EPA to reduce TRI reporting rules in two-step process

12 January 2005 21:23  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (CNI)--The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said Wednesday it is proposing revisions in its Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reporting requirements in order to ease the burden on industry.

 

In a statement today EPA said it is issuing the first of two proposed rule changes “intended to reduce the time and resources needed to submit annual reports to EPA’s TRI program.”

 

Those reductions in TRI reporting paperwork, said EPA, would be made “without compromising the usefulness of the information to the public” and would not “impact any protections for human health and the environment.”

 

Under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), some 23 000 chemical plants, power utilities and a wide variety of other industrial sites must submit annual TRI reports to EPA on whether and in what amounts they have released certain chemicals or other substances into the environment.

 

EPA said that if the first phase of proposed reporting rule changes is adopted, it would simplify some reporting actions, remove some data elements from TRI reporting forms and update the regulations to provide corrected contact information and definitions.

 

The agency said it “expects these proposed changes to improve TRI reporting efficiency and effectiveness as well as reduce the reporting burden.”

 

EPA is inviting public comment on the proposed reporting changes; the deadline for comments is 11 March.

 

A second revision to TRI reporting regulations will be proposed later this year, EPA said. That proposal, said EPA, “will examine the potential for more significant reporting modifications with greater potential impact on reducing reporting burden.”

 

Options to be considered in that second proposed TRI revision, said EPA, “include increasing reporting thresholds for small businesses or for classes of chemicals or facilities” and would introduce a reporting form checkbox for “no significant change” for chemical reports “that have not changed significantly relative to a baseline reporting year.”

 

The second-phase TRI reporting revisions are being put off until later this year, said EPA, because “the greater complexity and larger impacts potentially associated” with the phase-two revisions will require “additional analysis to more thoroughly characterize their impact on TRI reporters and data users.”

 

Complete information on the phase-one TRI reporting rule changes can be obtained on the EPA Web site at: http://epa.gov/tri/tridata/tier3/formsmodrule.html.

By: Joe Kamalick
+1 713 525 2653

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