United States Office of Pollution
Environmental Protection Prevention and Toxics
Agency (TS-779)
EPA700-R-92-007
June 1992
Proceedings
Toxic Release Inventory (TRI)
Data Use and Pollution
Prevention Conference
January 13th, 14th, and 15th, 1992
New Orleans, Louisiana
Sponsored by the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
in conjunction with the
Association of State and Territorial Health Officials
(ASTHO)
National Association of State Title III Program Officials
(NASTTPO)
Association of State and Territorial Solid Waste
Management Officials (ASTSWMO)
£70 Recycled/Recyclable
r\ <(\ Printed with Soy/Canola Ink on paper lha
YDC7 contains at least 50% recycled fiber
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Toxic Release Inventory (TRI)
Data Use and Pollution Prevention
Conference
Proceedings
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (TS-779)
Washington, D.C. 20460
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Disclaimer
Publication does not signify that the contents necessarily reflect the views and policies
of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or of any other organization represented
in these proceedings. Mention of trade names and commercial products does not
constitute endorsement of their use.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Agenda Steering Committee
Co-Chairpersons
George Bonina
Julie Winters Lynch
U.S. EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT)
Committee Members
Gerry Brown, OPPT; Mike Burns, OPPT; Jim Craig, OPPT; Eileen Fesco, OPPT; Ken
Geiser, L/MASS/LOWELL, Toxics Use Reduction Institute; Eileen Gibson, OPPT; Steve
Hanna, CA EPA', Al Innes, Waste Reduction Institute for Training and Applications
Research; Arnie Kuzmack, Office of Water; Fran Lynn, University of North Carolina;
Paul Drum, U.S. Public Interest Research Group; Casey Padgett, Environmental Action;
Dwight Peavey, Region I; Gerry Poje, Green Seal; Nikki Roy, Office of Solid Waste;
Sam Sasnett, OPPT; Doug Sellers, OPPT; Priscilla Seymour, Forum on State and
Territorial Toxics Actions, TX; Andrew Stoeckle, Abt Associates Inc.; Bob Styles,
WRFTAR; Dianne Thiel, Region VIII; Edward Weiler, OPPT; and Andrew Wheeler,
OPPT.
Special Thanks
Eileen Gibson, Conference Coordinator, OPPT
Daniel Reck, Environmental Policy Analyst, Abt Associates Inc.
EPA Track Coordinators
Track I: Jim Craig, OPPT
Track II: Eileen Fesco, OPPT
Track HI: Bridget Sullivan, Office of Compliance Monitoring
Track IV: Jan Erickson, OPPT
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i
INTRODUCTION v
CONFERENCE OVERVIEW 1
Goals and Objectives 1
Plenary Sessions 2
Track Sessions 3
Exhibits and Demonstrations 4
Training Sessions 5
KEYNOTE SPEECHES 7
Senator David Durenberger 7
Linda Fisher 14
Joel Lindsey 17
PLENARY PANELIST SPEECHES 27
Mark Greenwood 29
Debbie Sheiman 32
Art Gillen 36
Lee Tischler 40
Ted Smith 42
Jack Kartez 49
Eric Frumin 51
Mark Schleifstein 65
TRACK SESSIONS 69
TRACK I - USE OF TRI AND POLLUTION PREVENTION DATA 71
PANELIST PRESENTATION SUMMARIES 75
TRACK H - THE ROLE OF TRI IN STATE PROGRAMS 89
PANELIST PRESENTATION SUMMARIES 95
TRACK III - ENFORCEMENT AND MULTIMEDIA PERMITTING 113
PANELIST PRESENTATION SUMMARIES 119
TRACK IV - PROMOTING USE OF TRI DATA 139
PANELIST PRESENTATION SUMMARIES 143
ROSTER OF ATTENDEES 149
111
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
INTRODUCTION
The 1992 TRI Data Use and Pollution Prevention Conference was held on January 13-15,
1992, in New Orleans, Louisiana. The conference was sponsored by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency in conjunction with the Association of State and Territorial Health
Officials, the National Association of SARA Title III Program Officials, and the Association of
State and Territorial Solid Waste Management Officials.
The conference provided an invaluable opportunity for EPA to receive feedback on a
number of TRI issues from a wide variety of users. The Agency will be reviewing the
comments and suggestions prior to making any future TRI policy/program changes.
These proceedings contain: a conference overview which summarizes chronologically the
major events of the conference; text of the speeches presented by the keynote and plenary
speakers; an outline of each of the four track sessions followed by an outline of the panelists
remarks; and a list of the conference attendees including address and telephone numbers.
We hope that the proceedings will be a valuable reference.
The conference was particularly successful in bringing together the full spectrum of TRI
users. The broad range of perspectives and experiences of the panelists resulted in both
exciting and informative discussions regarding TRI applications, processing, packaging,
public availability, data linkage, federal and state responsibilities, enforcement issues, and the
future of TRI reporting.
We were pleased to see the enthusiasm that was evident throughout the conference. The
personal experiences exchanged throughout the conference were one of the keys to its
success. It is our hope that this conference was just the start of continuing exchanges that
will lead to more effective use of TRI data and more effective pollution prevention.
As a result of the hard work of our track leaders, coordinators, EPA staff, and panelists,
the four track sessions were a great success. Within each of the tracks, issues such as how
TRI is accessed, analyzed, and linked to other data sources were discussed. The tracks
encouraged the exchange of information through active participation from the audience. A
summary of the track sessions, along with summaries of panelists comments are provided in
these proceedings.
Mary EMen Weber Linda A. Travers
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
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TR1 DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
CONFERENCE OVERVIEW
This section presents an outline of the 1992 Toxics Release
Inventory (TRI) Data Use and Pollution Prevention Conference
which took place January 13 through 15/ 1992 in New Orleans,
Louisiana. This conference was the first time that such a broad
spectrum of TRI users attended the same event. Speakers and
panelists articulated specific advantages and successful applica-
tions of multimedia reporting as well as areas for improvement.
The conference was successful in meeting all of the U.S. EPA's
goals and objectives listed below:
Goals and Objectives:
Expand the network of TRI users
Exchange ideas about the diverse applications of TRI data
Provide a forum for discussing the future direction of the TRI
Foster links between TRI and pollution prevention programs
Develop a better understanding of pollution prevention data
and how the new TRI data will be used
Develop a better understanding of how TRI data is being used
in toxic use reduction laws, facility planning, and permitting
Develop suggestions for how TRI data can be made more
accessible, i.e. new products, outreach efforts, and linkage to
other data sources
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Plenary Sessions
The goals for the plenary sessions were to fairly represent all
sectors, private and public, and to provide a forum for discussing
important issues surrounding TRI and pollution prevention data.
The plenary session speakers, keynote and panelist, represented a
wide variety of TRI and pollution prevention data users. A sum-
mary of their remarks are provided on pages 7-68 of the proceed-
ings.
Keynote Speakers
The Honorable Senator Durenberger
of Minnesota
Sponsor, Emergency Planning and
Community Right-to-Know Act
Linda Fisher
Assistant Administrator, U.S. EPA,
Office of Prevention, Pesticides and
Toxic Substances
Joel Lindsey
Former Deputy Secretary, Louisiana
Department of Environmental
Quality
Plenary Session Panelists
Mark Greenwood
U.S. EPA, Director, Office of
Pollution Prevention and Toxics
Deborah Sheiman
Natural Resources Defense Council
ArtGillen
Director, Environmental Affairs,
BASF Corporation
Lee Tischler
Executive Director Minnesota
Emergency Response Commission
Ted Smith
Executive Director, Silicon Valley
Toxics Coalition
Jack Kartez
Senior Fellow, Hazard Reduction
and Recovery Center, Texas A&M
University
Eric Frumin
Director, Occupational Safety and
Health, Amalgamated Clothing and
Textile Worker's Union
Mark Schleifsteirt
Reporter, New Orleans Times-
Picayune Newspaper
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TR1 DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Track Sessions
The goals for the track sessions were to foster the exchange of
information through audience participation, and provide a forum
for EPA to gather information about TRI data use. All of the tracks
were designed to encourage active participation from the audience.
Attendees were able to participate in two one-half day track ses-
sions:
Track I: Use of the New TRI Pollution Prevention Data
Track II: The Role of TRI in the State Programs
Track III: Enforcement and Multimedia Permitting
Track IV: Promoting Use of TRI Data
Each of the tracks discussed the following issues in the context
of their specific area:
How TRI is accessed
How TRI is analyzed
How TRI is linked to other data sources
What changes have resulted from the availability of TRI data
Suggestions for improving the value and use of TRI data
A summary of the track sessions are provided on pages 69-142.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Exhibits and Demonstrations
A reception for the conference participants after the track
sessions for the conference participants was augmented with
exhibits of TRI capabilities and demonstrations of computer soft-
ware packages that access and manipulate TRI data. Exhibits were
displayed by a large number of participants and illustrated the
diversity of enterprises for which TRI is employed.
The 14 demonstrations illustrated custom computer software
designed specifically to help users access TRI data, manipulate,
and display findings, or link TRI data to other databases. Below
are the 14 demonstrations.
National Library of Medicine (NLM) -
TOXNET
Lisa Fleming, U.S. EPA
TRI Access - CDROM
Jan Erickson & Lisa Capazolli,
U.S. EPA
OPPT Software TRIFACTS &
VOYAGER
Eileen Gibson, U.S. EPA
RTK-Net (Right-to-Know Network)
John Chelen, Unison Institute
CAMEO (Computer Aided Manage-
ment of Emergency Operations)
Melanie Hoff, U.S. EPA
Intelligent Advisor
Intelligent Advisors, Inc.
PIES (Pollution Prevention Information
Clearing House)
Jocelyn Woodman, U.S. EPA
Expert Systems -
Karl Birns, KS Department of Health
and Environment
EPCRA Targeting System -
David Meredith, U.S. EPA
TRI Geographies Risk Analysis System
Vicki Hale & Jacki Ferguson, U.S.
EPA, Region VII
Graphical Exposure Modeling System
Loren Hall & Sondra Hollister, U.S.
EPA
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Training Sessions
Training sessions were offered to state officials who work with
TRI and Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know pro-
grams. Trainees were able to participate in two of the following
five training programs.
National Library of Medicine's
TOXNET - Lisa Fleming, U.S. EPA
An overview of TOXNET, including TRI
database search menus, command lan-
guages/ print options, and sorting and selec-
tion.
Risk Communication - Eileen Fesco and
Dorothy McManus, U.S. EPA
An overview of risk communication, in-
cluding goals and objectives, rules of risk
communication, technical issues, media
relations, maintaining public trust and credi-
bility.
Risk Screening - Loren Hall and Sandra
Hofflster, U.S. EPA
An overview of risk screening, including
basic philosophy and approach, use of TRI
data, and information and analytical tools
needed. Case studies and hands-on training
with PC-GEMS, ROADMAPS, and IRIS.
Train the Trainer for Form R -
Robert Costa, ICF, Inc.
Focused on the new pollution prevention
reporting under Section 313 of EPCRA.
EPA Tools for TRI and Related Data -
Three software tools commonly used by
EPA staff.
EPCRA Targeting System
David Meredith, U.S. EPA
CAMEO (Computer Aided
Management of Emergency
Operations)
Melanie Hoff, U.S. EPA
PIES (Pollution Prevention
Information Clearing House)
Jocelyn Woodman, U.S. EPA
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
KEYNOTE SPEECHES
Senator David Durenberger of Minnesota
Sponsor, Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act
Linda Fisher
Assistant Administrator, U.S. EPA, Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances
Joel Lindsey
Former Deputy Secretary, Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality
Senator David Durenberger
Senator David Durenberger is one of the co-authors
of the legislation that brings us together. Senator
Durenberger was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1978,
he is a leader in the areas of environment and health
care policy. Senator Durenberger has authored
legislation dealing with toxic substances, with leaking
underground storage tanks, acid rain, groundwater
protection, and, of course, major sections of the Clean
Water and Air Acts. He serves as the ranking
minority member on the subcommittee of Hazard
Wastes and Toxic Substances, and in the 101st Con-
gress he is one of the chief authors of creating a
cabinet level department for environmental protection.
Senator Durenberger has been honored by the Solar
Energy Industries Assoc., the Sierra Club, the
Renewable Fuels Association, and the National Recre-
ation and Parks Association.
I want to spend most of my allotted time
with you this afternoon talking about the
future of the Toxics Release Inventory and
pollution prevention. Bills have been intro-
duced in the Congress offering a "Right-to-
Know More" and moving the government's
role in pollution prevention another step for-
ward. My assignment today is to describe
the Congressional debate on those issues for
you. So, I will focus on the future.
But before I do that, I want to spend a
few moments on the brief history of section
313 of SARA and the Toxics Release Inven-
tory. It has worked well, frankly, better
than some of us expected when it was enact-
ed as an amendment to the Superfund law
in 1986.
I am the ranking Republican member of
Ate Senate Superfund Subcommittee which
has jurisdiction over the Emergency Plan-
ning and Community Right-to-Know law.
That subcommittee has held three oversight
hearings on section 313, one in 1988, one in
1989 and one in 1991. So, we have watched
implementation of the program closely.
And we have been pleased with what we
have seen. EPA and the States have done a
good job managing the data. There has not
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
been an inordinate amount of complaining
about the paperwork burden in the business
community. The press and the public inter-
est groups have made good use of the data,
analyzing the risks and impacts of toxic
releases on their communities. Many facility
managers and CEOs have responded to their
own reported releases by reducing emissions
and reducing risks.
I experienced the power of the TRI data
in a very personal way. I was the Senate
author of the air toxics amendments to the
1990 Clean Air Act. I first introduced my
air toxics bill in 1987. It was strongly op-
posed by the industrial community and
many times in 1987 and 1988 it appeared to
me that air toxics would be dropped from
the Clean Air Act agenda.
But in early 1989, the first TRI report was
released by EPA. It showed 2.7 billion
pounds of toxic air emissions across the
country. This was far more than anyone
had expected and it galvanized public opin-
ion for a change in the law.
By mid-1989, the Chemical Manufac-
turers Association was before our Commit-
tee testifying that further control of toxic air
pollution was necessary and that best tech-
nology standards would receive their sup-
port. In light of the TRI data, it was the
only responsible position that they could
have taken. And air toxics became a solid
part of the Clean Air Act Amendments.
Not only has TRI caused some individual
facilities to make commitments for pollution
prevention, it has also undergirded govern-
mental efforts to impose new controls on
those releases.
As pleased as we have been with the
implementation of section 313, there are
weaknesses to be mentioned. One of com-
pliance. Something like 25% of the facilities
that should be reporting toxics releases are
not doing so. That is a very high non-com-
pliance rate. It needs to be corrected. EPA
needs to be more aggressive on the enforce-
ment front. Part of the problem is the en-
forcement authority granted to EPA in title
III. Their entry and inspection authorities
need to be enhanced. But more compliance
resources need to be committed, as well.
Second, we cannot let our enthusiasm for
the anecdotal pollution prevention pledges
cloud our understanding of the real trends
in the data. Although many have promised
to reduce their emissions in the future, it is
not true that there has been a significant
reduction in toxic releases as a result of TRI.
Total reported emissions are trending
downward, but that appears to be as much
a function of refinements in measurement
and reporting as to actual changes in opera-
tions that reduce releases. The pressure of
reporting to the community under TRI is not
yet a substitute for best technology regula-
tions at the end-of-the-pipe to protect public
health and the environment.
And finally, TRI covers only a small
portion of the universe of toxic emissions,
between 5% and 20%, depending on the
way you count. There are many more
facilities and activities, than those currently
reporting, emitting the listed chemicals.
And there are scores of other substances that
might appropriately be listed.
So, let us expand on the Toxics Release
Inventory. That is the future and the objec-
tive of the "Right-to-Know More" bills that
have been introduced in Congress.
There are two "Right-to-Know More"
bills now pending. I joined with Senator
Lautenberg to introduce S.2123 just as the
Congress adjourned in November. We
circulated a draft of that bill in June of 1991
and then held hearings on the draft Many
of you may have seen that draft and we are
very grateful to those of you who took the
time to share your comments with us. The
introduced bill is only slightly different from
the draft that was circulated.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Actually, I urged Senator Lautenberg to
make more dramatic alterations. The hear-
ing and other comments suggested to me
that this bill might overload the TRI system
without commensurate gains in public
understanding. In a few moments I will
share with you my specific concerns about
Senator Lautenberg's Right-to-Know-More
bill and alternatives that I will be urging the
Senate to adopt.
Congressman Sikorski introduced a
companion bill on the House side. It is H.R.
2880 for those of you taking notes. His bill
has two parts. One part is a Right-to-Know
More title which is virtually identical to the
draft that Senator Lautenberg and I had
circulated. The second title of Congressman
Sikorski's bill is devoted to pollution pre-
vention issues.
There are three basic ways to expand the
Toxics Release Inventory to provide a
"Right-to-Know More." We can add more
chemicals to the list. We can require more
facilities to report. And we can require
additional information on the use or release
of each chemical from each facility. The
Lautenberg and Sikorski bills make dramatic
expansions to TRI in each of these areas.
Before discussing the specifics of the
legislation, let me outline four considerations
that ought to be weighed in the balance, as
we think about ways to expand TRI.
The first consideration is the burden on
EPA and the States and the size of the data-
base we are creating. TRI can be looked at
as a collection of discrete pieces of informa-
tion that must be carefully and reliably
managed and manipulated to produce any
useful public understanding. The size of
that database is dependent on the number of
chemicals listed, the number of facilities
reporting and the information that must be
reported on each chemical.
Under current reporting requirements,
EPA is managing about 5 million data ele-
ments. The reporting amendments that
were made by the Congress as part of the
Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 will in-
crease the database to 8 or 9 million data
points in 1993. That is 9 million. By way of
comparison, EPA has estimated that the
Lautenberg and Sikorski bills would bring in
well over 100 million pieces of information
each year.
There is a limit to how fast and how far
the database can be expanded. Not only
must the data be recorded and stored reli-
ably, but producing true understanding
requires that the data be folded and sorted
and crunched, as they used to say, in a
variety of ways. A database of 100 or 150
million pieces is not so easily manipulated.
We do not want a Toxics Release Inven-
tory so big that EPA and States take years to
produce summary reports. We do not want
to delay the publication of the information
or its reliability in a quest to get every last
scrap of information on toxic releases. There
is a point of diminishing returns.
A second consideration is the burden on
facilities that must report. That is not a
serious problem under current requirements.
There have not been serious complaints
from industry to the Congress about the TRI
paperwork burden.
But it could become an issue in the
future. The Lautenberg and Sikorski bills
require new reports on chemical uses and
throughputs at the production unit level.
For facilities with tens or hundreds of pro-
duction units within a single fenceline, unit-
by-unit data may become a significant bur-
den.
A third issue is the burden on those
facilities that are covered by TRI because
they are in a listed SIC code, but which do
not have to report because they do not make
or use the chemical in more than the thresh-
old amounts. Even if they do not ultimately
file a report, managers at these facilities may
nevertheless be required to invest consider-
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
able effort to determine that Right-to-Know
does not apply to them.
By listing all SIC codes including all the
commercial and service enterprises in the
country, the Lautenberg and Sikorski bills
raise the specter of a "non-reporters'" bur-
den.
A final consideration is on the benefit,
not the burden, side. The world seems to
have a "90-10," or maybe it is an "80-20," rule
for toxic risks. 90% of the problem is at 10%
of the facilities. You can get to most of the
human health and environmental problems
by working with a small percentage of the
potentially regulated universe.
The costs you pay to get at the last 10%
of the risk can be staggering and are often
not justified by the incremental gain in
public benefits that is realized. I firmly
believe that this rule applies to the Toxics
Release Inventory. We can probably capture
90% or 95% or even 99% of the risk by
requiring 40,000 facilities to report on 500
substances. To require 225,000 facilities to
report on 1000 chemicals, as the Lautenberg
and Sikorski bills would do, likely provides
very little additional public health benefit.
So, let us get to the specifics of these
bills. And some alternatives.
The "Right-to-Know More" bills would
add 600 chemicals to the more than 300
already on the list. They do not list individ-
ual chemicals, but rather cross reference
other lists in environmental statutes - the
priority pollutants under the Clean Water
Act, section 112 air toxics, the regulated
drinking water contaminants, restricted use
pesticides, chemicals subject to California's
Prop 65, and so on.
I think a smaller list and one more care-
fully constructed would be better. I would
prefer that EPA prepare the list based on an
expert screening of health effects informa-
tion that is now available. A list of possible
additions totaling about 250 substances
would be appropriate in my view. These
might be grouped into high priority sub-
stances that should be added immediately
and other substances to be added later when
the database can reliably be expanded to
include them.
When she testified before our Subcom-
mittee last summer, Linda Fisher promised
us an EPA list of this kind. I hope she will
renew that commitment here today. And I
would like to see the list before the Right-to-
Know More law is enacted rather than as a
rule-making after the fact.
There are other challenges that should be
explored here. What about listing the green-
house gases? Carbon dioxide, methane, and
nitrous oxide. If TRI is to be the foundation
for pollution prevention, would not it be
good to get the pollution prevention ham-
mer applied to greenhouse emissions?
No doubt, industry will say that this is
the Toxics Release Inventory, not to be
expanded into a catchall inventory of envi-
ronmental pollutants. And the numbers for
greenhouse gases are huge. They would
overwhelm the toxics. Perhaps a separate
inventory is a better approach. But report-
ing on greenhouse emissions is worth con-
sidering as we look to the future of TRI.
I think we should also give some atten-
tion to waste streams as we consider adding
to the list of chemicals. Casting the invento-
ry as environmental releases of constituent
chemicals has some advantages, but it is not
that informative when it comes to selecting
appropriate pollution prevention options.
Changes at a chemical plant are not orga-
nized according to the chemical constituents
of the waste streams. Changes are made to
process units. If the government is ever to
play a role in directing pollution prevention
efforts at the laggards in an industry, it is
going to have to think in terms of wastes
from process units, not an abstract list of
chemicals.
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TR1 DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Perhaps we should add 10 or 20 RCRA
hazardous waste streams to the TRI list of
chemicals. We could pick wastes where cost
effective pollution prevention options are
available now, so that we can readily track
industry progress in implementing those
measures.
Now, let us move to facilities. There are
various factors that determine whether a
facility is covered by TRI. Currently it has
to be in an SIC code between 20 and 39, the
manufacturing sector of the economy. It has
to have more than 10 employees. It has to
manufacture or import more than 25,000
pounds or use more than 10,000 pounds of
a listed chemical each year. Based on these
thresholds, 22,569 facilities filed reports for
1989. The General Accounting Office has
determined that perhaps 29,000 should have
reported.
The Lautenberg and Sikorski bills make
two important changes to the coverage
parameters. First, the program is expanded
to facilities in every SIC code. Every law
firm, grade school, grocery store, beauty
parlor, mortuary and government agency in
the country will be covered. If it has 10
employees, it must look for chemical uses.
EPA estimates that some 225,000 facilities
might be covered by TRI under the "Right-
to-Know more" bills. But thousands more
would experience the burden of the non-
reporter...being covered and having to
search the incoming shipments for TRI
chemicals, even if they are not there in th-
reshold amounts.
Again, I would prefer a much more
targeted approach. We ought to pick specif-
ic 2-, 3- and 4-digit SIC codes where use,
releases and risks are likely to be high.
Several states have already done studies to
help us identify these industries.
Based on those studies we might list the
SIC codes for mining, oil and gas produc-
tion, transportation services, drum recondi-
tioning, petroleum handling, paint supply
and wholesaling, gasoline service stations,
dry cleaners, laundries, exterminating servic-
es, photo-finishing, solvent recovery, hospi-
tals, research facilities and all the facilities
owned by the federal government. That is
a sample. But the point is to select specific
industries where we expect releases and
risks to be comparable to those facilities now
reporting.
In addition to listing specific SIC codes
now, we might ask EPA to do a thorough
screening of the remaining four digit codes
and submit a report within a couple of
years, taking action to list those industries
with a preponderance of facilities that have
high use or emissions.
The "Right-to-Know More" bills also
expand coverage in another way. Today the
threshold for reporting is based on the
manufacture or use of a listed substance.
The Lautenberg and Sikorski bills also add
a release threshold of 100 pounds per year
for metals and 2000 pounds per year for
other listed substances.
This new criteria, the release threshold,
would pick up the incinerators and power-
plants that do not "use" or "manufacture" a
listed substance, but nevertheless have
substantial emissions and present substantial
risks. This is a needed addition, but we
might give EPA some flexibility to select
alternative numerical limits.
The third way to expand the Toxics
Release Inventory is to require more infor-
mation from each facility. Since 1987, we
have collected data on annual releases.
Beginning in 1991, we will be getting new
information on pollution prevention. The
"Right-to-Know More" bills would make two
significant additions, several pieces of mate-
rials accounting or mass-balance data would
be required, and facilities would also have
to report on their peak releases, the highest
release in any hourly period.
