A rule requiring companies to report details about what chemicals they are releasing into the environment allows individuals and regulators to protect themselves and encourages businesses to pollute less in order to avoid having to file reports.
Now, for no good reason, the Environmental Protection Agency has decided to change the rule, allowing companies to release up to 2,000 pounds of pollutants before they must report the releases to the Toxic Release Inventory, a national database accessible to anyone. Before the rule change, the threshold was 500 pounds.
The change is especially toxic in Utah, which ranks sixth in the nation in concentration of pollutants. The EPA rule change means that as many as 30 to 35 companies may no longer have to disclose the chemicals they use and release, leaving their neighbors with no information about what might be floating in the air or water or hidden in the soil.
The EPA's stated reason for the change, to save the paperwork burden on businesses that pollute, is a poor excuse for robbing members of the public of information needed to keep them safe.
The Washington D.C.-based environmental organization OMB Watch reports that the EPA's action has been criticized by more than a thousand individuals, 23 state governments, 60 members of Congress, 30 public-health organizations, 40 labor organizations and 200 environmental and public-interest groups. And rightly so.
It's not surprising that only 33 who responded to the change, 29 of them with interests in polluting companies, favored the new standard.
The Toxic Release Inventory is a useful tool for individuals and organizations, including government regulators, to learn what businesses are doing, which ones are using and producing toxic substances and how well they are managing the pollutants. That usefulness will be needlessly undermined if this rule change is allowed to stand.
The EPA's role is to guard the environment and, consequently, the health and safety of Americans who depend on the agency's diligence. It is not the industry-protection agency.
