EPA recently announced plans to dismantle the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), our nation’s premier tool for notifying the public out about toxic pollution. The TRI annually provides communities with details about the amount of toxic chemicals released into the air, land, and water. The information enables groups and individuals to press companies to reduce their pollution, resulting in safer, healthier communities. But EPA is placing corporations ahead of community safety with enormous rollbacks in TRI reporting.
The EPA has proposed three changes, each of which would leave you in the dark about dangerous pollution in your community. The agency wants to:
• Cut this successful annual program in half by eliminating every other year of reporting;
• Allow companies to pollute ten times as much before being required to report the details about how much toxic pollution was produced and where it went;
• Permit facilities to hide information on low production of persistent bioacculuative toxins (PBTs), which are dangerous even small quantities because they are toxic, persist in the environment, and build up in people's bodies.
In a time when people are being exposed to industrial chemicals in the Gulf Coast, we should be arming ourselves with more information, not less. But instead, EPA is sacrificing this needed information in order to reduce paperwork on corporations and save $2 million a year. Our right to know is worth so much more than that.
Tell Congress to stop the EPA from moving forward with this assault on our right-to-know. Congress needs to know how much you care about this program.