EPA Proposes Easing
Reporting Requirements on Toxic Pollution
September 22, 2005 — By John Heilprin, Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The government wants to quit
forcing companies to report small releases of toxic pollutants and allow
them to submit reports on their pollution less frequently.
Saying it wants to ease its regulatory burden on companies, the
Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed adopting a "short
form" that would excuse companies from disclosing spills and other releases
of toxic substances if:
--They claim to release fewer than 5,000 pounds of a specific chemical. The
current limit is 500 pounds.
--They store onsite but claim to release "zero" amounts of the worst
pollutants, such as mercury, DDT and PCBs, that persist in the environment
and work up the food chain. However, they must report if they have stored
dioxin or dioxin-like compounds, even if none is released.
EPA said it also plans to ask Congress for permission to require the
accounting every other year instead of annually. The EPA's annual Toxics
Release Inventory began under a 1986 community right-to-know law. The first
year the change could be possible, if Congress agreed, would be 2008.
"We certainly recognize there will be concerns moving to every other year,"
said Kimberly Nelson, EPA's assistant administrator for environmental
information. "Every community will still have the same information about the
types of toxic releases. They just won't have some of the details in terms
of how that particular substance was managed or released."
Independent Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont called the proposal "a frontal
assault" on one of the nation's most successful environmental laws.
"The community right to know act will become the community right to know
every other year act," said Jeffords, a former chairman of the Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee. "This proposal would deny
communities up-to-date information about local toxic releases, reduce
incentives to minimize the generation of toxic waste and undermine the
ability of public health agencies and researchers to identify important
trends."
Reducing information on more than 600 chemicals put in the air, water and
land will make it harder for officials, communities and interest groups to
help protect public health, said Meghan Purvis, an environmental health
advocate for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
Some big chemical companies said complying with the annual toxic inventory
is not a problem for them.
"We are so in compliance it's not funny," Andrew Liveris, president of The
Dow Chemical Company, told the AP. "We've adjusted to it many years ago."
The looser reporting requirements are intended to let off the hook as many
as a third of the 23,000 companies that now report their pollution to the
government, according to the EPA.
Nelson estimated the shorter forms would save businesses about 165,000 hours
a year in paperwork. If Congress agrees to require the reports every two
years instead of annually, that would save another 2 million hours, she
said.
"With 20 years of experience under our belt, we recognize that we can reduce
the burden without losing much of the data we now receive," Nelson said in
an interview. "These are very small facilities that account for a very small
percentage of the releases."
In the latest inventory EPA released in May, overall chemical pollution fell
more than 6 percent from 2002 to 2003, the latest year for which total
figures are available, though there were increases in levels of mercury,
PCBs and dioxin. Some 4.44 billion pounds of toxic chemicals were released
in 2003, compared with 4.74 billion pounds in 2002.
Source: Associated Press |