The so-called mass-balance reporting
requirement was one of the most hotly
contested issues in the 1986 debate. Indus-
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
try resisted the Community Right-to-Know
law because it feared that divulging mass-
balance information might compromise trade
secrets. Rather than require industry to
report mass-balance data, the Congress
asked for a report from the National Acade-
my of Sciences on the mass-balance issue.
It is a very helpful report. Those of you
who have read it know that it makes a
distinction between mass-balance calcula-
tions from a chemical engineering perspec-
tive and what the NAS chose to call "materi-
als accounting" or throughput data. The
report indicates that there is some utility in
looking at throughput data for facilities
handling large volumes of toxic substances.
The report also suggests that the trade
secret problem can be mitigated, if the data
is reported on a per product basis. The
most sensitive trade secret information is
market position, which might be revealed by
reporting the total quantities of a chemical
that flow through a plant. By stating the
ratio of inputs and outputs per unit of prod-
uct hides market position, while still allow-
ing some understanding of efficiencies at the
facility and the effectiveness of its pollution
prevention efforts.
Using materials accounting on a per
product basis solves some of the problems
raised in the old mass-balance debate. But
I also think industry will be more willing to
accept this requirement today for another
reason. At the same time that we expand
TRI, we will also be establishing new pollu-
tion prevention responsibilities for each
facility.
There are a variety of pollution preven-
tion options before the Congress. We could
require each facility to prepare pollution
prevention plans. We could require each
facility to submit to an outside pollution
prevention audit and implement the find-
ings. We could set industry-wide pollution
prevention goals or standards. We could
phase out particular chemicals or uses like
we have with CFCs. We could tax chemical
production, uses or releases, a step also
applied to CFCs with stunning pollution
prevention results.
Of all those options, industry prefers the
voluntary, facility-by-facility planning pro-
cess for obvious reasons. And Congress is
inclined to go in that direction, I believe.
Each facility subject to TRI will be required
to prepare a pollution prevention plan. The
goals of the plan will be voluntarily set by
the facility, but must be publicly announced.
Specific methods and measures and timeta-
bles will be reported to the States. Annual
updates on progress will also be required.
This approach might be called "pledge
and review." Each facility will make a
voluntary pollution prevention pledge to its
home community. And over a five-year
period the facility will have to update the
community on its progress.
If this kind of "pledge and review" ap-
proach to pollution prevention is going to
work, the community needs to have a fair
chance to determine whether the voluntary
goal set by the facility is reasonable. That
determination can only be made, if materials
accounting, input and output, information is
available.
If industry says no to materials account-
ing reports in 1992 as it did to mass-balance
reported in 1986, then Congress cannot rely
on voluntary plans as the foundation for
pollution prevention. We would have to
look, instead, at industry-wide standards or
taxes or audits. Public availability of materi-
als accounting data is a necessary founda-
tion for a "pledge and review" approach to
pollution prevention. They go hand-in-hand.
That is the bottom line.
There is another issue here. For large
integrated facilities materials accounting
information only promotes understanding
when it is organized on the basis of produc-
tion or process units. Throughput data for
the whole facility will not tell you much, if
pollution prevention is your objective.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
But these big facilities can have literally
hundreds of production units. We could
quickly face the massive database problem
that hangs over the whole "Right-to-Know
More" effort. The Sikorski bill requires
materials accounting data on all production
or process units. The Lautenberg bill autho-
rizes EPA to target particular production
units in each industry as is done in the State
of New Jersey. Each of these options has its
problems.
My suggestion is that we rely on the old
"90-10" rule, that we require materials ac-
counting for the production units that pro-
duce 90% of the TRI by-products at each
plant. That is probably 10% of the units and
the database is kept to manageable propor-
tions. I would suggest that the same rule
apply to the pollution prevention plans.
They should be developed for the produc-
tion units accounting for 90% of the by-
products produced at the facility. The 90%
yardstick should be applied according to the
quantity of by-products, the waste stream,
from each unit, because it is by-products
that we are trying to reduce.
On the issue of peak release reports,
there will be a significant dispute. Again,
the Lautenberg and Sikorski bills require
facilities to report their maximum hourly
release of each listed chemical in addition to
the annual quantities. The theory here is
apparently one of acute toxicity rather than
chronic exposures reflected in the annual
data now reported. I agree that the public
has a right to know whether it is being ex-
posed to acute hazards.
But industry rightfully points out that it
is already forced to make reports under
other laws including Superfund and the
Emergency Planning portion of Title in,
when it releases a chemical that presents an
immediate threat to health. The new report-
ing requirement may only duplicate those
reports. One resolution to the problem may
be public summaries of those other reports
organized in the same way, by industry,
community and chemical, as the Toxics
Release Inventory (TRI).
There are other issues to be considered
when expanding section 313. How should
the new requirements be phased in? Could
we improve EPA's enforcement authority?
Should there be grants to the states to en-
courage their assistance in compliance ef-
forts? We will be sorting through each of
these issues in the next few weeks, but time
does not permit more than a mention of
these items today. Let me conclude my
comments this afternoon with a few more
general thoughts on pollution prevention.
The highest legislative priority for the
Senate Environment Committee in this
session of the Congress is the reauthoriz-
ation of the Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act, RCRA as it is called. There
are three big issues in the RCRA reauthori-
zation debate. First, recycling solid waste,
mostly the products and packages that make
up municipal trash. Second, the interstate
shipment of waste and what to do about the
strong desire of states for authority to ban or
regulate waste imports. And third, pollu-
tion prevention at industrial facilities.
The Toxic Release Inventory will be the
foundation of the pollution prevention
legislation. Facilities subject to TRI will be
subject to the pollution prevention require-
ments in our RCRA reauthorization bill. As
I have already indicated, it is likely that we
will require each TRI facility to prepare a
pollution prevention plan for each listed
chemical. That is no great innovation. We
are simply following the lead of many far-
sighted states in this field.
The reduction target for each plan will be
up to the facility. We recognize that facili-
ties have already made varying levels of
effort and nationwide goals would not be
fair to those who made an early start.
We also understand that we will not get
good, aggressive plans if we apply penalties
to those who fail to meet their own goals.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Everybody would shoot low, if a penalty
was attached to failure in a "pledge and
review" system.
The most difficult issue that we are
grappling with right now is the proper
meaning of the term pollution prevention.
What should these facilities be planning to
do?
For many years, the Senate Environment
Committee has shared the vision reflected in
the waste management hierarchy. Avoid
producing a waste at the source, if you can.
Recycle wastes that are produced, neverthe-
less. Treat the wastes that cannot be recy-
cled to reduce volume and toxicity. Safely
dispose of the residue. What part of that
hierarchy qualifies as true pollution preven-
tion?
The Pollution Prevention Act passed by
Congress in 1990 puts the emphasis on
source reduction, measures like good house-
keeping, process changes and product refor-
mulations that avoid the production of
wastes altogether.
In recent months, a new tier for the
hierarchy has caught the public's imagi-
nation. It is toxic use reduction. Not only
should you avoid making a waste, you
should also avoid using toxic substances
whenever possible. In addition to the pollu-
tion prevention advantages, toxics use re-
duction can also reduce risks to workers,
consumers and communities that can be
affected by catastrophic spills of chemicals in
commerce To me there is a great deal of
appeal in a management hierarchy that
starts with toxics use reduction as the first
priority.
But I aaspetit at as not quite so appealing
to a aannpan) wfoose products are industrial
chemacafe festetfl aaaader section 313. They do
st a pftaaa Sfoat reduces their mar-
as aaa aaiapitigated public
In fact, many in industry see recycling
and even treatment as equally appropriate
pollution prevention endeavors in some
circumstances. So, we will have a debate on
the definition of pollution prevention.
I will predict that "pollution prevention"
will have a new and mixed definition when
it finally emerges as public law, perhaps yet
this year. Pollution prevention will include
toxic use reduction, source reduction, and
in-process recycling. Pollution prevention
plans may include elements of all three, but
we will be looking for ways to move each
and every facility up the hierarchy to reduce
risks to workers, consumers, communities
and the environment.
Your help and suggestions along these
lines and on any of the other issues is al-
ways very much appreciated. I thank you
for the honor and opportunity you have
given me as your guest today.
Linda Fisher
Ms. fisher is the Assistant Administrator for
Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances at EPA.
Prior to becoming the Assistant Administrator for
OPPTS, Linda was the Assistant Administrator for
Policy Planning and Evaluation where she had the
primary responsibility for developing EPA's position
on global climate change, and for establishing the
office of pollution prevention. Ms. Fisher first joined
EPA in 1983, as Special Assistant to the Assistant
Administrator. for Solid Waste and Emergency
Response. Between 1985 and 1988, Ms. Fisher served
as the Chief of Staff for Administrator Lee Thomas,
and she was the principal policy liaison between
Congress and the White House, especially during the
rewriting of the Superfund Law in 1986. Ms. Fisher
received her B.A. degree from Miami University of
Ohio, her MB A from George Washington University,
and her juris Doctorate from Ohio State University
College of Law.
I appreciate the opportunity to address
this conference about an issue that is of
great importance to the public, to industry,
to government at all levels national, state,
and local and, increasingly, the interna-
tional community as well that of TRI data
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
and pollution prevention. TRI has been an
invaluable tool for the incorporation of a
pollution prevention philosophy in industry
and in government.
The passage of the Emergency Planning
and Community Right-to-Know Act by Con-
gress in 1986 directly involved the public in
environmental issues in a way in which they
never had been involved before. It did this
by requiring industry to tell the public
exactly what it was emitting into their com-
munity, hi so doing, it became the most
powerful environmental tool available.
Thousands of corporations began immedi-
ately to rethink their business with an eye
toward environmental stewardship.
This law forced industry to change their
approach from focusing solely on compli-
ance with existing laws to one of concern
over what their facilities were doing to the
environment, to the communities they live
and work in, and to their children. It was
not the government or regulation they
feared, it was their family and friends. In
addition/ their reputation as good corporate
citizens was on the line. TRI called public
attention to industrial emissions within their
own hometown.
As we in government watched in amaze-
ment, corporate executives and plant manag-
ers pledged continuous improvement to
achieve remarkable environmental goals
goals that if we had mandated through
regulations, they would have sued to stop
us!
Industry has been given an incentive to
reduce/ and they reacted accordingly. Un-
like the Dow Jones Index, TRI was one of
the few lists on which no company wanted
to be considered an industrial leader. Our
role at EPA in this process was as significant
as it was simple merely to put informa-
tion in the hands of the public in a way in
which they could understand and use it.
By using EPCRA for pollution preven-
tion, industry can be in the driver's seat in
figuring out how best and most cost-
effectively to protect the environment.
The pollution prevention philosophy re-
quires companies to put environmental
protection issues at the front end of corpo-
rate management and government practices,
rather than at the back end by continuing to
rely upon costly end-of-pipe solutions.
As a result of the resounding success of
EPCRA and TRI, EPA changed our own
philosophy and methods in attempting to
achieve our pollution prevention goals. We
are training our managers and staff in total
quality management so we can keep our
energy focused on environmental results.
We are targeting major regulations, especial-
ly under the new Clean Air Act, to be sure
prevention opportunities are built into them,
when feasible, to achieve our legal man-
dates.
The Agency has made a great deal of
progress in a number of areas using the TRI
database. All of the offices, from air to
water to solid waste, have used TRI to
improve the quality of their programs. For
OPPTS, TRI gives us the ability to measure
the success of one of our most ambitious
programs 33/50.
The progress has been substantial, but
questions have arisen. How can the Agency
be more successful in using TRI? Can EPA
use TRI more effectively? Should the inven-
tory be expanded to more reporters, more
chemicals, or more information? hi essence,
all of these questions boil down to, "Where
are we today, and where are we going?"
In short, my answer is that we have
indeed made a good start, and we are on
the right path, but more can be done.
Currently, we are focused on implement-
ing the new reporting requirements mand-
ated under the Pollution Prevention Act of
1990. These new requirements will affect all
facilities required to submit Form R under
section 313 of EPCRA.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
The new data is now required, beginning
with calendar year 1991. The data for this
first year must be submitted to the Agency
and the states by July 1 of this year. There-
fore, facilities reporting under 313 have had
to consider how they will collect this new
data.
The Pollution Prevention Acf s changes
to the Toxics Release Inventory requires
additional generation of in-plant data in a
number of key areas. These data require-
ments include information regarding the
quantities of chemicals entering waste
streams, source reduction activities to reduce
those quantities, quantities of chemicals that
are recycled, quantities of chemicals that are
released due to one-time or catastrophic
events, and a production index. These new
requirements, in conjunction with other
actions by the EPA, are helping to institu-
tionalize the pollution prevention concept.
In short, with the Pollution Prevention
Act supplements, the Agency's database will
be much more complete. We will also have
a much clearer idea of the extent to which
industry is practicing pollution prevention.
Soon, we will be able to see the reasons
behind the reductions, and better define the
term success.
EPA will provide reporting facilities with
the revised Form R well in advance of the
1992 reporting deadline of July 1. Our plans
call for publishing the final rule outlining
the revisions subsequent to issuance of the
revised Form R and instructions. As part of
the instructions, we are preparing guidance
to help facilities develop estimates for these
new data elements. Some of the information
necessary for this new reporting may al-
ready be part of the data developed for the
release, off-site transfer, and on-site treat-
ment sections of the current Form R. Some
of the data elements may require materials
accounting and engineering calculations/ a
review of records of accidents, invoices for
recycling services, and sales and production
figures combined with market and company
growth projections.
As you are all well aware, EPA is quite
serious in its interest in expanding the TRI
List A chemicals. EPA is screening 650
chemicals for possible addition to EPCRA
313. These include CWA priority pollutants,
RCRA chemicals, EPCRA Section 302 chemi-
cals, CERCLA chemicals, carcinogens, and
California reproduction and developmental
toxins. A third group consisting of all active
ingredient pesticides will be screened in the
near future.
In addition, EPA is interested in expand-
ing the list of industries covered under TRI.
Currently, only manufacturing facilities
operating in SIC codes 20-39 report under
TRI. Such facilities must also have at least
ten employees and meet the reporting thres-
holds of manufacturing, importing, or pro-
cessing 25,000 pounds/year or otherwise
using 10,000 pounds/year.
Adding new facilities to TRI could in-
crease reporting on the total volume of
chemicals released, increase the information
available to the Agency on the use or release
of most toxic chemicals, or the number of
facilities that use reportable chemicals. This
additional reporting could assist in identify-
ing more sources of potential exposure,
implementing other regulatory initiatives,
and furthering the promotion of pollution
prevention.
As EPA or the Congress contemplates
any expansion of the TRI list it is important
to keep in mind the goals of the program
putting valuable information in the hands of
the public in a manner in which they can
use it. Data usefulness, data quality, pro-
cessing capability, and accuracy are critical
to keeping this inventory valuable.
For the 1990 forms, we have managed
slightly over five million data elements. For
the 1991 forms, which include the Pollution
Prevention Act data elements/ we anticipate
receiving in excess of eight million data ele-
ments. With the capacity increases EPA will
be putting into place in the next two years,
we estimate that we will be able to achieve
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
a total capacity in the range of fourteen
million data elements. The total number of
data elements that may be required by some
legislative proposals exceeds 400 million.
Given the current database system and
resource constraints, we will need to set
some priorities as we undertake expansion.
TRI is increasingly becoming of major
interest in the international arena. EPA
sponsored a successful TRI workshop in
Vienna this past November, which was
attended by representatives of governments,
industry, and environmental groups from 20
countries.
Participants were able to examine our
system and determine for themselves what
would work best for their particular circum-
stances. By working with countries at the
inception of their systems, the U.S. stands a
better chance of ensuring the harmonization
of newly developed systems. I expect TRI to
be discussed at UNCED '92 and we are
exploring UN vehicles for the international-
ization of TRI.
In 1986, with the passage of the Emer-
gency Planning and Community Right-to-
Know Act, the Congress set in motion a
force that has begun to change the way we
in government, those in industry, and the
general public approach the environment.
The implications of the change has not been
fully realized. As we move over the next
several years to expand TRI, we need to
keep our goals clear to encourage greater
pollution prevention, to inform and involve
the public in a responsible way and to
encourage, and provide the necessary incen-
tives to, industry to deal with environmental
concerns in a timely, cost-effective way. I
want to emphasize that every one of you is
important in realizing the goals of TRI and
pollution prevention.
Joel Lindsey
Mr. Lindsey is the former Deputy Secretary of the
Louisiana Dept. of Environmental Quality. Mr.
Lindsey has worked with heal governments and has
organized systems advisory groups to assist the Dept.
of Environmental Quality in drafting rules and
examining the long-range policies. In addition to
initiating the departments recycling program, he also
directed preparation of environmental legislation,
supervised coordination and the technical review of
legislation, and has been in charge of a $33 million
grant program that has been giving grants to 55
parishes and town municipalities. These grants are
for initiating programs and toxic waste inventory
analysis, annual report preparation, and toxics use
reduction. Mr. Lindsey has also initiated a multi-
media permit review program to achieve toxics use
reduction and toxic waste reduction, and to cut red
tape.
The remarks I would like to share with
you are some of my experiences we have
had in Louisiana over the past four years,
working with SARA Title III and the TRI
data. How we have used it, some of the
successes we have had, what we think are
some of the future uses of the data, and
some of the limitations we see in the data
and what we can do about them. And I
have got a short slide show to emphasize
some of these points. I guess the major
thing that I would like to share with you is
the power of this information. Linda Fisher
talked about the power of the data. I have
experienced that here in Louisiana over the
past 3 years, as we have compiled our infor-
mation and provided it to the public and to
the press. One company, American Cyana-
mid, one of our largest emitters of TRI
chemicals in Louisiana, made a commit-
ment to reduce toxic releases in their recent
newsletter. The president of the company
has made a commitment to reduce their
toxic chemicals injected into the ground by
75%. We are not looking at transferring the
chemicals to another medium, we are look-
ing at process change and a major commit-
ment. We are very proud to have worked
with the company in coming up with this
proposal, and we think it is a step in the
right direction. This company is just one of
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
the company's that we have worked with,
and this particular newsletter/article is the
company president telling the folks in his
organization that they should be paying
attention to pollution prevention.
We used the information generated at
the national level to help us compare state-
to-state, and to help address the issues here
in Louisiana. We have also compiled our
own database on a three year running basis,
and we are proud to say, that in the last
four years, based upon the information
generated from the TRI data, we have seen
a 47.8% decrease in total emissions. This is
fairly significant for a state that led the
nation in 1987 for toxic chemicals releases.
And I can say a major reason for this reduc-
tion is the use of the SARA Title III informa-
tion and the public pressure that these
companies have been exposed to, and the
concern of the citizens living in these com-
munities next to the facilities. And, as a
result of having this information and being
able to talk to the facility managers, we have
had these major reductions and commit-
ments. And I will go into a little bit more
detail of how we have actually used the
data in just a minute.
This slide is an example of the most
recent toxic release inventory booklet that
we have available (see page 23). One of the
pieces of information in it. We have sorted
the data by parish and by facilities. Then,
we tried to identify the top emitters in each
medium, in order to let the communities
know where they are located and what type
of chemicals they are releasing into the envi-
ronment (see page 24). This has been, again,
a powerful piece of information. After the
1989 information was released, several
communities in Jefferson parish, which is
just north of Orleans parish where you are
sitting today, asked American Cyanamid
Company to come to a meeting with them.
This was the Women for A Better Louisiana.
They were specifically concerned about toxic
emissions, and as a result of that meeting,
the public pressure, and the press that fol-
lowed, the company made this large com-
mitment to reduce their toxic emissions by
75%. Again, that was the result of TRI data
and the public having that information
available to use.
This is another example of how we have
sorted the data. We identified the amount
released by parish for three years in a row
to try to give the parish's and individuals
living in the communities some idea of the
progress in reducing emissions. We have
also used the TRI data not only to look at
the total emissions by medium, but to iden-
tify specific chemicals that we are very con-
cerned about here in Louisiana, because of
their toxicity or maybe we have large
amounts of them in facilities being emitted
into particular areas. In Louisiana we have
an industrial quarter from Baton Rouge to
New Orleans that is highly concentrated
with industrial chemical facilities, and of
course, there are a lot of emissions associ-
ated with those facilities. We are very con-
cerned about that industrial quarter. Also,
in the Lake Charles area to the west, there is
another major industrial chemical facility,
and we are trying to highlight which emis-
sions are there and what the possible risks
to the communities are in association with
these large discharges. This type of infor-
mation placed in the communities hands,
helps them to deal with these facility man-
agers, and to get major commitments from
them.
This is the chart looking at the success
we have had broken down by medium.
This is land, air and water and underground
injection from 1988 to 1989, in terms of the
toxic chemical releases under TRI. And you
can see we have had some major decreases
in Louisiana. We are very proud of this,
and we hope this will continue under this
new governor that was sworn in today.
When we have used the TRI data, it has not
only been to look at Louisiana, but also to
focus in on where we stand compared to
other states. This has been very helpful to
try to give us a sense our progress Are the
facilities here doing a good job compared to
similar facilities in other states in terms of
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
dealing with their toxic waste? Are they
making major commitments in Louisiana as
they are in New Jersey and other states who
have large industrial chemical complexes, to
reduce these emissions. The national TRI
has been very helpful to help us to highlight
those issues and to let our citizens and
legislators know where we stand.
One innovative thing that we have done
in using TRI data is look at the number of
employees in the state who are addressing
environmental issues, compared to other
states. And we use the TRI data to help us
develop an index on the number of employ-
ees per million pounds of TRI chemicals
released. This slide is a summary of that
information (see page 25). Based upon the
top selected states and firms, and unfortu-
nately Louisiana, we only had .6 employ-
ees/million pounds of toxic chemicals re-
leased into the environment. Comparing
this to our sister states, such as Texas, which
had over 1 employee/million pounds, and
Georgia, and you can see New Jersey and
California are pretty high up there. We have
used this in the legislature to gain additional
dollars to protect the environment in Louisi-
ana, and, in fact, it has been very successful.
We have increased the number of employees
in our department from 325 in 1988 to over
850 at the present time. And a large part of
that increase was based upon the argument
that we used here, using the TRI data to
make a comparison. I think this is, again,
very significant, and it was very useful in
making that argument to our legislators in a
period of very tight-budget years.
For two years running, we have asked
the largest toxic chemical emitters to partici-
pate in a voluntary waste reduction plan.
We have just issued the second report and I
have copies available if any of you would
like to see them, or we can send copies to
you. We have asked the thirty largest emit-
ters to join with us to make a voluntary
waste reduction plan, similar to what EPA
has currently underway with the 33/50 Pro-
gram. We have had one year of actual
success, and we are finishing up the second
year of that particular program, and I will
share some of the information we have from
that. But this has been a very innovative
way to use the TRI data. We have used it to
identify the largest submitters, and then we
asked them to make commitments to us on
reducing those toxic chemicals.
Now this is one of the graphs out of the
first report on this corporate response for
1989. And here we compared the states of
Ohio, California and New Jersey in terms of
their total emissions to four companies in
Louisiana, in terms of their TRI emissions.
These are just four companies. And you can
see the real challenge we had in Louisiana
as far as toxic chemicals. These four compa-
nies totalled more than all the state of Ohio,
more than the state of California and New
Jersey in terms of toxic chemicals. So con-
centrating on these 12 largest emitters really
made a lot of sense in Louisiana. They
accounted for approximately 92-98% of our
total TRI emissions. And we were able to
get some very significant commitments from
them in this 1989 corporate response chal-
lenge, and then in 1990 we again went back
and looked at TRI data and asked the com-
panies that were, again, the largest 30 emit-
ters in all mediums, to join with us and
come up with voluntary waste reduction
plans. Now, some of these companies made
the list again. And as we met with them
and tried to understand what some of the
problems were and work with them in
coming up with some major commitments to
reduce these emissions, the question we
were asked over and over was, how do I get
off of this list? This was certainly one they
did not want to be on. And I always want-
ed to know, who is pushing you? Why do
you want to get off the list? And invariably,
it was coming from the corporate headquar-
ters. And in one particular case I can re-
member talking to the facility manager at
WR Grace Co. in Lake Charles Louisiana.
He said he had gotten a call from his corpo-
rate president who was on Wall Street in his
car with his mobile phone. He called the
facility manager when we released these
reports and they made the NY Times. He
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
wanted to know, why are we on this list?
And the guy had to get there from Lake
Charles to this mobile phone on Wall St. and
try to explain to him why they were on the
list and also what he was doing to get off
the list. Then I asked the plant manager,
what was driving this fellow in NY to get
off this list in Louisiana? He said, the stock
market. He felt it was impacting their stock.
And that was the president of WR Grace.
