Nov 30 - Associated Press/AP Online

The Bush administration, looking at the prospect of stronger oversight from a Democratic-led Congress, is withdrawing a proposal to let big polluters report less often on what they spew from their smokestacks.

The administration, however, is going ahead with a plan to make one-third less provide detailed figures at all.

The government last year proposed easing air regulations to exempt some companies from having to tell the Environmental Protection Agency about what it considers to be small releases of toxic pollutants.

That proposal is still alive. But abandoned now is the idea of making companies that must make such reports, known as toxic release inventory, do so every other year instead of annually.

"You will be pleased to know that I have decided against moving forward with changes to TRI reporting frequency," EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson wrote Democratic Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey this week.

Johnson decided the program would not be effective unless the reporting was done each year, agency spokeswoman Jennifer Wood said Thursday.

The EPA does plan to change the inventory requirements, easing what it called the "regulatory burden" on companies through use of a short form for reporting toxic pollution.

Currently, some 23,000 facilities are required to submit reports annually if they release more than 500 pounds of the worst toxic pollutants. Those include mercury, DDT, PCBs and other chemicals that persist in the environment and work up the food chain.

Johnson made clear in his letter Tuesday to Lautenberg and Menendez that the administration plans in 2007 to raise that threshold reporting requirement to 5,000 pounds. Companies would be exempt from the reporting requirements if they store the pollutants on site and claim to release "zero" amounts into the environment.

According to EPA officials, the higher threshold would free one-third of the 23,000 facilities from the reporting requirements. They include mining, utility, oil, rubber, plastics, printing, textile, leather tanning and semiconductor operations.

The EPA's latest inventory said chemical pollution released into the environment fell to 4.24 billion pounds in 2004, a 4 percent drop from the previous year, because of declines among metal mining, electric utility and hazardous waste industries.

Environmentalists were alarmed that toxic releases in U.S. waterways rose 10 percent, to 241 million pounds of chemicals.

Lautenberg and Menendez said they were pleased the EPA had responded to their criticism of the proposed changes. But they said plans to move ahead with a higher reporting threshold still "would essentially gut it."

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On the Net:

Background on the toxic release inventory program: http://www.epa.gov/tri