40 firms keep eye on EPA changes
Posted on Monday, December 19, 2005
Forty companies in Arkansas will be able to cut back on their disclosure of toxic releases if changes being proposed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency to the nation’s Toxics Release Inventory are passed, according to a report by an environmental group.
“The bottom line is these changes would be bad for Arkansas,” said Nora Ellertsen, a spokesman for U. S. Public Interest Research Group, a nationwide network of nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy groups, which authored the report. “The Bush administration needs to put public health first and not private corporations.” The government wants to reduce the number of releases that have to be reported and allow companies to submit reports on releases less frequently. The government says the reports in question only account for a small percentage of the overall amount of toxic releases and the changes will save companies millions of dollars. Many of the companies that will be affected are small and use fewer toxic chemicals.
“Collecting information annually on 24, 000 facilities and 650 chemicals is an enormous undertaking, and EPA continually seeks ways to streamline the process and reduce the costs for everyone involved,” said Kim Nelson, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Environmental Information. “The paperwork relief we are proposing... will not come at the expense of environmental safety, or make it harder for communities to find out when a dangerous release of toxic substances has occurred. “ The EPA’s annual Toxics Release Inventory was started as a result of a 1986 community-right-to-know law. The inventory provides a public database that contains information on toxic chemical releases reported annually by private and government facilities.
The proposed changes would allow companies to use a short form enabling them to be excluded from disclosing spills and other releases if fewer than 5, 000 pounds of specific chemicals are released. The current limit is 500 pounds.
The short form would also be allowed if companies store, but do not release, pollutants including mercury, the insecti- cide DDT and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl ).
The threshold changes could not take effect until December 2006 after a review period, EPA officials said.
The threshold changes do not have to be approved by Congress.
The agency has also said it will ask Congress to require the reporting every other year instead of annually.
If proposed in Oct. 2006, there would be a year of review and public comment and the change could not be implemented before 2007.
Stan Jorgensen, president of the Little Rock environmental engineering firm ECCI, said the changes will help smaller companies in particular that can spend hours filling out forms.
His company led seminars earlier this year on how to comply with Toxics Release Inventory.
Each seminar took eight hours.
Jorgensen is on a board of the Arkansas Environmental Federation, an industry group that helps train companies on environmental regulations. The group hasn’t taken a stance on the regulations.
“ I don’t look at this as a huge change to the program at all,” Jorgensen said.
He added that he’s not sure if the proposed changes will “go far enough or not far enough” to helping reduce the burden on businesses.
Even by EPA estimates, filling out inventory reports takes between 20. 6 and 51. 2 hours depending on the type of chemicals involved and other factors.
The report released by U. S. Public Interest Research Group found that 3, 849 facilities across the country would no longer be required to report their releases.
“All different kinds of facilities would come under this rule,” Ellertsen said.
In Arkansas, the list includes packaging companies, feed mills, various manufacturers and food producers among others. Among those on the list are Tyson Foods Inc. in Dardanelle, Mid-America Packaging in Pine Bluff and American Greetings and Creative Foods LLC, both in Osceola.
Doug Szenher, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, said the agency hasn’t taken a stance on the proposed rule changes. The state has its own reporting requirements on air and water emissions as well as solid and hazardous waste, he said.
The research group’s report credited the inventory for helping reduce pollution nationwide. An analysis of the inventory showed that releases of carcinogens declined by 41 percent between 1995 and 2000.
It said that changing reporting requirements from every year to every other year would make it difficult to track such trends and that raising the threshold would mean losing potentially valuable data.
Megan Lewis, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, said the organization is opposed to the changes and called the inventory one of the most effective environmental tools around. “When a facility or company sees they are one of the worst offenders in the area it’s embarrassing,” Lewis said.
EPA’s Nelson said recently that the “EPA’s analysis of the impact of the proposed change in reporting threshold was based on a national perspective ; we understand that some communities may be more impacted than others. This is one of the key areas in which we are seeking comment before finalizing the proposal.” She also said that alternateyear reporting could save EPA up to $ 2 million annually, money that would be used to upgrade the inventory’s software and for other improvements. Nelson is leaving the EPA at the end of the year amid criticism over her office’s proposal to change the Toxics Release Inventory, according to published reports.
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