And we heard that from corporation after
corporation. It was not only the publicity
and pressure from the communities in Loui-
siana that was being put on them they were
feeling here at the local level, but it was at
the corporate level too. These corporate
presidents who are members of the manu-
facturers associations and other chemical
manufacturers associations have made com-
mitments and they have to go into these
meetings and tell about their successes and
failures, and the TRI data has been very
helpful in focusing in on the success stories
and some of the failures. Now, one of the
things that we have tried to emphasize as
we have used the TRI data to get commit-
ments from them, is not just look at waste
treatment, of course. We have tried to
incorporate the idea of pollution prevention,
to try to look at the front-end of the pipe as
opposed to the tail-end of the pipe. And in
the 1989 study, when the plans came to us,
we looked at the ones that were trying to be
innovative and use front-end of the pipe
methods as far as a waste management
strategy, as opposed to just producing the
waste and then treating it. We tried to
highlight those, and we also gave them a
gold star. You can see the yellow bar across
the top there are the ones in air and land,
there were none in water, that chose front-
end of the pipe as opposed to the end of the
pipe of the 30 companies that submitted
their plans to us. This was the 1989 report.
And the most recent report that we just
finished, that we have copies available for
you, I am glad to say that now we have
gone up from 2 to 6 companies out of the 30
companies, have chosen front-end of the
pipe, really pollution prevention methods to
deal with these toxic chemicals. And that is
fairly significant. I think they are getting
the message. Pollution prevention is really
the wide way to go, it makes sense, and it is
going to save dollars in the long-run, and it
is certainly going to get them off this list
eventually.
Now, based upon our 1990 corporate re-
sponse information, this is where we think
we are going to be based upon these major
commitments we have gotten from these
large toxic chemicals release companies here
in Louisiana. By the year 1995, we suspect
we will have reduced, from 1988, our toxic
releases from 75-85%. If these actually go
into effect and we see the reductions that
these companies have made, Louisiana,
hopefully, will be behind Texas, Ohio and
Tennessee in terms of toxic releases into our
environment. This is assuming, and proba-
bly unrealistically, that these other states
will stay the same as 1989. This is very
optimistic I know they are working very
hard to reduce their toxic releases. But,
again, we are very proud of the progress we
have made, and I think the 251.3 million
pounds that you see there under Louisiana
by 1993, is a long way from the 478 million
pounds that we had in 1988. We have made
progress. And a large part of that is due to
use of the TRI information at the state level.
How else have we used the TRI infor-
mation? As most other states, we also have
a tax exemption program, which is an indus-
trial tax exemption program. If so many
jobs are created or if a new facility comes in,
or if an expansion of an existing facility is
created, the state allows them to take a tax
exemption. We changed the rules to a
certain extent in the last two years. We
have tied our TRI emissions to the tax ex-
emptions. And if they have a waste reduc-
tion plan in place that we have approved,
based upon this TRI data, then we would
give them so many bonus points. We think
that was a real incentive for a lot of compa-
nies to come in and try to aggressively
pursue waste reduction. These tax exemp-
tions meant a lot to them, and they were
fighting very hard to make sure that they
20
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
were complying in order to get the bonus
points that the state was guaranteeing to
them under this particular program.
We have also used the TRI data in multi-
media pollution prevention program. The
one that has probably been the most suc-
cessful that we have just finished up and we
have had a public commitment from the
company, was Freeport Macaran, of the
Fortune 500 companies that is located here
in New Orleans. They produce a lot of
agricultural chemicals, they have 3-4 facili-
ties up and down the river between here
and Baton Rouge, and they were probably
the third largest emitter of toxic chemicals
here in Louisiana-major emissions. We
were able to work with them addressing
these TRI chemicals in a multimedia pro-
gram that looked at all their permits, and
we met with them for about 9 months, and
finally, they agreed to come up with a plan
that they will reduce their toxic emissions
into the Mississippi River by 75% by the
year 1995. They are incorporating a very
simple process of covering some gypsum
stacks with a natural groundcover, putting
some French draining systems into the
stacks themselves so that rain water will
actually not come in contact with the chemi-
cals, and they will be treating any fluid that
comes off those stacks and recirculating it in
the facility itself. So this is a major commit-
ment in terms of dollars. I think it is a very
simple solution to a very difficult problem
that has plagued the state for the past six
years. We are very proud to have a success
with Freeport Macaran on this, and I know
they are very excited about it too.
Now, another area in which we have
used the TRI data. In developing legislation,
we passed, in 1989, an air toxics legislation
that calls for 50% reduction in toxic chemi-
cals released into the air. We identified 100
chemicals. We have just promulgated rules
to implement this legislation that will see
the effects by 1996, and a 50% state-wide
reduction in a select group of 100 chemicals
that have been identified off the TRI data
list. And based upon those commitments
and the reductions that we see coming as a
result of that legislation, this is a graph that
is projecting the toxic releases to air here in
Louisiana that we will probably be looking
at a decrease by the year 1995, of a 48%
decrease in toxic chemicals released to the
air. Again, very significant.
Other areas that we have used TRI in
that are not regulatory in nature but are
more monitoring, we have used the TRI
information to identify waters with impaired
uses due to toxic substances, hi one particu-
lar area we have also used the TRI informa-
tion to verify monitoring data. In one area
in the Calcasieu estuary, which is near Lake
Charles, we have used the TRI data to iden-
tify polluted waters and which chemicals
were going in there and which facilities
were emitting those particular chemicals (see
page 26). We ended up finding that PPG, a
large facility in terms of their water releases,
and that was primarily based upon using
TRI data and the surveillance information
we had from the particular area.
The last important area-we have used
TRI to do risk assessment in terms of trying
to identify what are major risks to the com-
munities and we have identified air toxics,
industrial waste discharges, and coastal
wetland losses as our major issues here in
Louisiana. Another innovative use of the
TRI.
Future uses of the TRI information. This
is something we are thinking about, and
hopefully they will be implemented, and
maybe this will spur some thoughts on your
part to be able to use this data. The toxi-
logical by accumulation and cancer potency
are some of the areas our water people are
looking at in terms of the TRI data. And, in
the final summary, this is where we have
used it. I would encourage other states to
think about using the TRI data not only to
pressure facilities to reduce their emissions,
but also in their own data gathering meth-
ods and to compare data that they derive
from other sources. It has been a very
powerful tool, we are very excited about the
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
future years of it, and we are excited about
having worked with the industries to make
some major reductions in the toxic chemicals
released here in Louisiana. Thank you very
much.
22
-------
Louisiana
Toxics Release
Inventory 1990
Prepared for
The Citizens of Our State
By the LA Department of Environmental Qual
-------
Toxic Discharges to Water
"Ouachlta: 254,469 IbT
- IMC Fertilizer
-Manville Forest Products
Morehouse: 124,183 Ibs.
- International Paper
Calcasleu: 994,827 lbs>
- PPG Industries
- Arcadian Corporation
- W.R. Grace & Co.
East Baton Rouge: 1,478,103 Ibs.
- LaRoche Chemicals
- Allied Signal, Inc.
Ascension: 16,744,078 Ibs.
- Arcadian Coporation
- Melamine Chemicals
Ibervllle: 507,140 Ibs.
- Dow Chemical
- Ciba-Geigy Corporation
Air Products & Chemicals^
LADEQTRI1990
rSt. Charles: 984,953 Ibs:
- Agrico CTaft)
- Shell (West)
Clinton Carbide^
St. James: 77,310,694 Ibs.
- Agrico (Faustina)
- Agrico (Uncle Sam)
laquemlnes: 292,513 Ibs.
- BP America
- Daybrook Fisheries
Jefferson: 262,763 Ibs.
jj-American CyanamicL
-------
Louisiana has .6 employees per million pounds
toxic chemicals emitted
14-
12-
Environmental
employees 10
per million
pounds of s
toxic chemicals
6-
4-
2-
0
Source: LADEQ, 1991
LA
14.14
CA
-------
Calcasieu Estuary
Identify
Waters
Impaired
by Toxics
Lake Charles
Calcasieu Lake
Gulf of Mexico
-------
TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
PLENARY PANELIST SPEECHES
Mark Greenwood
Director, U.S. EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics
Deborah Sheiman
Senior Resource Specialist, Natural Resources Defense Council
Art Gillen
Director, Environmental Affairs, BASF Corporation
Lee Tischler
Executive Director, Minnesota Emergency Response Commission
Ted Smith
Executive Director, Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition
Jack Kartez
Senior Fellow, Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center, Texas A&M. University
Eric Frumin
Director, Occupational Safety and Health, Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Worker's Union
Mark Schleifstein
Reporter, New Orleans Times-Picayune Newspaper
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Mark Greenwood
Mr. Greenwood is the Director of the Office of Pollu-
tion Prevention and Toxics. Mr. Greenwood joined
EPA's Office of General Counsel in September of
1978, and worked on a variety of issues under the
Clean Water Act and Solid Waste Matters. In 1983,
he became the 1st Assistant General: Counsel for
RECRA, and in 1987, he became the Assistant
General Counsel for Superfund. In 1988, Mr.
Greenwood was named Associate General Counsel for
Pesticides and Toxic Substances. Mark is a graduate
of the University of Michigan Law School. He
also holds a masters in public policy from the
University of Michigan. In addition to his
responsibilities for managing the TRI and for
reducing risks associated with new and existing toxic
substances, Mr. Greenwood now has the agency-wide
program lead for assuring that pollution prevention
is integrated into all EPA activities.
This is the time of year, the beginning of
a new year, to do predictions. And some of
those I think are safe to make. We can
predict, for example, this will be a presi-
dential election year. For me, as a graduate
of the University of Michigan, I can predict
that the football team that I followed for
many years will have a brilliant season and
lose a bowl game somewhere in the Sunbelt.
There are some not-so-safe ones, and I will
leave them for you to make up. You can
find them at the checkout counter at any
major grocery store. I think it is in that vein
we should probably think a little bit about
the TRI program. I would like to talk a little
about where it is now and where it is
heading, because beginning in 1992, the TRI
will really be making a major transition
from a basic Right-to-Know vehicle to a
national barometer on where we are on
pollution prevention. This also marks a
special year for us in my office, because we
going from being the Office of Toxic
Substances to becoming the Office of Pollu-
tion Prevention and Toxics. Many of you
have seen these little name tags that say
OTS on them for some of the people here.
That is no longer operative. We are now the
Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics. I
think that will be very important change,
because we will have in the same office the
people who are managing the toxic release
inventory, and the people who are also
responsible for being advocates of pollution
prevention throughout EPA. Inevitably,
these events raise the following question:
What role is TRI going to play in promoting
pollution prevention, and how can we
improve it to serve that goal? That is what
I would like to address in my remarks.
I think it is really useful to begin by
reviewing four functions the TRI program
has performed in the cause of pollution
prevention. First, TRI really serves as an
agenda-setting device. The data that we
have on emissions, on waste stream vol-
umes, and so on, define areas that really
should be the subject of pollution prevention
efforts. I think one of the strengths of the
TRI system is that it is the only way you can
systematically look at a whole bunch of data
and start to normalize it in terms of looking
at groups of industries, particular chemicals
or geographic areas. I think that is a very
powerful tool for targeting. As an example,
we will be looking at it for the next year in
the targeting of activities for accident
prevention Under the new Pollution
Prevention Act, we will be finding we are
going to get information on catastrophic
releases and under the new Clean Air Act,
we are supposed to be developing programs
for accident prevention. I think this is an
area we are going to start using the TRI
database to set some priorities for what we
will want to look at in the Clean Air Act.
A second area is from a public policy
perspective. TRI is, by itself, a very
important incentive for pollution prevention.
After all, it has become the device the
companies now use to measure environ-
mental progress throughout the company.
It is often used as a measure for programs
like the 33/50 program, but probably more
importantly, it has been used by individual
companies in setting their own company-
specific goals. This using TRI to set internal
company goals is probably one of its most
profound effects, and shows how deeply it
has become rooted into the psychology of
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
individual companies. Probably the major
reason that this has happened is that it has
become the way in which companies can
communicate to the public and what they
are doing and how they are doing. I think
that is why the new Pollution Prevention
Act information will be particularly
important. This tool, that is really the major
way in which communities and companies
interact, will focus on the pollution
prevention information that the company
has. How much is being done to recycle, or
for source reduction? And that will change,
I think, the nature of the debate and
discussion between the companies and their
publics.
A third major function is that TRI is
really an implicit planning device. The new
Pollution Prevention Act data include
predictions of the future. Not just what has
happened this last year, but what the
companies are planning to do in the future
in the areas of source reduction and
recycling. I think this is going to push
companies towards facility plans. Facility
plans obviously are not required, but, really,
it is difficult to avoid having some kind of
plan when you have to respond to the
public as they ask questions about your
operation. So for those who are talking
about the need for a pollution prevention
planning program, I would at least submit
to you that we have the beginnings of one
already imbedded in the Pollution
Prevention Act information in this next year
of reporting. I think, in many ways, this
suggests a possible role for the federal
government. There has been a lot of talk
about developing legislation about pollution
prevention planning. And, as you can tell
from Senator Durenberger, we may actually
be seeing that sometime soon. But I think
we have to think carefully about the role
that exists for the federal government versus
the state governments in this area. Many
states are already far ahead of the federal
government in these areas. And there is a
question about what the federal government
can add. Certainly there is no question that
we can, through TRI, develop a
comprehensive national database to measure
the progress that those planning programs
are having.
I think the fourth major area that we
ought to think about, as we think about the
role of TRI and pollution prevention, is its
role as the ultimate measure of success. It is
a very complex task to account for success
in pollution prevention. Emissions data
alone just really do not do it. It is helpful,
but it is not enough. Successes in periods of
economic growth can get lost when good
pollution prevention is happening, but
production is going up and the emissions
are going up. Similarly, you can find that
the status quo can look very good in bad
times, even though nothing is really
happening, because emissions are going
down. I think with the new Pollution
Prevention Act information, we are going to
be able to start sorting out what is real
pollution prevention and what is simply the
ebb and flow of emissions as different
transactions occur and economic conditions
change. But I think this will set up a
fundamental question for us. We will need
to look at the question of how we measure
success. There will probably have to be
multiple measures of success for pollution
prevention. For example, we are going to
have to look at the question of whether we
should focus on totals, totals emissions for
example, or try to normalize the emissions
data relative to units of production. Should
we be talking about how much pollution is
created in making an automobile, or
producing some other widget that we may
want to talk about? I think that is a way of
measuring success, and these are some of
the things we will want to look at, but we
have to remember that there will always be
this Community Right-to-Know aspect of it
in the sense that we have to be able to
express our success in pollution prevention
in a way that the public cares about. The
fact that we are doing well on a unit
production measure, does not sit very well
when emissions are going up if you are
living right next to a plant We are going to
have to think about these two things and
30
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION FREW110*1
how these different kinds of measures of
success fit together.
Let me talk for a minute about what I
see as some of the challenges to improve the
TRI system to help advance pollution
prevention. First, I think we need to do a
better job at linking the TRI data with other
data that exist. What we need are con-
temporaneous data on chemical life cycle
and pollution prevention efforts. One of the
efforts we are going to be looking at over
the next year in our office, is to try to
develop a national report that looks not just
at the TRI data, but also at information we
have through other vehicles such as our
Toxic Substances Control Act, about the
amount of chemicals being produced, where
they are going, a sense of the TRI emissions,
and then also look at questions about what
we are learning about pollution prevention
activities at particular plants. Hopefully, we
can develop a national report that gives a
whole picture of the whole industrial sector.
We also have to look carefully at the way
in which we link TRI data with other
databases. After all, various programs
across the country and various companies
look at other databases that exist. A notable
example, which Senator Derenberger
mentioned in his remarks that we are
working on right now, is to try and find a
better way in linking up the data we have in
TRI with the wastestream data that we have
in RCRA. And one of the things that the
Senator proposed would be a cross-
referencing of the chemicals being reported
in TRI and the RCRA wastestreams, so that
people could look on the same form and
through data manipulation get a sense of
what is going on between chemicals and
wastestreams.
A second area that has been mentioned
several times by the other speakers, is the
notion of expanding the scope of TRI. I
think it is important to emphasize why we
really need to do that, because I think the
integrity of this system means we need to
give a comprehensive picture of what is
going on with toxics in this country. The
current system may be giving us an
unrealistic sense of what are the particular
emissions that people should worry about in
an overall picture of toxics. So I think it is
important that we think of that as a context
for why we look at expansions. We do need
to look at chemicals, we do need to look at
additional sources. But, as mentioned, we
must target because this system could and
should not be overwhelmed. You have
heard the statistics already, but let me
reiterate them. We currently manage a
system of about 5 million data elements.
With the new Pollution Prevention Act we
are up to around 8 million or so. As a
general matter, we think in terms of a
system that could handle 14 million data
elements. So we have to think very
carefully about what additions we want to
make that use up that additional capacity.
Currently, we are reviewing other chemical
lists from other programs and sources. We
have screened most of the chemicals, and, as
Linda Fisher indicated, we are now starting
to discuss these with the other programs at
EPA to see if we missed anything. We are
also trying to bring in the sources that may
become important. We have looked at
sources mentioned to us from other groups,
and we are trying to get a picture of what
we know about emissions of those other
sources, looking at databases that exist for
the water programs, the air and waste
programs. Hopefully, with that database,
we will then be able to get a sense of where
the big emissions might be occurring. And
through a combination of looking at the
total number of chemicals that might be
good candidates and their sources, we will
try to get a sense of what are the best
combinations of those two elements, to get
the biggest environmental impact to use up
the remaining capacity we think we have in
the system.
A third area where I think we need to
focus attention is in the area of materials
accounting. I think everybody can agree
that developing a chemical life-cycle
database is a reasonable long-term goal. But
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
I think we have to think carefully as we
start probing the ways in which chemicals
are used. We need to look at the issue of
confidential business information. Now this
is an area where a fair amount of smoke is
blown from time to time, but I think there
are some very legitimate issues here that
have to be examined carefully. We do, after
all, have a dilemma. How can we do
materials accounting, how do we do that,
and still protect legitimate confidential busi-
ness information when we know we have to
have a public database. Fortunately, we
have several states that are now
experimenting with this. Massachusetts and
New Jersey are going to be developing more
comprehensive experiments in this to see
how it works. We are going to be looking at
this very carefully to see how it works, and
see what it can teach us about how a
materials accounting system can develop. I
think, from a national perspective, you will
see that most of the energy over the next
couple years, however, will be focused on
implementing our Pollution Prevention Act,
and then looking at the expansions of
sources and chemicals, and then coming
back to the issue of materials accounting
once we have had a better sense of where
we are.
The fourth area that I would like to
mention is that I think we really need to try
to distinguish, as much as possible, between
emissions data and the other data which the
TRI system begins to collect. Particularly
with the Pollution Prevention Act, we are
going to collect many data that really do not
constitute emissions. In fact, it will in that.
kind of data. We have to find a way of
developing a much clearer sense to the
public of what is really something to focus
on as emissions, and what is the kind of in-
plant data we want to look at but not think
of as an emission. This is going to be
particularly the case, and has been for some
time, for the so-called "transfers." Some
focus of off-site transfers are going to
situations which are essentially synonymous
with releases, others are not. We have to
start sorting that out. I think this is an area
where we will need to focus because there is
going to be a high potential for misleading
statements and public confusion, and I am
afraid the loser in all will be pollution
prevention. If the public does not have a
clear picture of what is really going on in
these plants, it is difficult for them to have
a sense of what to push on and advance
pollution prevention.
In conclusion, I think you can see that
the challenges we have are quite daunting.
But the potential results are exciting, and I
think they justify the effort. TRI is clearly
one of the most effective government
environmental programs I am aware of. It
changes behavior in positive ways, it does
this relatively quickly and without the
turmoil we find with command and control
regulations. I know we in the EPA and the
Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics are
looking forward to that future. Thank you.
Debbie Sheiman
Ms. Sheiman is a senior resource specialist with the
Natural Resources Defense Council, Air and Energy
Program. She specializes in clean air and Right-to-
Know issues. She also serves on the steering
committee of the Working Group on Community
Right-to-Know, and on EPA's accident prevention
advisory committee, and the National Air Pollution
Control Techniques Advisory Committee. Ms.
Sheiman is a prime organizer of a nationwide
citizen's Clean Air Network. Prior to joining
NRDC in 1984, Ms. Scheiman served as a senior
environmental specialist for the League of Women
Voters Education Fund. She began her career at
EPA in the pesticides program. And she is author of
numerous reports on acid rain, air toxics, and other
clean air issues, including A Who's Who of American
Toxic Air Polluters, Public Enemy Number 1111, and
The Risht-to-Know-More. Ms. Sheiman is a
graduate of the University of Michigan, School of
Natural Resources.
I am really happy to be at this
conference. It is the fifth year anniversary of
the passage of the Emergency Planning and
Community Right-to-Know Act, and I can
remember a meeting convened by EPA just
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
a few short weeks after the passage of the
initial law. It was a meeting largely of state
and federal officials and some industry
people, and everyone was extremely
worried about what this new law meant.
They said, first of all, what are these people
going to be doing with all this information?
They are going to be absolutely
overwhelmed by it. And second, we are
going to create some sort of public hysteria
that we will not know how to respond to.
The code word at that point in time was risk
communication. I think the thought was
that if the information was put into some
sort of context, that would quell the public's
concern, and the pollution control officials
and the industry folks could move forward
business-as-usual.
As we have heard this morning, what
actually happened has really been quite a
different story. I think everyone here will
agree that the required public disclosure of
toxic releases has had a very beneficial
impact from all perspectives the public
perspective, the industry perspective, and
the government perspective. The questions
now really are: how can we continue to
move forward to make the most effective
use of the information; to collect information
that will be most useful; to make it available
to the public in an easy form, and to apply
the lessons that we have learned from this
program to address other environmental
problems of concern. What I really want to
do today, is offer you a little bit of
perspective on the environmentalists'
agenda as far as Community Right-to-Know
goes, because we have been looking at this
program as one that might teach us some
lessons that ought to be applied more
broadly in terms of some of the other
environmental problems that we are dealing
with. We have been working in a
systematic fashion to develop Right-to-Know
proposals to be incorporated into all the
major pieces of environmental legislation
that are due for reauthorization by
Congress: the Resource Conservation
Recovery Act; the Clean Water Act; the
Mining Law; and so on. And our thinking
not just in terms of expansions to the toxic
release inventory per se, but to encourage
other forms of public disclosure of
environmental information that will help get
us to our mutual goals.
The issue that Mark Greenwood just
raised in terms of TRI as an agenda-setting
tool, I think really begs the question: how
much of the toxic release picture are we
currently including in the toxic release
inventory, and is it appropriate for agenda
setting? We did an analysis of basic EPA
information on toxic releases that was
available from the other program offices
the air office, the water office, the hazardous
waste office and so on. Basically, we used
information from documents used to
support the development of regulations,
because, many of the industries that are not
included in the toxic release inventory are
also exempt from regulatory controls at this
point in time. We produced a report which
we called The-Right-to-Know-More, which
tries to document everything that the public
does not have a right to know about under
the present program. And you can see from
this diagram that we do not know exactly
the size of this pie; what we do not have the
right to know under present law because of
lack of complete information; but some
pretty good guesses are that it amounts to
hundreds of billions of pounds of toxic
chemical releases, perhaps as much as 95%
of toxic chemical releases to the environ-
ment.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to drive
up the river about 30 miles or so to see
some of the industrial development along
the Mississippi and we must have driven by
about 25 different chemical plants and
refineries - huge complexes. But we also
saw a number of other facilities that are not
subject to reporting requirements, and I can
give you a few examples. There was a tank,
truck, and car cleaning facility EPA
estimates that outside the chemical industry,
this industrial source category is the second
largest contributor to water discharges of
priority toxic pollutants, yet they are
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
unregulated under the Clean Water Act at
present, and not subject to TRI reporting.
We saw some power plants. Again, not
subject to TRI emissions reporting. There
are estimates that coal fired power plants
emit eight times more mercury than all of
the manufacturing sector combined that are
included in the toxic release inventory. We
saw oil wells. And, again, for arsenic
discharges to water 450 times more
arsenic was discharged from oil and gas
development than from all the facilities in
the manufacturing sector combined. We
saw barge loading stations enormous
sources of volatile organic compound
emissions. We saw tank farms. As with all
other storage facilities, these were exempt
from public disclosure requirements.
Landfills of all sorts, hazardous waste,
municipal landfills, in fact, all of the
hazardous waste treatment, storage and
disposal facilities do not have to report their
discharges to the environment. We need to
include that kind of information if we are
going to get at a more comprehensive
picture of where we ought to be focusing
our attention.
In terms of chemicals, there has been
some discussion earlier of various legislative
proposals, and I would just like to give you
a two second background of what we
looked at in this report. We attempted to
analyze what chemicals are regulated as
toxics under various other federal
environmental laws that are not subject to
Right-to-Know reporting. We wanted to
take a conservative look at this issue and
really look at some of the obvious peices
that we are missing, the things that have
already been identified and recognized by
EPA as problem chemicals, so we can avoid
a lot of future reanalysis. We identified, for
example, sixteen hazardous air pollutants
that the public does not have the right to
know about. We identified about forty
things that are listed as priority toxic
pollutants under the Clean Water Act.
About 16 safe Drinking Water Act toxics.
