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TRI Fight Heating Up - States File Suit
Healthy Child
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Twelve states are suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the December 2006 regulation changes increasing the thresholds required for detailed Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reporting.
New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced today that the suit was filed on Nov. 28 in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. District Judge Barbara S. Jones and Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman have been assigned to the case.
Eleven state attorney generals and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection were named on the suit. In addition to New York, the attorney generals named on the suit are from Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Vermont.
States have been taking the lead in ensuring the EPA's most effective pollution reduction program is not weakened due to corporate interests. Last month, Gov. Schwartenegger approved the California Toxics Release Inventory Program on Oct. 13, which establishes California's threshold for detailed reporting at the former federal level of 500 pounds. Federal legislation is mired in committee, waiting for more representatives to sign on to the Toxic Right-to-Know Protection Act (H.R. 1055 and S.595) before moving ahead.
TELL YOUR CONGRESSPERSON TO SUPPORT THE TOXIC RIGHT-TO-KNOW PROTECTION ACT!
Call Your Representatives in the Senate and House: Tell them to support the Toxic Right-to-Know Protection Act and co-sponsor the bill.
With international environmental threats looming, it is imperative that Americans are able to know about pollution in their back yards. This is a successful program that was unnecessarily weakened, ostensibly to reduce burden on small businesses, except that the minor costs saved in no way compensate for the loss of information the TRI program was created to provide.
Use www.congress.org to find your representatives.
The new policies:
- Allow companies to release ten times more pollution before filing detailed reports;
- Create an unprecedented exemption for reporting low-level disposals of persistent bioacculuative toxins (PBTs), including lead and mercury, which have been proven to be dangerous even in the smallest quantities.
We estimate that almost half of facilities that report toxic pollution under TRI will be able to hide the details on some portion of their chemical releases due to these changes. In fact, our research shows that approximately 6,700 facilities will stop reporting the details on 50 percent or more of the toxic chemicals they produce.
For more information on EPA's proposals, visit OMB Watch's TRI resource center and take a look at the report "Dismantling the Public's Right to Know" to understand EPA's actions in the context of the agency's ongoing efforts to weaken the TRI program.
