HARRISBURG – Gov. Edward G. Rendell said that Pennsylvania and 11 other states will partner in a lawsuit against the federal Environmental Protection Agency to reverse new regulations that will deny the public access to information about toxic chemicals in their communities.
The lawsuit seeks to invalidate the agency’s revised Toxic Release Inventory regulations and reinstate the former reporting requirements so that public access to environmental information is not restricted.
The new EPA regulations will allow thousands of companies to avoid disclosing information to the public about the toxic chemicals used, stored and released into the environment by rolling back the reporting requirements. Previously, residents could obtain information from a federal Web site about the nature of certain chemicals and the dispersion of toxic substances from specific plants, locally and nationally.
“In early 2006, I voiced my concern that these regulations would weaken a valuable tool citizens use to find out what chemical contaminants and risks were present in their neighborhoods,” said Rendell, “but that concern fell on deaf ears. It is crucial that all Pennsylvanian’s have the ability to search vital information about the chemicals companies are legally releasing into the air.”
The Toxic Release Inventory, or TRI, was the only comprehensive, publicly-available database of toxic chemical use, storage, and release in the U.S. Under the previous regulations, companies were required to provide EPA—and the states in which the company’s facilities are located—with information critical to public health, safety and the environment, including the types and amounts of toxic chemicals stored at the company’s facilities and the quantities released into the environment.
In December 2006, EPA issued revised regulations that significantly weakened the Toxic Release Inventory by reducing the amount of information companies must report for most of the toxic chemicals covered by the program.
For most toxic chemicals, EPA’s new regulations increased by tenfold the quantity of chemical waste a facility can generate without providing detailed TRI reports. EPA also weakened the reporting requirements for the vast majority of the most dangerous toxic chemicals – those that are persistent and bioaccumulative – including chemicals such as lead and mercury. As a result, thousands of companies can now avoid filing a complete report on harmful chemicals.
Under the former regulations, TRI information became a powerful tool used by communities to protect public health and safety, and the environment:
-Citizen groups used TRI data to monitor companies in their communities;
-State and local government entities used TRI data to track toxic chemicals;
-Labor organizations used TRI data to ensure the safety of their workers; and
-Companies used the TRI program to learn about the toxic pollution they had created, which resulted in companies voluntarily reducing their toxic chemical releases by billions of pounds nationwide.
EPA’s rollback of the TRI regulations now limits the ability of labor organizations, environmental and public health advocates, community groups, and individuals to effectively monitor and respond to the presence of toxins in their communities.
The legal action brought by the 12 states seeks to invalidate the EPA’s revised regulations and return to the former reporting requirements so that public access to environmental information is not restricted. The lawsuit was filed today in federal court in Manhattan. The states or state agencies involved in the suit are Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, and Vermont.
Congress enacted, and former President Ronald Reagan signed into law, the Toxics Release Inventory program in 1986 after the Bhopal toxic chemical catastrophe in India. In 1984, a deadly cloud of methyl isocyanate accidentally released from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal killed or seriously injured more than 2,000 people. Shortly thereafter, a serious chemical release occurred at a sister plant in West Virginia.