About 200 chemicals that are identified as
known or probable human carcinogens by
EPA or the National Toxicology Program, or
the International Agency for Research on
Cancer.
So, it is one thing to talk about data
elements and overwhelming the capacity of
your current computer database, but it is
another thing to tell the people that are
living directly across the fenceline from
these facilities and they do not have the
right to know about what that facility is
discharging into their air because it would
involve too many data elements. I think
you can almost turn that whole argument on
its head and wonder what is all this
information that the public would be denied
because of some perceived problems in data
management capacity. I think the onus is
on EPA to try to develop data handling and
management systems and to move toward
electronic reporting requirements that will
allow EPA to do a better job in providing
the public with information in a timely
manner, and providing the public with
accurate information, and housing that
information in a real user-friendly type of
format, which we have not seen to date.
The Right-to-Know issue and the Right-
to-Know More campaign really goes beyond
expansion of the chemicals and facilities, but
also goes to the question of what type of
information is collected. We have been
advocates for the reporting of peak release
information. This is a pretty simple concept
actually. I get a lot of calls from citizen
groups and reporters that want to know
what these releases mean. And sometimes
people are asking me about acutely toxic
chemicals. I am sure you all get these calls
as well. What does it mean if they are
releasing 100,000 pounds of hydrogen
fluoride a year? What sort of concentrations
in the environment are you creating as a
result of those releases? Of course, we do
not have the answers because we do not
know what the rate of release is. Is it
released over the course of the year or in
one or several short blasts? What are the
causes of those short-term peak releases?
Pretty basic information to answer - pretty
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
fundamental questions that people have
about the TRI information that I think will
help advance the goal of understanding of
what the information says.
Secondly, we would like to take a lesson
out of the Right-to-Know experience and
apply that to moving the environmental
debate forward to the area of toxic use
reduction. Rather than proposing a
regulatory program with percent reduction
goals/ the kind of thing we are proposing
really revolves around the collection and
provision to the public of information about
toxic chemical production and use. It is
imperative that information be collected on
a unit specific basis if it is going to have any
meaning at all. Some of these facilities that
we heard about earlier this morning emitted
more pollution then the entire state of New
Jersey there are obviously many discrete
production units there, and you need to look
at those one at a time to figure out what is
going on and what the opportunities are to
make process changes to reduce the use of
toxic chemicals in the production process.
I think we also need to think about
Community Right-to-Know as a concept that
is broader than just a computer database.
We need to think about other mechanisms
for directly providing this information to the
public. Some of the ideas that have been
proposed have been things like: posting
signs at factory gates detailing
environmental releases; including informa-
tion in public utility bills about what your
sewage treatment plant is discharging into
the environment; posting signs at access
points to water bodies that violate water
quality standards; and labelling products
with their contents. This is basic informa-
tion that we do not currently have. In New
York City there is a proposal to consider
providing the public with real time access to
ambient air quality monitoring information
through electronic billboards at the sidewalk
level. I think we need to broaden our vision
of Right-to-Know and try to think creatively
about other mechanisms for direct provision
of this information.
The focus of this conference is really on
the use of TRI data. I am hopeful that we
can collectively come up with some
proposals for using the information in new
and creative ways. There have been a
couple of generations of reports. I think
maybe the first generation of TRI reports
was straightforward reporting of the
numbers, maybe some ranking of facilities
or chemicals. What I might call the second
generation of reports looked at particular
companies or corporations. There really is a
whole third generation of more sophisticated
uses of the information that we might make,
that I hope we can explore over the next
couple of days.
I can share with you a couple of my
thoughts now, and I am sure that you have
many other ideas as well. The most
important thing is trying to use your
authority as state regulators to see that the
companies are living up to the emission
reduction pledges they are making. We
have a lot of these voluntary commitments,
but we do not know what the bottom line is.
It is not enough to look at the TRI reports
that come in. I think it is clear that in the
early reductions program under the Clean
Air Act, you are going to have to look at a
lot more detailed information to figure out
what is happening at the plant. Are these
changes due to shifts in production from
one facility to another, from one country to
another, or simply declines in production?
Are they due to the fact that a lot of
chemicals have been de-listed, or due to
changes in estimation procedures? I just
think that these commitments cannot be
taken at face value and government has a
role in verifying what is, in fact, going on
out there with respect to these reductions.
Secondly, I think that there is a good
opportunity to use the information in more
of a critical, comparative, sort of way. We
need to look at particular industrial source
categories, and in conjunction with other
information, identify where the best
performers and the worst performers are,
and what can be done to bring the laggards
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
up to the level of the leaders. And my hope
is that sort of activity carried out in a Right-
to-Know context will get us the reductions
in a faster way than waiting for the Clean
Air Act's multi-year schedule to kick-in and
deliver technology-based standards, and
give the industries another few years to
comply, and then deliver some kind of
health based standards. We could be talking
about upwards of 20-25 years. But I think
through promoting the use of targeted
Right-to-Know information, we can speed
that process.
A couple of other thoughts. I do not
know of anyone that has taken a look at the
TRI data in terms of trying to analyze
industrial discharges that occur above
drinking water intakes. Disposal of
industrial waste and municipal landfills is a
big issue. Again, not much analysis has
been done. Stormwater data my hunch is
that companies are not correctly reporting
this information and that there is perhaps
more of a problem out there than we realize.
In terms of what you can do, the states
have obviously been leaders in this whole
field of expansion of Right-to-Know. In
Massachusetts, we have already seen a very
large expansion of the number of chemicals
and the types of facilities that will be subject
to reporting requirements as part of their
Toxic Use Reduction Act, which passed
recently. Also, New Jersey enacted toxic use
reduction legislation, which will be collect-
ing some of the unit-specific information
that we need, and obviously there is an
opportunity for many more states to get
involved in this area.
I think states are beginning to get reports
on the data out to the public, and I was
happy to see some of these out on the back
counter, because states can do so more
swiftly then the year or so it takes for EPA
to get the information out. But in some
states that I contacted for information, I
have been frustrated to find that, due to
budgetary problems and so on, the
information is just sitting in a box
somewhere, and there is really no way to
locate it and make it available to the public.
That is just not acceptable for Right-to-Know
programs. EPA obviously has authority to
move forward in many of these areas, and
we would like to encourage them as much
as we can. One way that we are doing that
is through support of federal Right-to-
Know-More legislation. You have heard a
little bit about the Senate version of that.
The HR 2880 bill introduced by Rep.
Sikorski has enormous support. I think
there are 148 co-sponsors on that bill. It was
introduced in July, and your support for
that legislation, as well as for the companion
bill in the Senate would be tremendously
helpful in creating momentum for passage
of that legislation. Thank you.
Art Gillen
Mr. Gillen is currently the Director of Environmental
regulatory Affairs for BASF Corporation in Parsip-
pany, New Jersey. This includes responsibility for the
corporate functions of air, water, solid waste and
EPCRA regulatory and legislative affairs. Under his
direction, support is provided to over 60 manufactur-
ing sites in North America. His group is also re-
sponsible for the design and implementation of a
corporate-wide ecology database. Currently, Art also
serves as Chairman of the Synthetic Organic Chemi-
cal Manufacturers Association's (SOCMA) Environ-
mental Quality Committee (EQC) and is a member of
the Chemical Manufacturers Association's (CMA)
Environmental Management Committee (EMC).
Prior to joining BASF in 1978, Mr. Gillen was an
environmental engineer with Union Carbide in South
Charleston, West Virginia.
The Toxic Release Inventory has created
a valuable accounting system for emissions
from selected facilities. Public availability
and the excellent starting point and common
baseline that it provides have prompted
many companies to set priorities and estab-
lish voluntary reduction goals. The Emer-
gency Planning and Community Right-to-
Know Act is a good law but is not without
its faults, and care must be taken to use it
appropriately. There are several respects in
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
which the TRI is a valuable tool for Investi-
gation and Measurement, Planning, Commu-
nicating, & Initiating Programs
Determining the total releases and trans-
fers for completing a plant Toxics Chemical
Release Inventory has proved to be a useful
and beneficial task in and of itself. Process
engineers have had to scrutinize their pro-
cesses as a whole to quantify wastes re-
leased to all media. These data are a valu-
able tool for planning.
As a planning tool, TRI provides an
excellent overall account from which priori-
ties for improvement can be identified. It
offers a starting point on which to build
other programs and set goals within the
facility. Over the four years that the inven-
tories have been a requirement, individual
facilities have used it and the work effort
involved in developing the inventory to
improve their knowledge of their own pro-
cesses and to improve operations.
TRI is also an excellent communication
tool. The public availability of the data itself
and the numerous analytical reports pub-
lished, even in newspapers and magazines,
have helped make everyone who is involved
employees, industry, regulators, private
citizens, and special interest groups more
aware of emissions and trends.
Some facilities have used Community
Advisory Panels to disseminate information
on releases and the effects of chemicals.
Being responsive to citizen concerns and
communicating with them so they feel
comfortable with our operations has
changed the way we do business, and that
change is for the better!
Another benefit of the TRI is that it has
acted as a catalyst for the initiation of many
other good programs and projects. Without
any regulatory pressure, many companies
volunteered and set goals to achieve reduc-
tions in their emissions.
Building on industry's initiative, the EPA
has developed the Industrial Toxics Pro-
gram. It is a voluntary reduction program
to which EPA has invited companies to
commit to reduce national aggregate emis-
sions of seventeen chemicals from the 1988
TRI levels by 50% by the end of 1995. More
than 200 companies have agreed to partici-
pate in the program.
There is, however, room in the TRI
program for improvement in several areas
which I will highlight.
The reporting itself and the addressing of
the issues that result from reporting require
a tremendous amount of resources. Fortu-
nately, much of the effort involved in gener-
ating the emissions inventories for the TRI
provides other benefits such as communicat-
ing with the community, improving process
knowledge, organizing information and
improving communication and awareness,
and revealing areas for process/product
improvement. Unfortunately, the manpower
requirements have not changed much over
the years. This is because we try to get
better data, changes are made to our opera-
tions, and changes are made to the TRI
program and form. Annual training, at
every facility, is required to keep up with
these changes. Changes to the program
should be strongly weighted against bene-
fits. More than anything else, the program
needs time and uniform compliance to work.
The TRI program and database itself,
while called the national Toxics Chemical
Release Inventory, does not truly represent
its name. The TRI list of chemicals does not
include all of the toxic chemicals that are
released. Nor are all of the chemicals on the
list toxic. Some are on the list because they
are used in large amounts some because,
although they are not toxic, they have an
effect on the environment. The OTA esti-
mates that the TRI data represent only a
portion of total chemical releases to the
environment. Only certain manufacturers
are required to report. These manufacturers
are by no means the only emitters of chemi-
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
cals. Processors and users of chemicals
outside the select SIC codes emit chemicals
as well. Automobiles are the major source
of air emissions in the ambient air that we
breathe as is indoor air. Even of those
facilities covered, it is estimated that almost
one third have not filed the required reports.
Another issue is the misrepresentation of
off-site transfers as emissions to the environ-
ment. The TRI defines emissions as releases
to the environment and transfers to off-site
facilities. Usually the materials transferred
to off-site facilities are further treated so the
material does not become a release to the
environment. Organics can be degraded
almost completely by bacteria in POTWs or
by burning in incinerators. Acids and bases
are neutralized to common salts. Methanol,
the second highest total pounds emitted
chemical in the TRI, is a favorite food of the
bacteria in the POTW. It is completely
decomposed to carbon dioxide and water.
To equate transfers to off-site treatment
facilities or transfers to recycling facilities
with environmental releases is wrong. It is
an ineffective way to evaluate effects on
human health and the environment. An off-
site transfer is most often never released.
Unfortunately, as releases and transfers are
all in the database, the distinction is usually
not made and the common usage definition
of releases is applied to transfers as well. In
fact, in 1988, over 25% of the reported re-
leases were actually transfers not releases.
This interferes with appropriate priority
setting of release reductions by risk reduc-
tion. It forces the setting of a goal, where
achievement of that goal may have no im-
pact on the effect of that chemical released
on the environment.
Finally, because the units of the TRI
database are total pounds of emissions, there
is a diversion away from risk reduction and
an emphasis on the reduction of pounds.
There is no toxirity ranking to distinguish
high toxicity chemicals from low. Generally
the chemicals that are emitted in the highest
quantity are those that have the lowest
toxicity for the simple reason that industry's
focus has been on reducing emissions of
high toxicity chemicals to reduce risk.
Because the unit of measure in the national
database is pounds, reduction in pounds is
the focus. Risk management requires both
the exposure and toxicity be considered.
The TRI provides only a portion of this
needed information.
To me, the key issue for the TRI is how
best to use it. Its basis is in Community
Right-to-Know. Action must be taken at the
local level. Ten million pounds of chemical
X reported nationally in the TRI is meaning-
less compared to the amount and impact of
the pounds of X that are emitted in your
community. If I convey anything today, I
would like to urge all of us to use the TRI to
communicate our local concerns with the
facilities in our communities.
The TRI is being used to set priorities
that are different from those that would be
set if evaluating risk. For any given chemi-
cal, risk can certainly be reduced by limiting
the pounds emitted, if there is any exposure
to the chemical. But to reduce the risk from
a variety of chemicals, toxicity and exposure
of the chemical are just as important as the
pounds emitted.
The public has a right to know and they
also have a right to understand. It seems
improved education is always needed, but it
is especially important when decisions and
public policy are dependent upon the under-
standing of this data by the public, legisla-
tors, regulators, and special interest groups.
If laws or programs are developed based
upon a misguided premise, problems will
not get solved. In fact they may get worse.
The idea that more is better in terms of data
collection can bog down any valiant effort to
make improvements simply because the
paperwork quagmire will be so deep that
resources will not be available for reduction
efforts or priorities will become so obscured
that effective management will be chal-
lenged needlessly. The TRI, or an expanded
TRI, cannot solve all of our environmental
concerns.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
What we in industry hope for is to be
given a tool and to be subject to regulations
that we can use, along with our other tools,
to effectively improve both our operations
and the environment. The TRI is part of a
set of tools, but it is not the whole picture.
Exposure and risk, while best done on a
plant by plant basis, must be incorporated
along with consideration for relative toxicity
and the TRI emissions data to set priorities.
A holistic approach based in sound science,
reason and pragmatism, that will truly help
us to improve the quality of life for humans
and the environment, is the only way to
deal with today's environmental concerns.
With four years of reporting behind us,
we have learned from our experience. Some
recommendations for developing a reporting
system have become clear:
The TRI Release Inventory should be an
inventory of releases. Presently, the TRI is
not; it includes both releases and transfers to
off-site treatment, storage, and disposal
facilities. In fact, over 25% of the pounds re-
ported in the database in 1988 were trans-
fers, not releases. The focus of a Toxics
Release Inventory should be releases to the
environment. The misrepresentation of
transfers as equivalent to releases distorts
the data and obscures what the priorities
should be. The combined data make it diffi-
cult to measure progress on the priorities set
for release reduction and risk reduction.
The chemical list must be developed
based upon sound science, with the specific
purpose of this program in mind, and with
care to include truly toxic chemicals. The list
of TRI chemicals is called the list to toxics,
but it includes chemicals which are not toxic
and does not include some chemicals which
are toxic. The list was created by combining
two pre-existing chemical lists that were
developed for other purposes. Some of the
chemicals were included on those lists sim-
ply because they were used in high quanti-
ties in commerce. There are no emissions
reported for almost 20% of the chemicals on
the list. Some of the chemicals are simply
not used by manufacturers in significant
quantities anymore.
The regulated community should include
the major emitters of toxic chemicals. Only
manufacturers in a given set of Standard
Industrial Classification Codes have been
targeted for reporting their emissions for the
TRI. Thus, emissions in the database are
from only a select group of emitters and do
not represent a complete inventory of what
is being released to the environment. Care
should be taken as well, however, to ensure
that the system will not get logjammed by
including small emitters of negligible quanti-
ties of chemicals.
Every effort should be made to ensure
useful data collection because what data are
collected determines what goals and priori-
ties will be set. The TRI database cannot be
used to solve all of our environmental prob-
lems. It should be used as a tool in combi-
nation with other tools. Collection of extra-
neous pieces of information waste time,
energy, and overwhelm the system. This
will detract from the effectiveness of the
data. More is not always better. It is better
to collect key pieces of data and to have
good accurate data that can be used and
managed. What data are collected drives
what goals will be set and what problems
will be perceived and addressed. Collecting
the wrong data can obscure the relevant
data and will shift priorities in the wrong
direction.
A pragmatic, reasonable approach using
sound science, and considering relative
toxicity, risk, and exposure potentials should
be used to set priorities. Laws, programs,
and goals based on faulty assumptions or
that focus on intermediate waste handling
steps but which will not have an effect on
the releases to the environment and expo-
sure to toxic chemicals will benefit human
health or the environment. Collecting the
right data and setting the right priorities is
the only way to focus on and achieve im-
proved quality of life for humans and the
environment.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Lee Tischler
Mr. Tischler is the Executive Director of the Minne-
sota Emergency Response Commission and the
Department of Public Safety. This is a post he has
held since 1987. In Minnesota the Emergency
Response Commission is responsible for all sections of
the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-
Know Act, including the TRI reporting. Mr. Tischler
is also the Vice President of the National Association
of SARA Title III Program Officials, and Chair of its
Section 313 Committee.
A prime location to be, just before the
break, but I will try to keep it short. Echo-
ing the comments of the earlier speakers, I
would like to emphasize again that TRI is
indeed an example of the power of informa-
tion. In Minnesota we prepared our first
TRI report for the public using 1988 data,
and it did generate a significant amount of
media coverage. In fact, we had a woman
contact our office indicating that her two
children had asthma, and she wanted to
know which state had the lowest releases of
toxic chemicals. Well, we have heard of
high taxes and we have heard of bad weath-
er as reasons to leave Minnesota, but we
have never heard of TRI information as
reasons to leave the state. After explaining
the limitations of the data, we did send her
the national TRI data.
Initially, many states were reluctant
recipients of TRI data. Few realized the
power of TRI. During these early reporting
years, EPA was involved in selling TRI,
which frankly was a tough sell to the states
because there were no monies involved with
it, nor could we immediately see any type of
program benefits associated with TRI. In
1988, EPA contracted for the development of
a guidance manual for state TRI program
coordinators. The manual had how-to
sections involved in it. The basics, beyond
the basics, advanced capabilities. That same
document also outlined a number of short
term and long term goals for state TRI
programs, including: (1) increased public use
and understanding of TRI; (2) improved
data quality; (3) increased industry compli-
ance; (4) establish and support pollution
prevention programs; and (5) link environ-
mental databases across media. In three
short years, we have made significant prog-
ress toward these goals.
Within Minnesota, the Emergency Re-
sponse Commission is responsible for all
aspects of Title III, including emergency
planning, accidental release notification,
chemical inventory reporting and TRI. At
first, we thought EPA is processing the TRI
data, why should we duplicate their efforts?
But it became very apparent after the first
year that there was a good reason for us to
become involved in TRI. Requests from
environmental groups and from the public
for TRI information, almost dictated that we
put together a report to the public that was
readily accessible. Today, almost 40 % of
the states now prepare some type of annual
TRI report.
At this time, states have developed an
ownership of TRI. The term "ownership,"
which has been the theme for the National
Governor's Association Conferences on the
Emergency Planning and Community Right-
to-Know Act, does imply a responsibility.
Over one-third of the states have statutory
and enforcement authority for TRI. States
are now responsible for such aspects as
public outreach, improving data quality,
responding to public information requests.
But state and TRI program officials also
expect an opportunity to shape the future
directions of TRI pollution prevention both
at the federal and state levels. For example,
some states have used the power of TRI to
pass state pollution prevention legislation.
We point to the states of Oregon and Massa-
chusetts as leaders in that area.
In Minnesota, the TRI data prompted the
passage of the Minnesota Toxic Pollution
Prevention Act of 1990. That law requires
pollution prevention plans for TRI facilities,
and assesses fees based on the number and
releases of TRI chemicals. The Minnesota
Emergency Response Commission has also
submitted a report to the Minnesota legisla-
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
hire in December of 1990, recommending an
expansion to selected non-manufacturing
sectors.
Those states that have developed TRI
programs generally concur with the need for
Right-to-Know More. But we also recognize
the confusion factor for industry if they have
fifty-one TRI programs to comply with. In
Minnesota, we are anxiously awaiting prog-
ress at the federal level and the passage of
Right-to-Know More legislation.
So, we have seen a significant evolution
in the TRI program, but I would like to offer
these questions and observations for the
future:
(1) As industry and community groups
sit down to negotiate good neighbor or
neighbor-labor agreements, what will be the
role of government: passive observers or a
party to the agreement? Will government be
willing to provide the same assistance to
local communities in assessing toxic releases
as it provides to help industry in developing
pollution prevention through technical
assistance programs?
(2) TRI is but one component of Commu-
nity Right-to-Know. How well is TRI being
linked with other components of Title 3?
How can TRI and pollution prevention be
incorporated into local emergency planning,
or even comprehensive community develop-
ment plans?
(3) How will EPA and states package
this new pollution prevention data they start
collecting this year? In Minnesota the Pro-
ject Environment Foundation is currently
conducting an audit of our Title III program.
That is a private foundation that has re-
ceived a private grant. A major concern of
the Project Environment Foundation is how
available is the information, and how can it
be manipulated to meet the varied public
requests and local needs.
(4) With the assortment of such new
legislation as the Pollution Prevention Act,
the Clean Air Act, Hazardous Materials
Transportation Uniform Safety Act, the
traditional lines for administration of health,
safety and environmental programs are
increasingly becoming blurred. Where do
OSHA regulations for process safety end
and EPA risk management plans begin?
Are the states able to select the best admin-
istering agency, and how much turf protec-
tion will occur? And in the rush for pollu-
tion prevention planning, is accident preven-
tion being adequately considered?
As time evolves, I suspect the public and
press will focus more on specific facilities
instead of the press reporting such items as,
"six million pounds of toxic chemicals re-
leased in Gopher County." I think you will
see a facility report card documenting TRI
releases, pollution prevention accomplish-
ments, risk management plan and chemical
accidents. State resources will be strained to
check the quality of the new pollution pre-
vention data elements in TRI, as well as
other legislative requirements. During the
past year, we have seen significant advances
in TRI data quality and compliance. As a
result of the resources provided through an
EPA grant, Minnesota has identified 140
new reporting facilities with releases and
transfers totalling 3.5 million pounds. Forty
facilities have also submitted revisions as a
result of our site visits under the grant. But
as we ask for more and more data from
industry, it becomes increasingly difficult to
provide technical assistance and to check the
accuracy of the data through inspections. In
Minnesota, we found another interesting,
unique method for improving data quality is
to assess fees based on the amount of releas-
es. It was amazing the number of voluntary
revisions that we received in Minnesota after
fee statements were issued to facilities based
upon their quantity of releases.
Finally, we all recognize that state and
federal resources are limited, which makes
it even more important to cooperate in the
implementation of TRI. As we develop
ownership of TRI, we need to share informa-
tion on what works and what does not
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
work. We also need to share ideas to shape
the program in future years. We should
broaden our perspective beyond TRI and
consider the implications of other Communi-
ty Right-to-Know related programs. For
these reasons, I would encourage you to
become involved in such national organiza-
tions as the National Associations of SARA
Title III Program Officials, which provides
an opportunity to meet with your peers.
There no longer is a dear demarcation
between emergency preparedness and envi-
ronmental protection. Plus, Community
Right-to-Know strengthens the linkage
between them. Community Right-to-Know
implies that knowledge can lead to action.
We have witnessed considerable action since
the first national release of TRI data in
spring of 1989. At the federal and state
levels, we have seen packaging the data,
pollution prevention programs, 33/50. From
industry we have seen numerous commit-
ments to reduce. From environmental
groups we have seen their own summary
reports and good neighbor agreements.
But we have also seen individual action.
Remember the Minnesota woman who
asked for the national TRI data because her
children had asthma. She made her choice.
We received a postcard from her saying that
she moved to the 49th ranked TRI state,
Nevada. Thank you.
Ted Smith
Mr. Smith is the founder and Executive Director of
the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Mr. Smith is
currently President of the National Toxics Campaign
Military Toxics Network, and he is also on the boards
of the Toxics Coordinating Project, the California
Toxics Coalition and the National Toxics Campaign.
In 1990, Mr. Smith co-founded the Campaign for
Responsible Technology. Prior to starting the Toxics
Coalition, Ted Smith was a partner in the law firm of
Smith & Johnson. He has also taught labor studies
at San Jose City College and environmental studies at
San Jose State University. Ted has been a member of
EPA's Integrated Environmental Management
Program Advisory Committee, the City Manager's
Toxic Gas Task Force and the Intergovernmental
Council Task Force on Hazardous Material Storage.
Mr. Smith received his juris doctor from Stanford
Law School after receiving his bachelor's degree from
Wesleyan University.
