 The Journal News. EPA at it againTHE JOURNAL NEWS (Original Publication: September 26, 2005) The federal Environmental Protection Agency is at it again. No, not trying to give big business a break when it comes to installing anti-pollution controls. That's already happened. Now the agency wants to reduce business costs by relaxing mandatory reporting when toxic chemical emissions are released. This should not happen. Under new rules • Toxic emissions of more than 600 types of chemicals would not have to be reported if the spills were fewer than 5,000 pounds. The current limit is 500 pounds. That might not seem too bad until one considers that by the EPA's own reporting inventory — the latest available is for 2003 — some 4.44 billion pounds of toxic chemicals were released. That is more than a 6 percent reduction from 2002, but there were increases in emission levels for some of the most dangerous substances, including mercury, PCBs and dioxin. • The storage of such chemicals as mercury, DDT and PCBs, which migrate up the food chain, would not have to be reported at all if there were no emissions. So how would anyone — from local health agencies to the Department of Homeland Security — even know where some of the most toxic chemicals are stored unless there was a leak of more than 5,000 pounds? The storage of dioxins, chemicals known to cause cancer, would have to be reported, whether there were emissions or not. Well, thanks for nothing. • Reports would be made every other year, not every year, as now required. Current reporting standards were required under the 1986 community right-to-know law enacted by Congress. If Congress gives the EPA the approval it is seeking to change that, it will be the community right-to-know-every-other-year law. Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., is right in calling the proposals "a frontal assault" on environmental protection: "This proposal would deny communities up-to-date information about local toxic releases, reduce incentives to minimize the generation of toxic waste and undermine the ability of public health agencies and researchers to identify important trends." Kimberly Nelson, the EPA's assistant administrator for environmental information, told The Associated Press, "Every community will still have the same information about the types of toxic releases. They just won't have some of the details in terms of how that particular substance was managed or released." That's an improvement in environmental protection? No, that's reason enough for Congress to tell the EPA: no dice on this one. We particularly liked what Dow Chemical President Andrew Liveris had to say about the proposed change: "We are so in compliance (with current rules) it's not funny. We've adjusted to it many years ago." So it's not broken. The EPA should stop trying to fix it.
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