can't really believe they want to do this."
The EPA's own Web site touts the chemical inventory's benefits, boasting that "communities have more power to hold companies accountable and make informed decisions about how toxic chemicals are managed."
The agency puts the data on its Web site, and with a few clicks of a computer mouse anyone can find information about specific industries and plants or about 650 different chemicals. The data can be ranked nationwide or by state, county, city and ZIP code.