Thank you very much. I wanted to
thank you for inviting me here to New
Orleans. It is probably the one city in the
country I have most wanted to visit for the
longest time, so I really appreciate it. I was
reminded of a funny incident by one of the
previous speakers that is an example of one
of the additional uses of TRI data which I
really want to address, but this one remind-
ed me of some of the ironies of it. Not too
long ago, we had a new employee in our
office who came in to see me and she was
just white as a sheet. She said, "There is a
man outside who is from the IRS and he
wants to see all of our Title III data." And
she said, "Is that what we have to do to
maintain our non-profit, tax exempt status?
Are they investigating us?" And I said,
"Well, no actually it is the new toxic release
inventory data from EPA. I do not know
why he would want to see it, but it is noth-
ing that we should be worried about. Why
do not you invite him in?" So he came in
and he said, "I have been trying to get this
data from EPA, I have been trying to get it
from the state government, I ca not get it
anywhere. We are investigating the compa-
nies who are discharging the CFC's because
we are empowered to enforce the CFC tax
and we just need to get this information, so
that is why we are here." And so we were
very glad to turn over everything that we
had. You can draw your own lessons from
that story, but that is one of the more inno-
vative uses of TRI data that I have run into.
If we could have the first slide, I would
like to talk a little bit about the fundamental
importance of TRI data (see page 47). When
it gets right down to it, I think that TRI
data, the usefulness of it, is in helping to
identify the extent of the toxic contamination
problem. If you look simply at the chart up
here, on the slide now, you can see that the
42
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
production of synthetic chemicals in the
United States has escalated very rapidly.
Those are exponential numbers along the
left hand column of the graph. And as each
major new technological development has
been developed, the production of these
chemicals has just escalated. This is a chart
that has been prepared by the Toxics Coor-
dinating Project, which is the California
Toxics Coalition. TRI data, to the extent that
it is helpful at identifying the releases of
those chemicals into the environment, can
have a major impact on people's under-
standing and awareness.
The second slide I would like to show is
what we like to call the solution (see page
48), which is how do we reduce the chem-
ical emissions, and in particular chemical
usage, which is really at the fundamental
core of a lot of the problems that we have
been dealing with. It identifies toxics use
reduction as the real major goal by simply
pointing out that controls in the past have
not really been very successful. Where we
have been able to measure very significant
environmental benefits is where we have
been able to phase out DDT; where we have
been able to phase out the lead and gaso-
line; where we have been able to phase out
DBCP and some of the others. Most recent-
ly, I think the real success story is in the
phase-out of the CFC's in order to protect
the stratospheric ozone layer. It is within
this context that I and a number of people in
the environmental movement come to this
TRI data with that perspective.
I would like to go back now for a mo-
ment to talk a little bit about our own local
efforts in Silicon Valley. Up until pretty
recently most people still believed that the
electronics industry was a clean industry. It
was a selfrdescribed clean industry and I
think the TRI data has been helpful, among
other things, in expediting peoples' under-
standing that in fact the electronics industry,
too, is a chemical handling industry, that it,
too, has significant chemical releases. We
discovered this actually just about a decade
ago, when we learned that our aquifers had
been contaminated by leaking solvents. We
were one of the first local groups in the
country to work successfully for the passage
of a local Right-to-Know law, and then we
were active in the re-authorization of Super-
fund, which provided the federal Right-to-
Know law. We were the first group in the
country that compiled the local data from
our county and identified what those releas-
es were back in August of 1988. The next
slide is actually going to show you two
years worth of data of reporting on who
have been the largest dischargers of the TRI
chemicals in Silicon Valley.
When we released this information we
did it with a press release and a press con-
ference. I want to read you a little bit of the
information that we released. 'Twenty-five
major area companies are responsible for the
discharge of millions of pounds of toxic
chemicals into the environment each year,
according to recent data. Twenty-five com-
panies with 41 facilities in Santa dare Coun-
ty admitted discharging over 12 million
pounds of 34 different toxic chemicals into
air, land and water. Almost 2 million
pounds went into the air through stack
admissions. Another 2 million pounds were
classified as fugitive emissions. Under
current legal regulations this type of pollu-
tion is largely legal, although considered
immoral by many. The Silicon Valley Toxics
Coalition has charged that industry has
enjoyed a free ride to use the air as an open
sewer for its waste disposal Some compa-
nies, however, are already beginning to
respond to community pressures in other
parts of the country. Monsanto, for in-
stance, has acknowledged almost 18 million
pounds of discharges nationwide, but has
promised to reduce those emissions by 90
percent in four years and is approaching a
zero discharge standard of tolerance."
We tried to dramatize what the problem
was and then put out a call for dramatic and
rapid toxics use reduction and discharge
reduction into the air and other environmen-
tal media. It was by identifying the chemi-
cals of concern, which is the next slide I
would like to put up, that we identified that
43
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
the largest single waste stream, by far,
particularly the air waste stream, was freon,
or CFC's. In fact, we identified that the
largest single source of those discharges in
Silicon Valley was IBM.
In the first year of reporting, IBM dis-
charged about 1.5 million pounds of CFCs
from one plant in San Jose alone. Now that
may not sound like a lot to people from
Louisiana. I was pretty impressed with
some of those numbers I saw before. But
for people in our area, again, who thought
that we were dealing with a clean industry,
these are pretty dramatic numbers. So we
tried to design a campaign that would not
only identify IBM, but some of the other
companies as well. We also designed a
campaign that used community organizing
tactics to encourage the companies to re-
duce, as rapidly as possible, these kinds of
discharges. In 1989, we organized a major
rally at the plant gates of IBM, and asked
them to make a commitment to rapidly
phase out their CFC's. We asked them to
do so well in advance of the schedule of the
Montreal Protocol, because by that time we
had identified the electronics industry as the
single largest source of the CFC 113 emis-
sions in the country. We knew that it was
an innovative industry that could, at times,
rapidly re-design its production processes,
and we asked them to do that in this case,
and to make public commitments around
Earth Day of 1989. We also asked them to
sign a good neighbor agreement committing
to the rapid phase out of CFC's.
Well, they were not ready to do that in
April of 1989, but we brought Ralph Nader
out, and we had a couple thousand people
show up at their plant gates and it generat-
ed a lot of interest and media publicity. We
also said that we would come back to their
plant gates in the big Earth Day of 1990 if
they had not made some very significant
commitments to phasing out the CFC's.
Well, in the meantime, we started some
discussions with them and we said, "Would
you rather have us back out at your plant
gates for Earth Day, 1990, or would you
rather have some kind of a cooperative
demonstration of real progress being made
which would require the inclusion of mak-
ing some very dramatic commitments to the
complete phase out of CFC's.
And, in fact, IBM did take this to heart
and well in advance of Earth Day 1990 came
out with a new corporate world wide com-
mitment to the complete phase out of CFC's
by 1993, which was well in advance of the
deadline set by the Montreal Protocol. And
even better, they did not say that they were
going to be replacing them with some other
chemical that was made by Dupont and
might have some other kinds of health
effects. What they discovered was that they
could do their cleaning, their ultra-dean
processes, very well by replacing the CFC's
with soap and water. So they found a
solution that did not create another environ-
mental problem by solving one that was
equally or more serious. And they even
found a way of using their contaminated
groundwater that they pumped out of the
ground and then used that in their industri-
al processes to replace their CFC's. So it
was a real nice, full-circle of environmental
solution.
So, by the time of Earth Day 1990, we
were able to make joint presentations with
IBM. They opened up their plant/ they took
people on a plant tour and they showed that
they really are making progress. Then, by
Earth Day the next year, we used the TRI
data identified by 25 largest companies in
the Bay area that were discharging CFC's.
We sent them a questionnaire asking them
to describe their own internal corporate
goals and timetables for phase out of CFCs.
We asked them to commit to rapid phase
out. We asked about alternative solutions
and how far along they were. Based on that
data, we then published a list of the leaders
and laggards. I have heard that terminology
here today and I think it is useful terminolo-
gy. We gave awards to the companies that
were out in front and gave some brick bats
to the companies that were dragging up the
rear.
44
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
We discovered that in fact it was many
of the military contractors that were making
the least progress. We did this for both
CFCs and TCA, which is another one of the
chemicals destroying the ozone layer. We
found the military contractors were the least
aggressive because they are stuck with
military specifications. This is important
when we start talking about the barriers to
pollution prevention. The military requires
of their contractors that they use a lot of
these chemicals and they have been extreme-
ly slow in changing those military specifica-
tions.
So, if I had to step back and say what
has been our overall strategy in trying to
use the TRI data, I would say that it really
has been to try to use it to identify the
leaders and the laggards. To identify and
promote effective technologies, processes
and companies, identify and seek to change,
phase out or replace the harmful technolo-
gies. In other words, to help companies get
off of their chemical dependence and to
focus attention on the companies and their
leadership that have failed or refused to
implement effective pollution prevention
policies.
We have heard some of the arguments
put forward today about why we ca not go
forward in moving this program to the next
step. They are the same kinds of arguments
that we have heard repeatedly: trade secrets,
too much paperwork, etc. In the whole
history of chemical reporting, in Silicon
Valley at least, going back to 1983, I think
there is only been one, possibly two claims
of trade secrecy made. So I just do not
think that we feel that is a legitimate kind of
a concern. The paperwork you have heard
about from other speakers today, really is
not a very significant problem in most cases.
There was a man from one of the major
electronics companies, originally when we
were talking about our local Right-to-Know
ordinance, who did use a term which I think
is really the fundamental basis of what some
of the real concerns are. He says, "We are
really concerned about making this informa-
tion public because of the hassle factor."
And we said, "What do you mean by the
hassle factor?" And he said, "Well, if people
have this information, they will use it to
hassle us." And I think that is precisely
right. And that is in fact what we have
tried to do. I think the problem has been
how do you use it to hassle in an effective
way, in a way that is going to bring about
needed changes. I think we have largely
been on the target, although I think some-
times we have not been, but I think we are
all learning as we go along.
One final problem that you heard about
from a previous speaker was that we are
now going to get in to a data overload: "We
just cannot put up with the data that we are
going to get. We just need to keep that
down to a minimum because we will not be
able to handle it" Well those are arguments
that people have used in the past about why
they do not want to report information to
IRS also, that it would just give them a data
overload and they cannot handle it. IRS
seems to come back and to say that we can
handle it. We all know they have problems
doing it sometimes. But, I just think that we
have to look at those kinds of rationales
again with somewhat of a jaundiced eye.
We should focus on what we can do to use
this data to more effectively target the lead-
ers and the laggards. In that way, we can
help to bring about not only waste reduc-
tion, but also move up the chain so that we
can actually get much better usage reduction
data. I understand I am out of time. I am
going to have to just show you two very
quick slides that I think also need to be
stated.
I was at a TRI conference in Vienna that
was mentioned earlier. This slide is a state-
ment issued by all of the non-governmental
organizations there - the NCO's which are
the European groups from all over the conti-
nent. I think that the information that we
now provide in this country really is leading
the world. I think that sometimes we do
better in making data public than we do in
figuring out what to do about it, but I think
45
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TR1 DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
that we are in the leadership of public dis-
closure and that this is something that is
being picked up now around the world.
This will certainly benefit all of us.
And lastly, I would like to show a slide
that is a statement distributed by the Cam-
paign for Responsible Technology. In the
middle there, I just want to read it, because
I think that this is an important insight. It
says, "We have abdicated power over our
future to the experts, and for the sake of our
children we must take that power back.
Our society does not even have a forum to
discuss the possible results of technological
change. By failing to establish such a mech-
anism, a body chosen directly or indirectly
by the people, we have placed the fate of
the planet in the hands of technical special-
ists who, however brilliant, are unqualified
to decide questions of the common good."
I believe that the importance of TRI is that
we get the information out to the public so
that the people themselves can help to
participate in making some of these deci-
sions about what direction we want to go.
Thank you.
46
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THE SOLUTION
A New Strategy for the Future
JL ollution control is not onough.
JL he federal government's pollution control strategy has failed. Our
current legal and monitoring systems ore cumbersome and often
contradictory. Many times, regulations are enforced only through voluntary
compliance.
Although government and industry spend S70 billion a year on 'waste
management", we see little measurable decrease in toxic contamination.
A now pollution prevention strategy for the
future:
J. o solve the toxic problem, we need a new perspective. Toxics
use reduction prevents pollution by decreasing the use of hazardous
chemicals in the home, workplace and environment.
Si.
ouccess otories:
J. hrough technology changes, chemical bans, and the
development of safer alternatives, we can protect our health
and environment without acute economic impact:
Rachel Carson's ground-breaking research led to the
banning of DOT, and a new public awareness of chemical
hazards.
By changing to lead-free gasoline, we have
measurably lowered the level of lead in infants' blood.
The pesticide DBCP, which has contaminated
groundwater and caused reproductive harm to workers, is
now banned.
In 1976, Congress banned the manufacture of highly-toxic
PCB's, and ordered remaining uses phased out.
Worldwide concern led to an international
treaty to reduce the use of ozone-destroying chloroflouro-
carbons; citizens continue to coll for complete elimination
ofCFC production.
-------
THE PROBLEM
Chemical Use Continues to Soar
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X odoy we face an inaeasing threat to our health and environment from
decades of unrestrained growth in the use and production of toxic chemicals.
JL oxic contamination has crept into every aspect of our lives: our water, air,
homes, food, and workplaces. The results are cancer, birth defects, genetic
mutations, worker illness, and suffering.
Worldwide, we now use some 70,000 chemicals,
and the list grows by 500 to 1000 every year.
California farmers used 420 million pounds of
pesticides in 1986.
Almost 1/5 of major California drinking water
welb are contaminated by hazardous substances.
Each year, over 35,000 California workers seek
medical treatment for work-related illnesses.
Los Angeles air quality exceeds federal safety
standards 150 days a year.
Annually, we add about 350,000 tons of household
hazardous waste to California landfills, many of which are
leaching toxic into the environment.
-------
TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Jack Kartez
Mr. Kartez is a Senior Fellow at the Hazard Reduc-
tion and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University.
From 1980 to 1990, Dr. Kartez taught in the unique
interdisciplinary environmental science program at
Washington State University. He now teaches and
conducts research on environmental dispute resolu-
tion, natural and technological hazards and on how to
design public planning processes. His research is
supported by a variety of public sources, such as the
National Science Foundation, EPA, state and private
sources, and currently includes projects on the future
of Title III LEPCs, use and impact of the TRI, haz-
ardous facility sitting, and local government disaster
planning. Dr. Kartez received his degrees from
Middlebury College, the University of Oregon and
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and
has worked as both a policy analyst and enforcement
specialist in Wisconsin and Oregon state government.
I wanted to use one of my precious mo-
ments to mention that I am also a member
of the National Association of SARA Title III
Program Officials, and a member of its
Research Committee, and it is an increasing-
ly useful and needed network of people
working at state and local levels to imple-
ment Title III related programs. I took my
invitation here as a charge to try and repre-
sent the academic sector and that is difficult
because we are so diverse, so if I leave
something out - it is inevitable - please do
not be hurt, just tell me about it.
Although academic policy advocates
argued for using information as a supple-
ment or substitute or addition to regulatory
approaches over a decade ago, by people
like Mike O'Hare of MIT, who was also a
state official, and Susan Hadden of the
University of Texas and many others, use of
TRI data by the academic sector has been
slow. Since 1986, however, there are at least
three academic roles in using TRI data that
are unfolding. One is to use the data to tell
us something about substantive problems
like health effects, vulnerability of popula-
tions, social equity, the direction of industri-
al practices and so on. A second use is to
analyze the way the TRI program itself
works. For example, is the data truly acces-
sible, and accessible to whom, and what is it
being used for and to what real effect? The
third role is using TRI as an educational
tool, and I would like to just briefly com-
ment on each of those roles.
Substantive uses, number one, are slowly
increasing. Let me just give you some
examples. One scientist recently at the
National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences, started to think about the need to
combine TRI data with cancer data to tell us
something useful about health effects. A
Berkeley doctoral student and former com-
munity organizer, Bill Pease, is showing
how California's Proposition 65 chemicals
data can be used to monitor environmental
improvements in California. He is now
trying to use the TRI data in the same way,
although that is hard because of the limita-
tions in the data. Pease's Proposition 65
study, incidentally, appears in the December
issue of the magazine Environment, and it is
a good example of where uses of TRI data
can go in legitimate research and monitor-
ing.
There are several projects by groups at
Tufts and now Columbia University that
have been moving from looking at the 311
chemicals to looking at the 313 chemicals
and the impact of the data on the internal
practices and direction and decision making
of industries. There are economists at other
universities who are looking at the impact of
TRI data on market prices, on Wall Street,
on issues of environmental racism and so
on. All of these different kinds of appli-
cations are beginning slowly to emerge.
Without question, the limitations and the
coverage and validity of the data are an
obstacle to acceptance of its use in scientific
research on issues like health effects and
ambient environmental improvements.
Difficulties in accessing the TRI are an
issue with academics too, you may be sur-
prised to know. Susan Cutter is a well
known environmental geographer at Rutgers
University, whose National Geographic
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Society project called "The Toxic Landscape"
has compiled a complex 50-state database of
acute toxic releases during all of the 1980's.
I asked Susan this fall when she would
combine TRI data to get an even better
picture of chronic exposure in the nation,
and she said, "Well, that would be nice Jack,
but TRI availability is not as good as some
claim. Simply putting it on Toxnet does not
make it available."
This brings us to the second role of
academics to assess how the TRI is working
as an experiment in environmental data
democracy in terms of its access, its use, and
its impact. Last year, GAO issued a report
on TRI implementation that questioned
whether the data is reaching the individual
citizen. My colleague, Frances Lynn of
North Carolina, and I also completed a
study of TRI use with support from the
Office of Toxic Substances. Our findings
supplement those of GAO's study, but they
also differ in some respects, and I want to
just mention one.
We found that public interest groups
which acquire the TRI data, reorganize it,
refold it, analyze it, apply it, summarize and
disseminate it to their constituencies, are the
vital link to ordinary citizens. One of the
environmental groups in our study put it
this way, and I am quoting: "People do not
ask for TRI directly, but the data will help
them with their problem. Most of our call-
ers have never heard of TRI. They just call
for help."
We conclude from this and other evi-
dence that asking whether every individual
citizen can access and understand TRI data
may miss the point. We should be asking
how well our society can support the orga-
nizations that are needed intermediaries or
bridges between people and complex infor-
mation about health and their environment.
Those helpers include citizen interest
groups, state 313 agencies and enlightened
industry, among a growing number. Citizen
groups in particular should not be viewed
as just an external client for TRI data. They
are for all purposes a vital link without
which the TRI's egalitarian purposes will be
an empty government promise.
Now our study includes other findings
about the accessibility of TRI, and the format
in which it needs to be available to make it
useful. We have advance copies for you of
a short summary that we prepared for EPA
and some are available out in the hall, and
Jan Erickson of the EPA staff will have some
in her track tomorrow.
One question we think needs scrutiny in
the future, that is not in our summary, is
how fiscally pressed states can most effec-
tively help people use TRI. For example/
Washington State is one which gives funds
to public interest groups to directly propel
outreach. That kind of partnership may be
effective, but there may be other solutions as
well. Another question is how TRI data is
being incorporated into media-specific waste
and other functional programs. We hope to
get EPA's green light to begin to pursue at
least some of these questions in the coming
year.
In general, we academics do need to do
more to monitor use of the TRI because we
all need objective yardsticks about the suc-
cesses, failures and solvable problems. TRI
is a test of whether environmental quality
can be induced and negotiated through
information as well as direct regulation, and
a lot rides on knowing whether environmen-
tal democracy is effective in that manner,
and good legitimate research can provide
information that anecdotes simply cannot.
Finally, one more comment. As a teach-
er, I have to say something about the role
TRI could and should play in education.
John Ridgway of Washington State's De-
partment of Ecology, who is out in the audi-
ence, recently told me of a Mott Foundation-
funded workshop that University of Wash-
ington faculty held to compare notes about
TRI use among key researchers, environ-
mentalists and state agency staff in the
northwest states. It is very useful to get
50
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
together small select groups like that, but we
can further pursue the educational uses of
TRI and we should. For example, I would
wager that we would benefit if those we are
training to be industrial process and safety
engineers became as aware of the TRI as are
at least some of the graduate students in our
environmental science curricula. Now
maybe that is Utopian thinking, but that is
part of what higher education is supposed
to promote in our society, along with mar-
ketable skills.
Eric Frumin
Mr. Frumin is the Director of Occupational Safety
and Health for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile
Workers Union, AFL-C1O, CLC. ACTWU repre-
sents approximately 250,000 workers in the United
States and Canada in the apparel, textile and related
industries. He is a leading national trade union
spokesperson on job safety and health issues, includ-
ing OSHA enforcement and occupational disease and
injury surveillance. He has helped shape numerous
OSHA health standards, such as Formaldehyde
(1987), Hazard Communication (1983), and Cotton
Dust (1978) which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme
Court in a landmark decision outlawing the use of so-
called "cost-benefit analysis" under OSHA. He
chairs the U.S. Labor Department's Labor Advisory
Committee on Occupational Safety and Health
Statistics. He has advised OSHA, NIOSH and
numerous medical organizations on ergonomic
hazards in the apparel industry.
On behalf of President Jack Sheinkman
and the 250,000 members of ACTWU in the
U.S. and Canada, I want to thank you for
the opportunity to speak at this important
meeting.
The Right-to-Know has been at the heart
of the trade union movement's program for
job safety for the last quarter-century, since
the first versions of the OSHAct were intro-
duced in 1967. After the OSHA law was
passed in 1970, we struggled for 13 years to
force the implementation of the Right-to-
Know provisions, including a direct confron-
tation with both the top management of the
chemical industry and the highest authori-
ties in the executive branch. Our persistence
was directly responsible for the Supreme
Court's stripping the Office of Management
and Budget of its authority to block regula-
tions mandating industry's disclosure of
chemical hazards to workers and the public.
In the aftermath of the horror inflicted
upon the people of Bhopal by the Union
Carbide Corp., we joined with the environ-
mental movement to expand the workplace
Right-to-Know to the community, Title III of
1986 Superfund amendments which estab-
lished the Toxic Release Inventory. This law
finally recognized what industry has always
known: that forcing the industry to share
information gives power to the industrially-
powerless.
Who are the powerless? They are com-
munity residents beset by the twin evils of
toxic chemical pollution and weak local
economies, and at the mercy of the power of
global corporations and markets.
The workers in these industries are also
often powerless. The majority of workers
are not members of any trade union. And
where there are unions, the unions are often
subverted and weakened by the notoriously
anti-worker legal framework for our basic
labor laws. Today, only 12% of our private
sector workforce is organized, and only 22%
in manufacturing, down from 70% at the
end of World War II.
Federal, state and local agencies are also
powerless when denied the authority to
force industry to prevent pollution in the
first place.
What we are really talking about today
is power, the practical ability to force pre-
vention programs on the polluters both
outside and inside the workplace. In the
case of TRI, power begins with knowledge.
Let us take an example close to my heart:
Since 1979, the 700 members and officers of
our Local 1481 in Northfield, Minn, have
been trying to prevent cancer, nerve disease
and other disorders from their exposure
51
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TR1 DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
to methylene chloride, perchlorethylene and
other chemicals in the production of circuit
boards for autos, appliances and many other
industries. Until 1989, we tried to force the
Sheldahl Co. to reduce the workers' expo-
sure to these solvents, with only limited
success. OSHA's standards were ridiculous-
ly high, and the health risks were not going
to show up for years or decades. In 1985,
after methylene chloride killed the requisite
number of rats and mice in animal tests, the
company continued to rely on the chemical
industry's phony reassurances that the stuff
was not so bad. Even after our members at
the Hoechst-Celanese Co. plant in South
Carolina showed an 8-fold increase in the
rate of death from liver cancer, the company
and its suppliers stuck to the Big Lie.
But when the 1988 TRI data first made
the headlines in 1989, things changed rapid-
ly. Sheldahl was listed first in Minnesota for
cancer-causing emissions 400 tons/year.
The data shocked the workers, as they had
no idea of the amount of methylene chloride
used, much less the extent of the pollution
problem outside the plant.
The other members of the community
town residents, employees of two colleges
and farmers began complaining. Some
people blamed the union. They said that
the union had been covering up the fact that
cancer-causing materials were used in the
plant. The local union responded that if
anyone in the town had been concerned
about the serious hazards the chemicals
posed, they could have discovered many of
the same things the union already knew.
Eventually, most agreed that more commu-
nication and education was needed, and that
the one party doing the least talking and
sharing the least information was the com-
pany and its suppliers.
So the company moved fast. Within a
month, it proposed a plan to eliminate 80%
of the usage of the chemical within 18
months, all the while never admitting to the
magnitude of the cancer risk to the workers.
For some people in the community, that
was not enough. "We want the plant shut
down now," a few people shouted. These
few showed no apparent concern for the
welfare of 1,200 company employees and
their facilities who had no other options
when it came to looking for comparable jobs
with decent pay and health insurance.
Other people were rightfully worried wheth-
er the state air pollution agency would
really force the company to stick to the
schedule.
