E.P.A. Is Sued by 12 States Over Reports on Chemicals
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.
Molly A. O'Neill, assistant administrator for the agency's Office of
Environmental Information, defended the new rules in a statement
yesterday, saying they were "making a good program better."
But Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo
uomo/index.html?inline=nyt-per> of New York, who is leading the
plaintiffs, said, "The E.P.A.'s new regulations rob New Yorkers - and
people across the country - of their right to know about toxic dangers
in their own backyards."
Mr. Cuomo said the lawsuit sought to restore a public right to
information about chemical hazards, "despite the Bush administration's
best attempts to hide it."
The Toxics Release Inventory program was enacted in 1986, two years
after a deadly cloud of chemical gas was accidentally released from a
Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, killing thousands. The law quickly became a kind of "community right to know" rule.
Information on the location of dangerous chemicals is posted on the
environmental agency's Web site. Environmental organizations, community groups and labor unions across the country have used the inventory to prevent exposures to toxic chemicals in neighborhoods and at workplaces.
The first reporting deadline under the new rules was July 1. But
officials say it is not yet clear whether individual companies have
substantially reduced the amount of information they provide, or
voluntarily decided to comply with the old rules.
By ANTHONY DePALMA
