NYT: E.P.A. Is Sued by 12 States Over Reports on Chemicals

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/us/29EPA.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

By ANTHONY DePALMA
Published: November 29, 2007

Twelve states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, sued the Environmental Protection Agency yesterday for weakening regulations that for two decades have required businesses and industries to report the toxic chemicals they use, store and release.

The suit, filed in the Federal District Court in Manhattan, asks the court to reverse the agency’s move and so restore all the chemical reporting requirements that were previously part of its Toxics Release Inventory program, or T.R.I.

Community groups across the country have used the program to track the amounts of hazardous chemicals in local neighborhoods. Under the program, companies must provide information about the types of toxic chemicals stored at plants and factories in each state, as well as the quantities discharged from each plant.

Besides the states of the New York tristate area, the plaintiffs are Arizona, California, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Vermont.

Their suit takes aim at a change, adopted by the environmental agency last December, that streamlined the T.R.I. process by reducing the amount of information that companies are required to report. The new rules allow them to file shorter, less detailed forms if they store or release less than 5,000 pounds of toxic chemicals. The old rules required a longer, more comprehensive form whenever a company stored or discharged as little as 500 pounds.

In addition to making compliance less burdensome for businesses, the agency says the new regulations provide an incentive for them to eliminate the release of the most dangerous chemicals, including those known as persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic pollutants, like lead and mercury. Last December’s change allows companies that handle those chemicals to use the shorter reporting form, but only if they can certify that they are not releasing them into the environment.

FULL story at link.