But our local officers were not confused
or unclear about what was at stake. They
knew that three things were necessary:
1. They had to defend their jobs, which
the company wanted to subcontract to either
a non-union plant in South Dakota where
unions barely exist, or to other companies.
And the local was not prepared to rely on
the Minnesota Air Pollution Control Agency
to take 18 months to decide on a new per-
mit, by then the jobs could have moved to
South Dakota.
2. They had to force the company to live
up to its pollution prevention plan in order
to protect their own lives from the cancer
risk, a risk which was hundreds of times
higher than that suffered by community
residents. They also needed the emissions
stopped because many of them and their
families lived in the two trailer parks and
the apartment house right next to the plant.
3. They needed the community's sup-
port to do these things.
So they did what good trade unionists
do when their backs are against the wall
they stuck together and threatened to strike
unless the company put its pollution preven-
tion plan into the union contract
And by putting their livelihoods and
those of their families on the line, they
believed that the community, or at least
major parts of it, would support them, and
that the company would fear this.
52
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
I am happy to report that their strategy
worked in 1989. They got the contract
language which forced the company to
commit its capital investment funds to
pollution prevention and toxic use reduc-
tion, and to actively consult with the local
union and the community on the progress of
this effort.
In April 1991, the state agency finally ap-
proved the plan. In October 1991, the next
union contract was renewed with a new
toxic use reduction commitment. The use of
methylene chloride had already been re-
duced by 60%, and an additional reduction
of 38 tons/year is slated for 1995. However,
the plan is already ahead of schedule with
the current emissions presently at 36 tons.
Final elimination of methylene chloride is
likely because of the drop-off in military
orders, the customer most resistant to prod-
uct changes lacking methylene chloride. The
union contract also prohibits substitution
with other cancer-causing solvents in the
interim. The best news is that the company
is actually switching to water-based sol-
vents, which are flammable but can be
controlled with proper fire-prevention and
limited on-site storage.
So knowledge alone is very useful, but
by itself is only the beginning. In the case
of TRI, industry has cleverly anticipated the
effects of their forced release of this informa-
tion, and acted to protect their remaining
and substantial power. "You can trust us,"
they say. "We tell you the truth about
chemical hazards, so you know we are
committed to preventing pollution." As if
they ever volunteered this information
without the law requiring them to do so.
So what are we really talking about
today? It is democracy plain and simple.
And this country needs a big dose of it,
especially in the industrial sector where
there are few democratic structures today,
other than a diminishing trade union move-
ment under constant attack.
We need effective organizations both in
the workplace and in the community which
represent the rights of working people to
safe jobs, decent wages, a real national
health care program, and a real commitment
to pollution prevention and toxic use reduc-
tion.
Working class people are now making
this demand loud and clear. Just ask the
voters of Pennsylvania. And unless we
build those organizations quickly, we will
end up with something else to fill the de-
mand. We have had a bitter taste of the
alternative recently here in Louisiana. Here
comes David Duke, the man who talks
about environmental protection and protect-
ing people's jobs from the Mexico Free
Trade Agreement. He fools lots of people
into thinking he really gives a damn about
their problems. Yes, he preaches racism and
anti-Semitism as well, but that did not help
him really win all those votes. Across the
river, in Mississippi, Kirk Fordyce actually
won the governor's race with less blatant
rhetoric, and there are plenty more around
the country where he came from. The com-
mon people are in a rage.
In its 1988 poll, EPA found that worker
exposure to toxic chemicals was rated a
"very serious" environmental problem more
often than almost all other environmental
hazards (see page 57). Both working class
people and those with higher incomes have
understood the link between toxic exposures
on the job and across the fenceline (see page
58). Many people within EPA, the media,
and elsewhere have tried to minimize the
value of these popular opinions.
We all know better. Environmental
activists know that toxic chemicals on the
job are some of the most serious toxic haz-
ards. Even the EPA Science Advisory Board
has admitted that among the high-priority
risks to human health, worker exposure to
toxics deserves EPA's closest attention.
We all know that the existing TRI has
loopholes big enough to sail the Exxon
53
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Valdez through. We all realize that real
pollution prevention and toxic use reduction
means more than simply requiring better
reporting of emissions and even chemical
usage by more facilities.
That understanding obviously underlies
the "Community Right-to-Know More Act of
1991." We need this law not only because it
fills the major reporting loopholes in the
current TRI, but also because it forces indus-
try to directly establish pollution prevention
plans. We need it to give people in the
community and workers some real "say-so"
in the form of company/worker/community
committees to directly oversee these plans
and their implementation.
This "collective direct-action" model is, I
believe, a novel concept for the environmen-
tal movement.
But it is a model which union members
know well. If local union officers can do
anything, they can establish a committee
which regularly meets with management
and daily defends workers' interests from
the abuses of extremely powerful, profit-
hungry corporations.
We do not always win. hi fact, today we
are fighting for survival against a legal
framework, which looks like the state of
environmental laws in the 1960s or before.
But we win often enough to know how not
to get taken by companies talking a good
game. We know how to help poor and
working people represent themselves in a
democratic fashion.
The Community Right-to-Know More
Act is a good start. In addition to expand-
ing reporting requirements, it requires the
establishment of a tripartite work-
er/community/management Toxic Use
Reduction Committee to force industry to
actually stop polluting. Our members in
Minnesota understood the need for this from
day one, and so did the members of OCAW
local 4-620 at the BASF plant up the river in
Geismar. They fought for 4 years to defend
their union, and in the process sparked a
revitalization of the grassroots environmen-
tal movement in Louisiana which is still
shaking the foundations of corporate power
from New Orleans to Lake Charles.
That is democracy, the kind that Bush
talks about for workers in a few countries in
Europe. That is the kind of power-sharing
at the grassroots which the TRI can feed and
nourish. And it is missing from most work-
places in America today.
That is why the trade union movement
has taken the first new step in workplace
democracy and job safety in two decades. It
is called OSHA Reform (HR 3160; S. 1622),
and it was introduced on August 1, 1991,
three weeks after the Community Right-to-
Know More Act. And the two bills have
much in common.
OSHA Reform does many things to
strengthen OSHA's standards and enforce-
ment. It forces employers to establish safety
and health programs, similar to the Toxic
Use Reduction Programs required under
Title of the Community RTK More Act (see
page 59). But the centerpiece of the whole
bill is the mandate for employers with 11 or
more workers to establish joint labor-man-
agement Safety and Health Committees (see
page 60).
The bill also spells out the right of work-
ers to designate their own representatives on
these committees, to prevent employer dom-
ination of the committees, and imposes strict
prohibitions against on-the-job discrimina-
tion for any safety activities.
And what about the non-union work-
places? In this situation, which is still the
majority of all workplaces, the boss would
have to allow the workers to elect their own
representatives in a "free and fair election"
democracy plain and simple, right on the
job, to deal with health and safety.
With greater force than the Right-to-
Know More bill, OSHA Reform specifies and
54
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
protects the rights of committee members to
investigate workplace conditions and man-
agement records (see page 61).
OSHA Reform also mandates extensive
training for workers and the committee
members themselves (see page 62).
In addition, OSHA Reform will greatly
expand the database on toxic exposures
within the workplace (see page 63).
Finally, OSHA Reform will open up in-
dustries' files, and those of its medical con-
sultants, on the epidemic of occupational
disease throughout our country, and serious-
ly involve the independent medical commu-
nity in creating the first National Surveil-
lance Program for occupational injuries and
diseases (see page 64). This will have enor-
mous implications for improving the recog-
nition of environmentally-related diseases as
well.
For instance, in the area of lead poison-
ing, the numbers are truly frightening.
Looking at just New York City one of the
few places which has a reputable lead dis-
ease reporting system, we see preliminary
1991 data indicating 625 cases of childhood
lead poisoning, out of an estimated 385,000
children screened. However, without any
formal screening, there were nearly 500
cases reported in adults. What are the
comparable figures nationally? We have a
right to know this, too, and it is time for
industry, the medical profession, and federal
and state health departments to get this
information by any means necessary, and to
make it public. This includes the Associa-
tion of State and Territorial Health Officers,
a sponsor of this conference, which has
direct responsibility for both the success and
the failure of such reporting systems.
We have witnessed in the last few years
the worst tragedies in the twenty-year histo-
ry of OSHA's existence. As with the explo-
sion which killed 23 workers at Phillips
Petroleum in Houston two years ago, these
have included dozens of worker fatalities
from the multiple explosions throughout the
chemical industry in the Texas, Louisiana
and the Southeast, states with the weakest
unions, often involving some of the most
exploited workers many but by no means
exclusively people of color.
These tragedies have now culminated
into the most horrible of all the outra-
geous murder of the 25 defenseless, unorga-
nized workers at the Imperial Foods chicken
processing plant in North Carolina last
September 3.
The abuse of these workers was unusual
only in that it happened to so many so
quickly. In fact, more than twenty-five
American workers are killed in so-called
accidents every single day, or about 10,000
a year. An additional 50,000-100,000 die
from occupational diseases, many due to
toxic chemical exposure. That is a Vietnam
war every six months.
Unfortunately, we do not really know
how many are actually killed. As you may
know, most illnesses and even some deaths
and injuries from occupational and environ-
mental factors are rarely reported or investi-
gated by medical or public authorities in the
United Sates.
What about lead poisoning? And how
about silicosis, or occupational deafness, or
carpal tunnel syndrome? All of these are
widespread, affecting literally millions of
workers each year. Diseases such as lead
poisoning also threaten millions of other as
well, including children. The federal health
authorities are failing to keep track of these
at the national level, in part because so
many states are refusing to lift a ringer to
force the medical establishment to recognize
environmental and occupational disease.
Imagine, if you can, the effect of a national
reporting requirement for lead poisoning.
In the area of injuries, we have a national
database, but only on a sample of selected
employers. And no employers have to
report their injury data to OSHA directly.
55
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
OSHA Reform will change all that.
So I appeal to those of you who are
obviously committed to protecting our
environment to support OSHA Reform as
well. Join with the AFL-CIO, the American
Public Health Association, the American
Lung Association, leading toxicologists and
industrial hygienists who recognize the vital
importance of this bill. Talk to your col-
leagues indeed, even to our department
directors, governors and leading state legis-
lators. In our on-going struggle to block the
lunacy of an ill-conceived North American
Free Trade Agreement, we have all learned
that environmental activists and the labor
movement have much to gain by cooperat-
ing. Let us apply the same principle to the
hazards of toxic chemical exposures and
occupational injury and disease here at
home.
56
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1988 EPA POLL OF PUBLIC CONCERNS OF
"VERY SERIOUS" ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS
% PUBLIC:
HAZARD "VERY SERIOUS"
1. Active hazardous waste sites 62
2. Inactive hazardous waste sites 61
3. Worker exposure to toxic chemicals 60
4. Industrial water pollution 58
5. Nuclear accident radiation 58
6. Radioactive waste 58
7. Underground storage tank leakage 55
8. Pesticide harm to farmers 54
9. Pesticide residues harming consumers 52
10. Industrial accident pollution 51
-------
1988 EPA POLL
PEOPLE INDICATING
"WORKER EXPOSURE TO TOXIC CHEMICALS" AS
"VERY SERIOUS ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM"
GROUP % OF GROUP POLLED
ALL POLLED 60
AGE
18-29 68
30-44 59
45-59 54
60 + 51
FAMILY INCOME
LESS THAN $15,000 64
$15-25,000 66
$25 - 35,000 58
$35,000 + 61
OCCUPATION
EXEC 51
WHITE-COLLAR 60
BLUE-COLLAR 62
HOMEMAKER 72
UNION INFLUENCE?
- ONLY 9% OF TOTAL WERE UNION MEMBERS
- AMONG ALL POLLED, 52% STATED THAT
"UNIONS HAVE TOO MUCH INFLUENCE"
(HIGHER THAN FOR BUSINESS [44%] OR
ANY OTHER INTEREST GROUP)
-------
CLOSING THE LOOPHOLES AND
EMPOWERING WORKERS AND COMMUNITIES
ESTABLISHING PROGRAMS ON
WORKPLACE SAFETY AND TOXIC USE REDUCTION
OSHA REFORM
PROVISION [Section #] COMM RTK MORE
ESTABLISH PROGRAM YES [101] YES
Workplace safety
HAZARD ID & CONTROL YES N/A
INJURY/ILLNESS INVESTIG. YES N/A
HEALTH SERVICES YES N/A
WORKER PARTIC. YES YES
WORKER TRAINING YES NO
Toxic Use Reduction Plan
MGMT POLICY NO YES
TUR GOALS NO YES
EVAL OPTIONS YES* YES
SCHEDULE YES* YES
EFFECTS ON WORKERS YES YES
* Substitution or use reduction is often required by OSHA regulations on worker
exposure to toxics.
source: Dept. of Health and Safety, Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, 1/15/92
-------
CLOSING THE LOOPHOLES AND
EMPOWERING WORKERS AND COMMUNITIES
ESTABLISHING JOINT COMMITTEES
PROVISION
COVERAGE
JOINT COMMIT.
WHEN CREATE?
# WKR REPS
# COMP. REPS
# COMMUN.
OSHA REFORM
[Section #]
ALL EMPLOYERS [301-4]
EMPLOYERS WITH
11+ WKRS[201]
MANDATORY
1-6 (depending on
# of workers)
SAME
REPS NONE
HOW SELECT REPS? UNION OR
SECRET ELECTION
PROTECTION FROM
DISCRIM.
PAY FOR TIME ON
COMM. ACTIVITIES
WORKER REPS
COMMUNITY REPS
YES [601]
YES [201]
NO
EMPLOYER PROVISION OF
MAT'LS. & FACILITIES YES [201]
CQMM RTK MORE
ONLY EMPLOYERS
WITH10+WKRS
EMPLOYERS WITH
50+ WRKRS
UPON PETITION
3
3
NO RULES
NO
NO
NO
NO
source: Dept. of Health and Safety, Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, 1/15/92
-------
CLOSING THE LOOPHOLES AND
EMPOWERING WORKERS AND COMMUNITIES
PROVISION
DEVELOP:
OSH PROGRAM
"TUR" PLAN
REVIEW PROGRAM
MEET QUARTERLY
RIGHTS OF JOINT COMMITTEES
OSHA REFORM
[Section #]
YES [101]
N/A
YES [101]
AT LEAST [201]
MAKE INSPECTIONS AT LEAST QTLY [201 ]
INVESTIGATE
HAZARDS
COMPLAINTS
INJURIES
ILLNESSES
FATALITIES
[201]
YES
YES
YES
YES
INTERVIEW WORKERS YES [201 ]
OBSERVE MONITORING
OF TOXIC EXPOSURES YES [201 ]
RECOMMEND TO MGMT. YES [201]
DISSENTING VIEWS YES
RECOMMEND TO GOVT. NO
ACCOMPANY GOVT.
INSPECTORS
YES [201]
CQMM RTK MORE
N/A
NO*
YES
YES
NO
NO
N/A
N/A
NO
NO
YES
NO
YES
NO
* "Owner shall involve a spectrum qf employees ... in preparing plan"
source: Dept. of Health and Safety, Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, 1/15/92
-------
CLOSING THE LOOPHOLES AND
EMPOWERING WORKERS AND COMMUNITIES
TRAINING WORKER / COMMUNITY REPS ON
JOINT COMMITTEES
OSHA REFORM
PROVISION [All Section 1011 COMM RTK MQRc
ESTABLISH OVERALL
TRAINING PROGRAM
FOR ALL WORKERS YES NO
ESTABLISH TRAINING FOR
WRKR/COMM REPS YES NO
ANNUAL TRAINING YES NO
MORE TRAINING IF
CONDITIONS CHANGE YES NO
NEW LAWS/REGS YES NO
WRKR/COMM REPS ROLE
IN DESIGNING TRAINING YES NO
PAY FOR TRAINING TIME YES NO
source: Dept. of Health and Safety, Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, 1/15/92
-------
CLOSING THE LOOPHOLES AND
EMPOWERING WORKERS AND COMMUNITIES
DATA SYSTEMS FOR TOXIC EXPOSURES
OSHA REFORM
PROVISION * [Section #1 OOMMRTKMORE
PREPARE REPORT ON USAGE &
PROCESSING OF TOXICS:
"EXPOSURE ASSESSMENT" YES [406] N/A
"TOXIC USE RDCTN. DATA" N/A YES
MONITORING HUMAN
TOXIC EXPOSURES
IN-PLANT YES[406] NO
"FENCELINE" NO NO
PROVIDE TEST RESULTS
TO JOINT COMMITTEE YES [201/406] NO
REPORT TOXICS DATA TO EPA
LABOR DEPT. AND/OR NIOSH
TOXIC RELEASES NO YES
HUMAN TOXIC EXPOSURE YES [801] NO
TOXIC USAGE NO YES
PUBLIC ACCESS YES [801/803] YES
EMPOWERS STATE AGENCIES YES [905/1001 ] YES
source: Dept. of Health and Safety, Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, 1/15/92
-------
CLOSING THE LOOPHOLES AND
EMPOWERING WORKERS AND COMMUNITIES
DATA SYSTEMS FOR
OCCUPATIONAL/ENVIRONMENTAL INJURIES AND ILLNESSES
OSHA REFORM
PROVISION* FSection #1 OQMMRrKMQRP
IDENTIFY ILLNESSES FROM
TOXIC EXPOSURES YES [403/406 NO
801/802/805]
REPORT HEALTH EFFECTS TO
LABOR DEPT. AND/OR NIOSH
INJURIES YES [903] NO
ILLNESSES YES [801/905] NO
PHYSICIAN REPORTING OF
ILLNESSES/INJURIES YES [905] NO
PUBLIC ACCESS YES [801/803/905] N/A
EMPOWERS STATE AGENCIES YES [905/1001] N/A
* most Junctions carried out by employers or their physicians
source: Dept. of Health and Safety, Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, 1/15/92
-------
TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PRE\
Mark Schleifstein
Mr. Schleifstein is an environmental reporter for the
Times Picayune in New Orleans. He has reported on
environment issues for 12 years. This year he and
James O'Bum, now assistant metro editor for special
projects at the Times-Picayune, completed an 18
month investigation entitled "Louisiana in Peril,"
which culminated in the publication of four series on
the environment. The four series, which filled nearly
56 open pages, examined environmental impacts of
the state's chemical industry, hazardous waste dispos-
al, coastal wetlands loss and water pollution. Mr.
Schleifstein joined the Times-Picayune in 1984 after
working five years as a reporter and assistant city
editor at the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion Ledger. In
1980, he won the Edward J. Meeman and Women in
Communications, Inc. awards for environmental
reporting for a 36 page special entitled "Empire of
Waste" for the Clarion Ledger. That report detailed
hazardous waste abuses of Browning - Ferris indus-
tries. Mr. Schleifstein worked as a general assign-
ment reporter at the Norfolk, Virginia Virginian Pilot
from 1976 to 1979.
Sitting here, I made notes of things that
I wanted to say before I got into my talk.
First of all, I was trying to think about wrten
I first came across the idea of "Right-to-
Know." And I guess my earliest experience
with what I believe to be a "Right-to-Know"
issue involving chemicals happened when I
was working in the summers during high
school and college at a small company in
Miami that made heart pacemakers and
cardiac catheters. One summer I was work-
ing as a mail clerk driving between 15 or 16
individual little plants, within this corpora-
tion. They were in the midst of a major
expansion and had not moved into a real
building yet. One day the lab asked me to
bring a bottle of something over to another
facility. About halfway through Miami, I
started getting sleepy and I finally pulled
the car over to the side of the road and got
out to grab a breath of fresh air. 1 looked in
the back and there was this bottle of stuff
with the lid open and I looked on the label
and it said ether. I went back to the lab
after screwing the top back on the bottle and
screamed and yelled and said, "You should
have told what was in that bottle." And I
think that was one of my first expei
with right-to-know.
Another summer and I was working at
the same company making cardiac catheters.
Part of this process was you had to pull
pieces of wire that were covered with plastic
material through different materials. One of
the things that you had to do was send it
through a wire wrapping process. But
before the wire-wrapped material would be
coated with another plastic coating, the wire
had to be cleaned. This whole thing had to
be cleaned in a vat of methyl ethyl ketone.
It was open vat so my hands were in meth-
yl ethyl ketone all day long with no protec-
tion. It was only years later that I thought,
"Maybe I ought to know a little bit more
about what I am doing." Anyway, just some
thoughts about that.
Secondly, I personally believe that the
Emergency Planning and Community Right-
to-Know Act is a misnomer. It actually
should be "the Emergency Planning and
Community Right-to-Know if You Can
Afford It and if You Know Where to Get It
Act." An example of that is in your own
packet where the little data sheet from the
National Library of Medicine is. And it
reads: TRI is a component file of NLMs,
Toxnet System. On-line/off-line printing of
entire specific portions of records is avail-
able, as are a variety of customized print
options, special allow sorting and numerical
manipulation of data. Cost: $30 to $37 an
hour. Well, that is not including the cost of
the PC that you need to hook on or the
modem or the telephone time or anything
else. And most people, Mr. and Mrs. Joe
Smith out there, do not have that material
and do not know where to go to get in any-
way. They have never heard of Toxnet. So,
instead of spending this $30 to $37 an hour,
they rely on the 35 cent Times-Picayune to
get some of that information. So we spend
that money, or actually we spent a heck of
a lot more of it putting together this series.
Thirdly, there is the question of what TRI
does and how it has revolutionized both the
65
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
public awareness of chemicals, the news-
paper industry's awareness of chemicals, the
state agency's awareness of chemicals and
the industry itself.
TRI has forced states and the industries
and everybody else to provide this data in
one form or another in a rather regulated
fashion. The information is there, it is avail-
able. If you know where to get it, like I
said. It is generally in some computer
database somewhere.
But what is not there are records on the
historical aspects of the corporation, past
accidents, dumps, what is in those dumps,
prior disposal habits, things like that.
Where those records are in Louisiana are in
voluminous files that are in the DEQ offices.
In putting together this series that we spent
about two weeks just going through the
groundwater division files. Page after page
of information, just on groundwater prob-
lems of individual facilities. We looked at
17 different chemical plants in the state. It
took us about two weeks to go through
those files 8:30 to 5:30 every day. And, at
that point in time, Governor Roemer was in
office, and we had no problems at all getting
the files. I am not quite sure what it will be
tomorrow.
The interesting aspect, though, was one
day we were sitting there flipping through
these files, taking notes, marking things to
be copied for later use. The head of the
division came and he looked at us and said,
"You know, we have got to do that some-
day." And that also says a lot about Right-
to-Know. If the agencies themselves do not
know what their own files have inside them,
what is the public supposed to know.
Finally, as you can tell, for those of you
in the audience who work for an industry, I
am probably, at times, your worst night-
mare. Because I can do things like spend 15
to 18 months putting together four series on
the chemical industry and other environ-
mental problems in the state and I can get
your picture, the picture of your industry on
the front page. Like this, this is actually, I
know you cannot see this picture, but this
obelisk-shaped thing in the middle is the
building that Huey Long built, it is the state
capitol and behind it all that smoke and
haze is coming from Exxon's refinery, which
is a huge facility. I guess it is the fifth larg-
est refinery in the nation.
It is a great picture, it really did say a lot
about what our problems are in Louisiana.
We put on top of that a little score card,
which shows that we are first in toxic sur-
face water discharges. I should say, these
are 1988 numbers. Second in toxic ground-
water injection, second in discharges of
carcinogens, second importing hazardous
wastes. In our case it does largely go to
hazardous waste landfills. Second in overall
discharge of toxins. Fourth in toxic air
discharges. Forty-fifth in our residents
general health quality and forty-eighth, at
that time, in state environmental programs.
Anyway, as you can see, we have some
problems.
Louisiana Cajuns have a saying - laissez
les bon temps roulez - let the good times
roll. The economic good times rolled for
nearly half a century, fueled by the state's
abundant oil and gas supplies, its petro-
chemical industry and access to the Missis-
sippi River. But Louisiana's environment
has paid a rather drastic toll. Now, with the
oil boom gone bust, the state has faced a
continuous budget crunch and the worst
environmental problems potentially in the
nation.
In 1990, we embarked on our 15 month
investigation of our ecological problems.
Myself and my partner, James O'Byrne,
examined the repeated blows that we be-
lieve were dealt to the state's air, land, water
through decades of abuse and neglect. The
result was our series, which we called "Loui-
siana in Peril." We looked at four different
sections, actually, four different areas. We
looked at the chemical industry itself, which
we tried to define in terms that nobody had
before. Nobody had taken a basic look at
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
the industry and what it meant to Louisiana,
both in terms of the jobs that it produces,
the revenue that it brings to the state and
also in its environmental hazards. We also
looked at our state's hazardous waste pro-
gram. The fact that we have, at last count,
660 abandoned hazardous waste sites across
the state. There are more out there, they do
not have the staff to find them. We looked
at our wetlands. The state has one of the
largest coastal wetlands in the United States,
about 40 percent of the nation's wetlands are
here. And we are losing somewhere up-
wards of 30 square miles of wetlands a year.
And finally, we looked at Lake Pontchap-
train, which is the other way from here,
away from the Mississippi River, and why
nobody can swim along its edges and what
its problems are.
Interestingly enough, TRI data was very
little help to us in defining that problem
because most of the problems, the public
does not recognize this and different polls
have shown that. They believe that the
chemical industry causes the pollution in the
lake, but the reality is that the people cause
the pollution in the lake. It is basically com-
ing from urban run-off on this side, and on
the north shore of the lake the pollution is
coming from cattle farms and individual
septic tank systems that are just in disrepair.
Louisiana discharges more chemicals into
its environment than any state except Texas.
The state is a national leader in importing
hazardous waste from other states. The
state leads the nation in toxic discharges to
water. The state's coastal wetlands are
nurseries for 40 % of the nation's commer-
cial seafood catch, which is why our series
on erosion was so important.
A key feature of the project was an easy-
to-read map. At least we think it was easy
to read. We wanted to show the people in
the New Orleans area what pollutes them.
We put together this map and accompany-
ing chart that shows what each zip code's
pollutants are. And for instance, for 70094,
which is Waggamen and Bridge City, we
find that the top chemicals disposed or
otherwise emitted from that area are sulfuric
acid, 82 million pounds, ammonium sulfate,
64 million pounds, acetonitrile, 11 million
pounds, acrylic acid, 7 million pounds and
methanol almost 5 million pounds. The top
facilities are American Cyanamid, which you
have heard about earlier today, Avondale
Industries, which is a major shipyard, and
Gulf States Asphalt Company, which has a
very small amount. We point out that at
American Cyanamid, what we call a hot
spot, acetonitrile, we explain that they dis-
charge more than 11 million pounds in an
underground injection well and that it is a
suspected carcinogen, and some other bit of
information that we know about it.
We also provided, much to the chagrin
of a number of local industries, a series of
questions that people might ask of both their
local government and company officials
about what people are discharging in their
neighborhoods. That chart took a long time
to prepare. And one of the problems was
that the TRI data, although readily available,
was not readily understandable. We actu-
ally had to write a program to bring that
information into some form that we could
use at the time. I understand that there are
now programs available to the public that
do similar things to what we were doing,
but we were looking at specifics for zip
codes, we were looking at specifics for
certain segments of rivers.
It took a lot of time to do. The TRI data,
as others have said today, on Toxnet, is not
user-friendly, even though they say it is. It
is not in a form that reporters are able to use
on a day to day basis. Basically, when I try
to use TRI data, I end up going to an indus-
try source, ironically. The Louisiana Chemi-
cal Association provides a series of tables of
their industries with the individual data
points in a very easily readable fashion.
And today that is what I use. That informa-
tion was not available in the way that we
needed it for the series, so we had to put
together a variety of methods for pulling
that together.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
I do not know where else to go from
here, other than to say that the biggest
problem that I see with TRI data is assump-
tion. Especially in terms of what you all out
there in the audience assume that we in the
public and at the reporting end of things
will be able to do with that data. We were
able to do what we did because we could
throw a heck of a lot of money at it. Local
newspapers, small mom and pop operations,
are not going to be able to do that The data
are just in a form that is not usable very
easily.
In addition, it does not include the things
that we really need to do to make a real
story out of some of these questions. In
addition to knowing what a chemical plant
emits, we want to know the rest of the story.
We want to know if workers have been
injured, we want to know if there is a histo-
ry of releases. We want to know if there is
a past history of disposal of these same
chemicals that might be a danger to the
public. And that information should be
available in the same area, the same place,
where we can find it. And if there are
moves to be made to expand the TRI data-
base, those are the areas where I would
suggest that we go. We need to get the
state agencies involved in putting their
information on computer so that it is avail-
able very easily to the public and to the
press in a format that we can make sense of
it, and place these numbers into a context
where they are usable and understandable.
Thank you.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
TRACK SESSIONS
Track I: Use of the New TRI Pollution Prevention Data
Jim Craig, U.S. EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics - Pollution
Prevention Division
Track II: The Role of TRI in the State Programs
Lee Tischler, Executive Director, Minnesota Emergency Response Commission
Steve Hanna, California EPA - Environmental Information Division
Track III: Enforcement and Multimedia Permitting
Dennis Wesolowski, U.S. EPA - Region V
Track IV: Promoting Use of TRI Data
Linda Travers, U.S. EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics - Information
Management Division
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TRJ DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
TRACK I - USE OF TRI AND
POLLUTION PREVENTION
DATA
The objective of this session was to improve understanding
of pollution prevention data to be added to TRI in the 1991
reporting year. The session described the new data and
presented several individual facility case studies. The focus
was on potential uses of the new data and how the data may
be used to enhance current TRI data or to encourage pollu-
tion prevention. A wide range of panelists participated in
this track, resulting in a thorough and wide range of opinions
presented.
Track Leader and Coordinator:
Jim Craig, U.S. EPA, Office of
Pollution Prevention & Toxics
Track facilitator:
John Warren, Program Director,
Research Triangle Institute
Panelists:
David Allen, UCLA, Department of
Chemical Engineering
Tom English, Director,
Environmental Programs, Santa Clara
County Manufacturing Group
Ken Geiser, Director, Toxic Use
Reduction Institute, UMASS-Lowell
Hfflel Grey, National
Environmental Law Center
Sharon Johnson, Environmental
Chemist, NC Office of Waste
Management
Kevin McDonald, Senior Environmental
Planner, MN Office of Waste
Management
Fred Moore, Union Carbide
Steve Ross, Columbia School of
Journalism
Mark Schleifstein, Reporter, New
Orleans Times-Picayune
Ted Smith, Silicon Valley Toxics
Coalition
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Introduction
A case study for a hypothetical city of
150,000 people was created which had three
TRI reporters: a fertilizer company, a paint
formulator, and a furniture laminating
company. Data were created for those
facilities, and the panelists discussed what
they would do with the data, followed by
comments and suggestions from the audi-
ence.
In this session, five topics were discussed
at great length: 1) new data elements; 2)
specific uses; 3) conclusions about the pollu-
tion prevention data elements; 4) limitations
of the data, and 5) suggestions for future
EPA policies.
New Data Elements
For the 1991 reporting year, new TRI
data elements will be required. The new
requirements focus on pollution prevention
(source reduction) efforts. The changes will
allow assessment of source reduction activi-
ties and the resulting impact on waste and
release quantity. The major new data re-
quirements include:
Quantity of chemicals entering waste
(or otherwise released) to the envi-
ronment and quantity recycled on-
site and off-site - Current and prior
year quantity and estimates of quan-
tity expected in the next and follow-
ing year.
Quantity treated on-site and off-site -
Current snd prior year quantity
Changes in estimation procedures,
accounting methods, measurement
protocols, and other methods used to
develop quaantity information.
Desription of source reduction activities
implemented in the reporting year, tech-
niques used to identify source reduction
opportunities, and the effect of the activities.
Specific Uses for the Data
The speakers discussed several uses of
the new TRI data elements. Below is a brief
summary:
Develop case studies of facilities that
have implemented successful source
reduction programs, so that facilities
that need assistance can determine
how to implement similar programs.
Identify facilities that are either lead-
ers or laggards, to provide an under-
standing of what is required to re-
duce releases and to encourage fur-
ther reductions.
The data can be combined with exist-
ing data to assess risks and expo-
sures. Comparisons can be made
within a plant, or with other plants
within an industry.
Conclusions about the New Pollution
Prevention Data
The speakers outlined the new roles for
TRI and pollution prevention data:
The data provides a starting point for
cooperation between industry, public
interest groups, and government
groups.
The data can drive voluntary pollu-
tion prevention by indicating where
progress is occurring and highlight-
ing public facilities that are "good"
facilities.
The data can reinforce the environ-
mental protection hierarchy: source
reduction first, followed by recycling,
and disposal as a last resort.
Limitations of the Data
Although the data provide useful infor-
mation, there are still gaps. Therefore, the
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
data cannot be substituted for interaction
with industry. Summarizing what the track
participants felt were the limitations of the
data:
The data are inconclusive about how
"safe" a plant is7 they do not provide
a complete understanding or evalu-
ation of source reduction progress,
they do not assess worker exposure,
and they do not always provide suffi-
cient information to eliminate the
effects of production changes and
other confounding factors.
Suggestions for Future EPA Policies
The participants overwhelmingly agreed
that in order to enhance the credibility and
viability of TRI data, EPA should consider
the following improvements:
Decrease the lag time between when
data are submitted and when they
becomes available to the public - By
the time a TRI user completes their
analysis, an industry group may have
the next year's data available.
Release consistent data over time -
Trend data is important in order to
convince industry management that
releases must be reduced. If the
baseline jumps around from one year
to the next because of changes made
to TRI, it is going to be much less
powerful.
Provide additional guidance and defi-
nitions in filling out Form R - Also,
look for information to add and/or
remove from the form. Possibilities
include: materials accounting, facility
size indication, compliance history,
and commitments towards clean-ups
and release reductions.
All groups and players should investi-
gate ways to link TRI to other sources of
data (i.e., EPA databases for the air, water,
and hazardous waste programs, Census of
Manufacturers). Clearly, there is a need to
push for continuous improvement, not just
in implementing pollution prevention re-
porting by industry, but in streamlining the
reporting and encouraging progress by all
the players involved.
There was consensus that TRI is not the
last word on industry activities, it is only a
starting point for industry interaction with
EPA, states, media, public interest groups,
academia, etc. TRI should be looked at as a
compliance system with movement towards
using the inventory as a tool for learning.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
TRACK I -
PANELIST PRESENTATION SUMMARIES
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Dr. Tom English
Santa Clara County
Manufacturing Group
The Santa Clara County Manufacturing
Group (SCCMG) and twenty-five of its
member companies conducted a study to
determine the progress that member com-
panies have made in managing chemical
releases, and to support the public educa-
tion objectives of SARA Title III. In the
1987 base year, these twenty-five compa-
nies accounted for 71 % of the TRI releases
for Santa Clara County. Hence, they con-
stitute a significant sampling of Silicon
Valley's industrial environmental releases.
The SARA III data shows a remarkable
decrease in the weight of TRI chemicals re-
leased. A decrease of 74% or 4.3 million
pounds occurred between 1987 and 1990.
In order to provide a sense of perspective
on these reductions, a comparison of the
percentage reductions accomplished by
1989 by the United States, the state of
California, and SCCMG follows:
USA
California
SCCMG
18.7%
26.5%
62.0%
SCCMG's pace of reduction of TRI
releases has not slackened since a reduc-
tion of 1.0 million pounds (40%) occurred
in 1990. Trends for reduction of TRI che-
micals released are shown in the figure
below.
Air releases have decreased by 2.5
million pounds (68%) since 1987. A reduc-
tion of 890,000 (43.1%) occurred in 1990.
1.5 million pounds (59.4%) came from
decreases in Freon 113 releases. Other ma-
jor components of this air release reduction
are due to trichloroethane (14.7%), hydro-
chloric acid (10.2%) and dichloromethane
(5.6%).
POTW chemical releases have decreas-
ed by 443,000 pounds or 75% since 1987.
Most of this is due to the reduction of
sulfuric acid by 218,000 pounds, and hy-
drochloric acid 130,000 pounds. A reduc-
tion of POTW chemical releases of 41,000
pounds (21.6%) occurred during 1990.
Offsite chemical shipments were reduced
by 1.3 million pound which is an 88%
reduction since 1987. A reduction of 494,-
000 pounds (37.4%) came from acetone,
and 174,000 pounds (13%) came from tri-
chloroethane. A reduction of offsite chem-
ical shipments of 76,000 pounds (28.8%)
occurred in 1990.
A detailed examination of the TRI data
shows a broadscale effort to dramatically
reduce releases of most TRI chemicals. For
example, releases of twenty-seven chemi-
cals have been reduced by more than 40%,
while releases have increased for only six
chemicals. These reductions are not due to
the efforts of only a few companies. This
effort has been widespread among mem-
ber companies. For example, nineteen
companies have decreased their TRI releas-
es by more than 40%, while only four
companies increased their releases because
of starting new production lines. Overall
these twenty-five companies have accom-
plished TRI reductions of 74%.
These reductions in TRI releases were
accomplished by:
Modifying processes to reduce
chemicals purchased;
Recycling chemicals that are used;
Implementing alternative processes
to eliminate use of specific chemi-
cals; and
Substituting a less hazardous chem-
ical in the process.
SCCMG conducts an annual press
conference to share the TRI reductions
with the public. Since the total releases for
each company are shown at the confer-
ence, the companies compete with each
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
other to show reductions. This competi-
tion has significantly contributed to these
impressive reductions.
This study demonstrates significant
accomplishments of local industry in vol-
untarily reducing the releases of TRI chem-
icals to our environment. These reductions
were accomplished while maintaining
economic growth in Silicon Valley. Manu-
facturing, as well as hundreds of other
activities in our society, will always re-
quire the use of chemicals. These chemi-
cals must be used safely, and the public
needs to understand the potential and the
relative risk of chemical use. It makes
good business sense to ensure the health
and safety of its employees, the communi-
ty and our environment by controlling and
practically reducing chemical releases.
Ken Geiser
Toxics Use Reduction Institute,
Massachusetts
In five short years the Toxics Release
Inventory (TRI) has proved the valuable
role public information can play as a pro-
moter of environmental protection. Thou-
sands of national firms now report on their
environmental releases. Each year the
very act of reporting appears to play a
large role in encouraging industrial man-
agers to seek new technologies and practic-
es that will reduce the numbers they re-
lease the next year. The new emphasis
placed on reporting pollution prevention
data offers increased incentives to reduce
the volume of chemicals released to the
environment.
We can be proud of these accomplish-
ments. Yet, we cannot rest satisfied.
In several ways the new TRI reporting
form "Form R" provides new data
that can help us all to understand and
track changes in industrial practices. Be-
ginning next year we will have data on
off-site recycling, on-site recycling, on-site
treatment and the volume of all chemicals
released as "wastes". Not only will this
close information loopholes and add to our
knowledge of what is going where, this
will also more closely approximate a com-
prehensive output record on each report-
ing facility. (A complete output record
would require reporting the amount of
chemical released as facility products as
well.)
Still, a release record on each facility
can only tell us about one stage in the life
cycle of a toxic or hazardous chemical
the facility release stage. In order to ade-
quately measure, track and promote pollu-
tion prevention or toxics use reduction we
need additional data on chemical inputs
and chemical uses in industrial facilities.
Let me illustrate by turning to the case
study provided for this panel. Three
Pleasantville firms have reported their TRI
data and the question is how useful is this
data for promoting the state's new Toxics
Use Reduction program?
Let us just examine one of the facilities:
Great Paints. This is a paint formulator
with six reportable chemical releases:
chromium, zinc, lead, formaldehyde, ethyl-
benzene and MEK. From the release data,
we can see that the facility is reducing its
lead releases and, somewhat, increasing its
zinc releases. Source reduction programs
are reported for both chromium and lead.
This tells us that lead is being replaced by
zinc. The reduction in lead release is re-
ported as pollution prevention. From the
codes, we can see what techniques are
being used to accomplish this reduction.
Yet, there are limits to this data. Sub-
stituting the metals in the pigments is only
one form of toxics use reduction. Little is
revealed about the formaldehyde in the
resins or the solvents. Are there non-mela-
mine resins that do not require formalde-
hyde? Are the solvents used as carriers in
the product or cleaning agents? A move
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
from solvent-borne to latex paints could
reform the product so as to reduce the
solvents. This could also permit aqueous-
based cleaning to replace solvent cleaning
and further reduce tine solvents. Because
the reportings do not cover the product or
the chemical inputs, these ideas cannot be
further considered. Because the reportings
remain at the facility level, we have no
way of validating the numbers where the
facility may have several paint formulating
vats or operations.
In Massachusetts we too have a Toxics
Use Reduction law. Luckily, the Massa-
chusetts law requires additional informa-
tion from the firms. The Massachusetts
law passed in 1989, and this past year we
had 596 facilities reporting. By 1994 each
of these facilities will need to prepare
plans documenting how they will reduce
or eliminate their toxic chemical use of
toxic chemical by-product generation.
Beginning this past year (July, 1991), each
firm had to report all of the federal TRI
data as well as additional information.
This additional information includes the
amount of each listed chemical (by weight)
that is manufactured, processed or other-
wise used at the facility, the amount (by
weight) that is sent off-site as product, and
the amount (by weight) that is released as
by-products before any treatment or recy-
cling.
But the Massachusetts program does
not rely on facility level data alone. Each
firm must plan for and report on a smaller
unit than the facility called the production
unit. Each firm must identify the produc-
tion units and the products each produc-
tion unit manufactures. The reports on
chemical use or by-product generation for
each production unit are not reported as
raw data, but, rather, as reduction ratios
normalized against the amount of product
produced that year.
In Massachusetts we seek a more com-
prehensive set of data than the TRI data,
and to some degree we seek it at a finer
level of detail. Of course, we are only in
the first year of real reporting. There are
many bugs to be worked out. For in-
stance, nearly 80 percent of the first full
reportings had errors and needed to be
sent back for revisions.
Yet, the Massachusetts case does sug-
gest more of what we need in the federal
TRI data base if we are to adequately un-
derstand and track real pollution preven-
tion. To refer to an ail-too trite phrase,
"we have come a long way, baby," and
almost just as trite, "we have a ways to go
before we finish."
Hillel Grey
National Environmental Law
Center
1. What is Pollution Prevention?
The Pollution Prevention Act of 1990
establishes three key conditions to
distinguish prevention from waste
management
Change products, raw materials,
and technologies or activities that
make products or provide services
Exclude waste treatment and recy-
cling
Reduce toxic hazards to public
health and environmental media
An explicit focus on "toxics use reduc-
tion" (TUR) is needed
To prevent hazards linked to use,
not just wastes
Occupational exposure
Product use and disposal
Transportation, storage and
processing accidents
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TR1 DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Prevent shifting of toxics into prod-
ucts and workplaces
Stimulate innovation toward funda-
mental toxics prevention
Guide public policy, technical assis-
tance, and research
A growing number of states have pioneer-
ed TUR laws, especially Massachusetts and
New Jersey. Legislation, such as the Com-
munity Right-to-Know More Act (H.R.
2880), would adopt a comprehensive pro-
gram for toxics use and source reduction
at the national level
2. Multimedia Waste Data in TRI Re-
porting is Important
Multimedia wastes before treatment
or recycling
On-site treatment and recycling
Off-site recycling and the recycling
loophole
Non-routine, non-production releas-
es
3. The Proposed TRI Reporting Would
Not Be Adequate to Track and Pro-
mote Pollution Prevention
Materials accounting is needed to assess
pollution prevention
Manufactured, processed, and oth-
erwise used
Converted to another substance
("consumed")
Transferred as a constituent of a
product
Multimedia wastes before treatment
or recycling (PPA)
The proposed PPA data would give a
better picture of the waste stream than
current TRI. However, it lacks crucial
facility-wide information on chemical use,
manufacture, processing, and toxics in
products. Example: NJ and MA toxics use
reduction laws
Process-level information (e.g., H.R. 2880)
is essential
Appropriate focus for reporting and
goal-setting
Reliable tracking of toxics use and
source reduction
Public right-to-know about chemi-
cals uses
Fair analysis and comparison of
different products
Flexibility in assessing changes in
product lines
Facility-wide production ratios are
faulty
Without materials accounting and process-
level indicators, the proposed TRI source
reduction data can readily misrepresent
pollution prevention or new toxic hazards
at facilities
'Toxics shell game" may shift
wastes to workplaces or consumer
products. (Case study example)
Changes in product mix within a
facility may give a misleading im-
pression of source reduction (Case
study example)
Waste data may not reflect increas-
es in toxics manufacture or use.
Should the public be informed
about increases in potential toxic
hazards? (Case study example)
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
The proposed production ratios to
normalize data may be vague or mis-
leading
There is no workable aggregate
measure for dissimilar products in
a facility "Such
(waste/production) ratios become
less meaningful as waste data are
aggregated from various produc-
tion units within one facility, OTA
(1986), also concluded that waste-
reduction data should be process-
specific or production-unit-specific,
because facility-level reporting
would be too complex to obtain
meaningful data." NRC (1990), p.
48
Need to account for new produc-
tion lines and products
Faulty choices for production ratios
or ratio adjustments
Wastes that are unrelated (nonlin-
ear) to production
Inappropriate changes in account-
ing and estimation methods
The calculation of quantity prevented may
be misleading
National or industry-wide evaluations
would be seriously compromised without
materials accounting and better process-
specific information
4. Problems with 33/50 Continue
The serious flaws of the EPA's 33/50 In-
dustrial Toxics Project would remain de-
spite the proposed TRI data. Notably,
33/50 goals still focus on emissions, which
may be reduced by either prevention or
waste treatment/recycling. There would
not be sufficient data to evaluate toxics use
and source reduction gains or claims.
5. Conclusions
The wastestream and source reduction
data available through the Pollution Pre-
vention Act is a significant improvement
of TRI. It quantifies the multimedia
wastes from production processes before
these wastes are further treated or repro-
cessed. It also asks companies to quantify
source reduction claims.
But the wastestream data only tells half
of the story. No information is available
about quantities of chemicals manufac-
tured, used in workplaces, or put into
products. Moreover, the production ratios
may be useless or misleading for facilities
with multiple products or production pro-
cesses. Pollution prevention efforts, in-
cluding reporting and goal-setting, should
focus on production units within facilities.
Without a more complete picture,
source reduction claims and reported
waste data may appear to show pollution
prevention, or reduced toxic hazards,
when that would not be the case.
The new TRI data does not meet the
urgent need to direct prevention efforts
toward the uses of toxic chemicals, not just
wastes. Proposed federal legislation (HR
2880, the Community Right-to-Know More
Act) would give citizens full information
about toxic chemical use, allow more reli-
able tracking of toxics prevention, and
stimulate industry to prevent all of the
problems associated with toxic chemical
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Sharon Johnson
NC Pollution Prevention
Program
1. Waste Reduction Management System
Use of TRI Data in WRMS
Data used to supplement TRI
NPDES
Pretreatment
NEDS
Hazardous Waste Annual Report
Use of WRMS by industry
2. 33/50 Program Targeting
Target Great Paints as part of 33/50
Program
Governor's letter encouraging par-
ticipation
List of services offered by PPP
including information packages and
on-site technical assistance
3. Targeting Based on New Pollution
Prevention Data
Request participation of companies
reporting source reduction activities in
case studies or information sharing
Plant Grow
Great Paints
George's Boards
Target industries to receive PPP servic-
es information offering free technical
assistance
Target by SIC Code
Target based on quantity released
Target non-attainment areas
Target based on toxirity of chemi-
cals released
Prepare industry-specific or technology-
specific waste reduction information
packages
Target by SIC Code
Target based on quantity released
Target non-attainment areas
Target based on toxicity of chemi-
cals released
Target specific industries or processes
for training courses and/or seminars
Target research and grant monies
Kevin McDonald
MN Office of Waste
Management
I. TRI and the MN Toxic Pollution Pre-
vention Act
New multimedia pollution prevention
law
TRI reporters develop non-public pre-
vention plan
Planners complete public progress
report annually
TRI reporters pay pollution prevention
fees ($0.02/lb)
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TR1 DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
2. TRI Pollution Prevention Data Sup-
plements MN Law
MN planning/progress reporting
Recycling and treatment data (8.2 - 8.5
&8.8)
Production ratio and activity index (8.9)
Optional information on past efforts
(8.16)
Methods to identify activity (8.11)
3. MN Use of TRI Pollution Prevention
Data
Pollution prevention evaluation report
Projecting impact of prevention on
statewide releases
"Source Reduction Activities (8.11)"
valuable information on successful
methods and technologies
"RCRA Hazardous Waste Affected
(8.14)" and waste min aspects of
CERCLA capacity assurance
Possible data quality/enforcement
applications
Public use of data likely will increase
Future policy-program development
targeting programs
4. Proactive Efforts to Increase Data
Quality
Essential program element
MN TRI-pollution prevention work-
shops
Trade association, chambers and techni-
cal assistance
Frederick Moore
Union Carbide Chemicals and
Plastics Company
1. Public Use of the New TRI Data
Assumptions
Hierarchy
Intrinsic and dispersive use of chemi-
cals
2. Assumptions
Sharing of data with the public
Reinforcement of the hierarchy
Difference between intrinsic and dis-
persive chemical use
3. Accountable to the Public
4. Preservation of the Hierarchy
5. Consistent and Credible Data
6. Intrinsic and Dispersive Use
Dispersive use
Use may equate to release
Intrinsic use
Use generally does not equate to re-
lease
7. Definition of Recycle in New Data-
Base
8. Conclusions
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Steven S. Ross
Columbia Graduate School of
Journalism
As with all TRI data, there is an expec-
tation that journalists will use the informa-
tion to explain toxics use for their readers
and listeners. Indeed, the Pollution Pre-
vention data hold out that possibility. But
lack of direct comparability with data
generated for RCRA, NPDES, and other
data sources will produce many traps for
the unwary. This presentation describes
how journalists might use PPA data, and
the limitations of such use.
1. What a Journalist Looks For
Depends on journalist/media
Differences in expertise
Chemophobia
Concern with general public vs.
safety officers (fire, police)
Local vs. national/regional
Year-to-year comparison
(Is company "improving"?)
Industry comparison (How dean is
clean? Compare with other plants in
same industry)
Impact on community (Is the plant
"safe"?)
Routine releases
One-time events
Corporate mindset (Is company a
"good citizen"?)
2. Decoding the Activities
This year vs. last year
Reductions attributable to PPA
Uncertainties
Due to "fuzziness" of Form R re-
porting categories
Due to nature of precess industries
State pollution prevention activities
(NJ, MA, etc.)
3. Industry Comparison
By 4-digit SIC codes
Sources of comparison inaccuracies
Form R problems
Regional differences
Old vs. new plant
Product mix within SIC (different
paints, for instance)
Comparison basis
Waste/product shipped ratios
Waste/employee ratio
Waste/$ volume
Often, will look at similar plant run by
same company, if one exists
Incompatibility with RCRA, etc.
What journalist will do to reconcile data
4. Community Impact
Follow outputs through community
Land, air, etc.
Recyders
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Sources of information on impacts
References
NJ data sheets
Special needs/situation of community
Odd geographical features
Water supplies, etc.
5. Company/Industry Mindset
These data are small part for local story
These data are large part for national
or regional surveys
What data might tell us in national/re-
gional survey
Economic constraints
6. Access to Data Sources
NLM TOXNET
RTK Net
Other databases
"Live" expertise
7. Lessons and Recommendations
Mark Schleifstein
New Orleans Times-Picayune
Pleasantville's three major industries
generated almost 25 million pounds of
hazardous wastes in 1991, according to fig-
ures released by the federal Environmental
Protection Agency, making the town the
15th biggest producer of toxic wastes in
the state.
Pleasantville ranked third in toxic
waste production among towns of the
same size in State, and among the top 15
percent of towns in the nation, according
to EPA data.
But only about 2.6 million pounds of
that total actually were released to the
environment, according to the EPA figures,
including about 15,000 pounds of a variety
of wastes that ended up in the Pleasant-
ville Landfill and another 12,300 that were
burned in the Megalopolis incinerator.
Under federal Right-to-Know legisla-
tion, EPA collects data from industry on
the releases to the environment of a vari-
ety of chemicals it regulates and makes
that data available to the public.
In Pleasantville the biggest generator of
waste chemicals was Plant Grow Corp.,
which makes nitrogen-based fertilizers.
The company generated 24.6 million
pounds of waste, mostly ammonia. But
much of the waste was recovered and
reused in the fertilizer manufacturing
process, or sold to other companies, ac-
cording to EPA figures.
"Pleasantville is ahead of schedule,"
said Bob Sierra, secretary of the State De-
partment of Environmental Protection.
"The town already has experienced a 22
percent overall reduction of emissions in
only one year."
But Sierra said that was due almost
solely to the efforts by Plant Grow.
"We have really worked on knocking
down our ammonia emissions by revamp-
ing our production process," said Plant
Grow manager Josh Shmoo. "We are spen-
ding another $1 million on research into
other areas where we can cut emissions
this year, and we have hired an outside
contractor to do sniffing tests on the am-
monia pipelines that criss-cross our site to
help reduce fugitive emissions."
Plant Crow's wastes included:
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Ammonia, 17.8 million pounds, down
from 24.9 million pounds in 1990.
About 2.2 million pounds of the 1991
wastes were released to the environ-
ment, either through permitted releases
to the air or the Trout River, or
through minor leaks to the air from
equipment The rest of the wastes
were either recycled or treated on site.
Plant Grow also reported to EPA that it
reduced the amount of ammonia it
generated in 1991 by 6.7 million
pounds through changes in its produc-
tion methods.
Sulfuric acid, 2.4 million pounds, the
same as in 1990. About 16,600 pounds
were released to the river, and about
11,000 pounds were held in a surface im-
poundment on the site. Another 2 million
pounds were recycled on-site and about
320,000 pounds were treated.
Methanol, 4.4 million pounds, up from
4.1 million in 1990. About 230,000
pounds of the material was released to
the environment, mostly to the air in
permitted emissions. The rest was
treated on-site.
The town's two other industries, Great
Paints Corp., and George's Boards, gener-
ate much smaller amounts of wastes.
However, Great Paints recycles much of its
wastes, mostly solvents, while George's
Boards has no treatment or recovery oper-
ations for its sole pollutant formaldehyde.
Sierra said he is concerned about the
amount of wastes from Great Paints that
ends up being buried in the city's landfill.
"While these wastes are being treated
before they are buried, we are just not
happy that they are ending up in the
ground," Sierra said. "We want them to
look at other ways of dealing with their
wastes."
Great Paints has had a history of dis-
posal problems, according to DEP files.
Last year, the company entered into a
consent agreement with the state and the
EPA to remove 200 tons of soil contami-
nated with solvents, zinc and hexvalent
chromium, several of which are cancer
causing materials, from an old dump site
on the plant's property.
"The cleanup would cost about $30
million," Great Paints President Bill Crooks
said, "and take about 10 years."
Sierra said he also has ordered his staff
to meet with George's Boards officials to
determine how to drastically reduce the
formaldehyde emissions that plant is re-
leasing into the air.
"We know they have a permit, but that
plant is just too close to the Blackberg
neighborhood. These people have been
complaining for a number of years about
those odors," he said.
"This is just another case of environ-
mental racism," said Joe Johnson, president
of the Blacks in Blackberg Residents Asso-
ciation. "My family and my neighbors
have lived here since sharecropping times.
You know we did not have any say in let-
ting that company build there, and we do
not have any say in it dumping that stuff
on us day and night, either."
And Pleasantville Mayor Jim Crooks
said he is concerned about the company's
use of the city's sewer system for treat-
ment of some wastes.
"We are getting just a bit concerned
with the frequency of upsets at the city's
treatment plant caused by that stuff,"
Crooks said, "and I have talked to George
Wood about finding another way of dis-
posing of it."
Pleasantville was cited seven times last
year by the DEP for violating its own
pollution discharge limits, after formalde-
hyde wastes from George's Boards killed
the bacteria used to treat wastes in the
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city's treatment plant. One of those inci-
dents resulted in a major fish kill on the
Trout River, with, more than 30,000 trout
found dead stretching from Pleasantville to
the south of Megalopolis.
That incident resulted in bad feelings
between the two towns, as residents of
Swank, the posh riverfront development in
Megalopolis, complained about the odors
of dead fish that lasted for two weeks last
July.
Pleasantville's chemical wastes are only
a small percentage of those produced in
the nation. According to the federal Envi-
ronmental Protection Agency, industry
produced 19 billion pounds of toxic chemi-
cals that were either disposed or released
into the environment in 1991. That was a
1.9 billion-ton, or 9.1 percent, reduction
from 1990.
Almost half of that reduction in pollut-
ants resulted from pollution prevention
measures involving at least one chemical
used in about a third of the nation's in-
dustries, according to EPA figures.
Ted Smith
Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition
1. Overall Strategy Use the Data to
Identify Leaders and Laggards
Identify and promote effective technol-
ogies, processes, and companies
Identify and seek to change, phase out,
or replace harmful technologies
Focus attention on companies (and
their leadership) that fail or refuse to
implement effective pollution preven-
tion policies
Focus on waste stream in order to
promote source and use reduction
TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
2. Technical Issues
Develop simple data base for data analysis
Other research and information necessary
to do analysis
Toxicity data Roadmaps, NLM,
RTKNET, etc.
Review available epidemiological data
cancer, reproductive outcomes, etc.
Exposure analysis air modeling and
monitoring, meteorology data, water
monitoring, demographics, etc.
Define hazards of current disposal
methods incineration, dumping in
river, air pollution, etc. Conduct
monitoring
Compare data with data from compara-
ble companies and with past years'
data
What alternatives are available? How
effective and costly are they? What are
the impacts on jobs? Is a transition
plan necessary?
Is more R&D necessary to develop
alternatives?
ID barriers to pollution prevention
economic, technical, social, inertial
i.e., short-term profit pressures, mil-
specs, etc.
Conduct political and economic re-
search to ID pressure points
Verification
Plant tour and inspection with commu-
nity and union experts
Distinguish real from phantom reduc-
tions
Examine permit data RCRA,
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
NPDES, state, local for permit limits,
inconsistencies, inaccuracies, etc.
Mass balance
3. Community Education and Organizing
Tactics
Organize in most affected neighbor-
hoods work with local community
organizations and institutions neigh-
borhood groups, schools, etc.
Work with union, if possible
Develop "Good Neighbor Agreement"
strategy
ID allies and opponents form broad-
based coalitions
Develop media strategy to dramatize
the problems, frame the solutions, get
maximum attention and focus on the
issues you define
4. Data Inadequacies
No reliable use data
Insufficient process-specific data
No effective inspection or monitoring
system to verify data
5. Next Steps
Improve data reporting requirements
and fill in data gaps
Right-to-Know -> Right-to-Act
Incentives and sanctions
R&D initiatives
Industrial policy
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
TRACK II - THE ROLE OF TRI
IN STATE PROGRAMS
The Toxics Release Inventory was first publicly avail-
able in the spring of 1989 and since then there has been a
dramatic, albeit uneven, evolution in state TRI programs.
While some states have only a few resources allocated to
their TRI programs, other states have developed sophisti-
cated computer databases and reports, multimedia enforce-
ments, and pollution prevention programs that could be
used as blueprints for other states' and the federal govern-
ment's environmental programs. The panelists in this
track, representing state governments, environmental
groups, academia and industry, discussed the past, present,
and future role of TRI in state environmental programs.
Track Leaders:
Morning Session: Lee Tischler,
Director, MN Emergency Response
Commission
Afternoon Session: Steve Hanna,
Chief, Environmental Information,
Track Coordinator:
Eileen Fesco, U.S. EPA, Office of
Pollution Prevention and Toxics
Panelists:
Ken Geiser, Director, Toxic Use
Reduction Institute
Joseph Goodlier, Manager,
Emergency Planning, Illinois EPA
Sharon Kenneally-Baxter, Analyst, VA
Department of Waste Management
Richard Kleiner, Public Affairs
Director, LA Chemicals Association
Joel Lindsey, Former Deputy Secretary,
LA Dept. of Environmental Quality
Paul Orum, Coordinator, Working Gr-
oup on Community Right-to-Know
John Ridgway, Supervisor, Community
Right-to-Know, WA Department of
Ecology
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Introduction
The four major topics covered during the
sessions were: 1) packaging the data; 2)
resources and funding issues; 3) new pro-
grams and legislation resulting form TRI,
and 4) TRI in the future.
Packaging the Data
Packaging of data is the process of
collecting, recording, analyzing, and final-
ly, releasing the data to the public. The
necessity for packaged data was widely
agreed upon, as indicated by Richard Klei-
ner, LA Chemical Association, who stated
"We need to be proactive instead of reac-
tive." Many states, industry organizations,
and other groups release national/state
reports and other analyses of the TRI data.
The participants did, however, acknow-
ledge a potential risk in packaging the
data. While states issue their reports with
specific numbers, sometimes focusing on
individual facilities, the federal govern-
ment summarizes the states' information in
their reports. The states, therefore, need to
be conscientious and collect extremely
accurate information in order to avoid
further disparities when the federal gov-
ernment summarizes the information, and
vice a versa. The participants noted that
the length of time it takes for EPA to pro-
cess the forms and make the data accessi-
ble is problematic.
The states that are packaging the data
are receiving positive responses from envi-
ronmental groups, citizens, media, and
even from industry. Paul Orum, from the
Working Group in Community Right-to-
Know, noted that many public interest
groups receive the TRI data from the state
rather than from the TRI national database.
Industry is pleased to know that some-
thing is being accomplished with the filing
of this information. The importance of
explaining what the TRI data means was
emphasized by a number of state represen-
tatives. It was also recommended that the
facility be contracted for clarification on its
release reports.
States' opinions differed significantly
regarding data interpretation. Some states
maintained that their role as TRI coordina-
tors was simply to receive the information,
process it, and quickly release a report,
without providing a lot of additional anal-
ysis of the data. While other states do
include analyses and discussions on expo-
sure and risk in their reports.
Resources and Funding
There is great variation between the
states when it comes to their TRI pro-
grams. Last summer, Cindy DeWulf from
the Ohio EPA, conducted a survey on the
status of various states' TRI programs. It
reviewed the range of TRI program fund-
ing sources, a summary of her results,
which follows, was presented in the track
session.
Funding Source
Ten states responded that
they have no funding for
their TRI programs
Twelve states indicated that they
are turning towards fees for fund-
ing their TRI program
Twenty states getting monies
through the general revenue
Twenty states have received EPA
grants, and five states indicated
other resources
Level of Funding
Ten states said that they have no
monies for their TRI program
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Six states reported funding levels
from $1,000-$65,000
Two states reported funding levels
from $65,000-$100,000
Eight states have funding levels in
excess of $100,000
Thirty-five states indicated that
their funds support a TRI staff of
one or two employees
These numbers dearly indicate the
limited resources available for TRI at the
state level. State officials are concerned
about the resources that will be needed to
process the new pollution prevention ele-
ments/ and where the states will turn for
these resources. In addition, many states
wonder if the passage of the Right-to-
Know More legislation will overload the
system.
There was some discussion on using
penalties and fines to fund the TRI pro-
grams. Some states indicated that enforce-
ment should not be the sole revenue
source for a TRI program. Funding for the
program could be lined out of the states'
budget. Many agreed that it is appropriate
for the fines to go into the states' General
Revenue Fund. Some states also felt that
the use of "Environmentally Beneficial
Expenditures" as a part of penalty settle-
ment could be used to promote pollution
prevention. The panelists had mixed opin-
ions on these issues and/ indeed, some
states are using penalty stipulation agree-
ments to fund portions of their TRI pro-
grams.
The states with fee programs strongly
recommended the system to the rest of the
states. Fee programs not only provide
revenue for administering the program but
they also encourage pollution prevention
and more careful reporting by facilities.
New Programs and Legislations
All of the panelists agreed, as stated by
Paul Orum, that 'TRI helped create the
climate to establish pollution prevention
programs." The panelists offered several
examples of new pollution prevention
programs and legislations. A few exam-
ples include:
Washington has passed a fee-driven
Toxic Use Reduction Act, which
they expect will result in a 50%
reduction in releases by 1995.
Starting with the larger reporters,
facilities will be required to provide
a reduction plan. And, in order to
promote cooperation, Washington,
developed an agreement with
RCRA.
Minnesota, which already has a
Pollution Prevention Act, is looking
to establish a variation of the 33/50
program.
In Illinois, university students have
been assigned to facilities to help
implement pollution prevention
programs.
Massachusetts has established a
Toxic Use Reduction Program and
has expanded the SIC coded cov-
ered beyond those 20-39 cases cov-
ered under EPCRA.
EPA Air Division uses TRI data to
develop a list of air toxics for fur-
ther regulation. Also, EPA is in the
process of electronically integrating
environmental information by de-
veloping a "tie-file" containing mul-
tiple program facility identifies.
Finally, panelists suggested imple-
menting facility "scorecards", as
well as a common facility identifi-
cation.
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TRI in the Future
s
Participants agreed that the future of
TRI is unclear because the data are in a
constant state of flux - addition/deletion
of chemicals, changing forms, new pollu-
tion prevention reporting requirements,
and "Right-to-Know More" efforts. Some-
one asked if it "would not be more effi-
cient to have EPA focus on the develop-
ment of standardized software than to
have each individual state spend its own
resources for developing software that is
incompatible among the states?" The gen-
eral feeling was that the states need assis-
tance from EPA to develop and maintain
systems. If the system is standardized,
some states may be able to enter the data
for EPA or at least have greater control
over the availability of the data. It was
agreed that EPA and the states need to
discuss the options available and work to
promote the consistent, reliable and timely
production of TRI.
The participants had several sugges-
tions regarding future TRI reporting. They
suggested that magnetic media submittals
be encouraged in order to speed-up the
time it takes to make TRI data public.
This was a major concern in all of the track
sessions. Also, questions were raised
about the use of optical scanning, specifi-
cally, concerns regarding the error ratios
associated with this type of reporting.
These questions will be pursued in future
years. Paul Orum, Working Group on
Community Right-to-Know, cautioned
about "regulatory creep" in the TRI report-
ing process. As more and more require-
ments are added to TRI, there is a risk of
harming the Right-to-Know aspect of TRI.
Working with other agencies to encour-
age a multimedia approach to pollution
prevention is seen as an obvious evolution
of both state and federal programs. Also
more effort needs to be made in the public
outreach area, particularly working to
explain what the data mean, e.g. providing
a more detailed "facility profile".
TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Generally, all participants agreed that
TRI has been very useful particularly in
promoting pollution prevention.
Finally, there were comments on the
need for packaging TRI and other Right-to-
Know information, such as hazardous
chemical inventory. And, concerns were
raised about the future availability of risk
management plans. That information can
be used to create a facility profile that can
aid local planning.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
TRACK II -
PANELIST PRESENTATION SUMMARIES
95
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Ken Geiser
Toxics Use Reduction Institute,
Massachusetts
The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) can
play a valuable role in tracking and pro-
moting pollution prevention and toxics use
reduction/ but more work is required to
realize this potential
1) The opportunity to package the TRI
data in ways that increase its public use-
fulness appear endless. Many state agen-
cies and state public interest groups have
compiled state data in special state toxic
chemical release reports. The media has
been quite creative in presenting the data
as well. Mapping the data seems to be
particularly appealing. A San Francisco
television station produced a highly useful,
four color, fold out map in 1989.
Yet, there remains great potential in
citizens accessing the data and preparing
reports or maps themselves. The Institute
has initiated a highly innovative project
that will engage middle-school aged chil-
dren in accessing data about pulp and
paper production.
2) There are two types of resources:
institutional and financial. In Massachu-
setts we are trying to mobilize the univer-
sities and research centers to support pol-
lution prevention. One way to do this has
been to encourage researchers to consider
joint projects that involve the TRI data.
Financial resources can be produced by
reporting fees. Several states (Kansas,
Ohio, Florida) have tried reporting fees on
the TRI reporting alone. Massachusetts
sets a reporting fee on toxics use reduction
reporting. This also serves as a filing fee
on the TRI reportings.
3) The Massachusetts Toxics Use Re-
duction law is based on the TRI reportings.
The initial list of chemicals, the reporting
thresholds and the date of reportings are
all carefully coordinated with the federal
TRI requirements. This coordination was
agreed to because the authors of the legis-
lation believed that this would reduce the
filing burden placed on firms. The initial
calculations over the filing fee were based
on estimates of the number of firms filing
under the TRI.
In setting priorities for the Massachu-
setts program, both the Institute and the
state technical assistance program have
relied on the TRI data. An initial analysis
of the largest volume releases in the state
led to a commitment on the part of both
agencies to work on solvents as an initial
priority.
4) In the future the TRI program needs
to be expanded if it is to adequately track
and promote pollution prevention. In
particular
The list needs to be expanded to
cover additional chemicals.
The range of SIC codes needs to be
broadened to include more firms.
The reporting points need to be
increased to cover data on chemical
inputs and chemicals released as
products.
Joseph Goodner
Illinois EPA
Packaging the Data
The Illinois Environmental Protec-
tion Act (Act) requires the Illinois
EPA to send copies of Form R to
any Illinois resident upon written
request.
The Act requires that Form R be
available for inspection and copy-
ing during regular work hours. An
environmental group used this ac-
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
cess to compile data for a report
focusing on a subset of the list of
toxic chemicals; numerous news
media representatives have used
this access as background for geo-
graphically focused articles and
series.
The Act also requires the Illinois
EPA to publish an annual report
summarizing toxic chemical release
information.
Though not required by the Act,
lists of facilities and their releases
for each county are sent to the chief
executive officer of each county.
Agency staff are often asked to
discuss the Toxic Chemical Release
Program and data at informational
seminars sponsored by a variety of
citizen, industrial and professional
groups.
Resources and Funding Issues
The Illinois Toxic Chemical Inven-
tory (TCI) program operates with
one full-time staff person/ a pro-
gram manager who dedicates ap-
proximately one-half of his time to
the program and the annual data
input effort which takes four opera-
tors approximately two months to
accomplish, incidental clerical sup-
port and approximately one month
of effort by a graphic artist in prep-
aration of the annual report.
Funding is obtained from two spe-
cial source funds which contain
money from certain hazardous
waste fees and penalties collected
through environmental litigation
along with a small and diminishing
amount of general revenue funds.
The Agency has attempted to estab-
lish a Form R filing/processing fee
through legislative initiatives for
four years with no results; efforts to
establish a fee are continuing.
New Programs and Legislation
The Illinois Environmental Protec-
tion Act was amended to require
the public availability and reporting
of information previously men-
tioned, to require a computer data-
base (the TCI) which included Form
R information and to require that
Form R be submitted to Illinois
EPA, which gives the Agency legal
authority to initiate legal action
against non-filers.
Beginning in September of 1988,
TCI data was used by the Agency's
air division to develop a list of air
toxics for further regulation pursu-
ant to state legislation; the data is
currently being used to identify
specific facilities as the Agency's
overall air toxics program, includ-
ing elements of the CAAA, is de-
veloped.
The Illinois Toxic Pollution Preven-
tion Act (TPPA) created the Office
of Pollution Prevention (OPP) with-
in Illinois EPA. The OPP adminis-
ters a voluntary pollution preven-
tion planning program, an industri-
al materials exchange service and a
graduate intern program. TCI data
was used to identify facilities for
the planning effort and is used
annually to target facilities for ac-
complishment of pollution preven-
tion activities for the graduate in-
tern program. OPP has also used
TCI data to support federal 33/50
program efforts in Illinois.
TCI data is used to evaluate facili-
ties for addition to regulation under
the Illinois Chemical Safety Act
(ICSA), which requires contingency
planning by individual facilities to
deal with chemical and oil releases.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
The Agency has efforts underway
to electronically integrate environ-
mental information by developing a
"tie file" containing multiple pro-
gram facility identifiers to facilitate
use of this information to support
environmental policy decisions,
utilizing such tools as a Geographic
Information System (GIS) for infor-
mation evaluation.
The Future
The TCI will be utilized by all Ag-
ency media divisions to assess total
risk as contaminant loading in
geoecological regions such as air-
sheds, drainage basins and aquifers
in Illinois.
Efforts to assure compliance with
reporting requirements and data
quality will intensify.
Illinois will continue to promote
submission of toxic release informa-
tion on magnetic media to mini-
mize data entry and quality control
efforts given limited resources for
program management.
Efforts will continue to integrate
environmental information, includ-
ing TCI.
Efforts will continue to make TCI
data available, throughout the Ag-
ency, to other users outside the
Agency and to the public through
electronic and other imaging
means.
Steve Hannah
CAEPA
Overview
California has the largest number of
filers nationwide
TRI funding is approximately
$120,000, which funds one data
processing position and temporary
help
Data are distributed by Sept. 1
Data are distributed and manipulat-
ed for anyone requesting informa-
tion, usually free of charge
An annual report is sometimes pro-
duced
State Data Entry
This was discussed as a separate item
in the afternoon because of the expressed
in the morning session. California has
been an advocate of state data entry prior
to the first reporting year.
New Programs
California is taking steps to obtain
statutory authority to collect TRI forms
from an expanded facility universe. This
is aimed at using TRI data as a compre-
hensive quantitative source of information
for multimedia programs such as pollution
prevention.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Sharon M. Kenneally-Boxter
VA Emergency Response
Council
Packaging the Data
a. Database: The Virginia Emergency
Response Council (VERC) has main-
tained its own database containing
facility identification information and
release data since 1988. At present, the
database is housed on a local area
network on DBase IV. Data quality
efforts include returning forms to facili-
ties for correction/completion and rec-
onciliation of Virginia and EPA data-
bases.
b. Industry Outreach: From 1988 to 1991,
fifteen one-day TRI workshops were
presented with an attendance of ap-
proximately six hundred per year.
Invitations are sent to all manufacturers
within the state (approximately 3200).
These sessions, held in various loca-
tions throughout the state, have been
produced in cooperation with the Du-
Pont Company and Region III of the
Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA). Each workshop covers regula-
tory requirements; changes in the
chemical list and reporting require-
ments; release estimation techniques;
and waste minimization/pollution
prevention case studies and informa-
tion. Current guidance documents are
also provided to each participant. In
1992, the focus of the workshop will
shift from TRI compliance to the new
requirements of the Pollution Preven-
tion Act of 1990, as a result of requests
from industry.
c. Annual Summary Report: Annually, a
TRI summary report is prepared by the
VERC (the report for calendar year
1990 should be available in February).
The reports are produced to facilitate
the use of the TRI data throughout the
state. Within the reports, the TRI data
are summarized in the following six
categories: environmental media to
which the releases occurred; chemical
reported; reporting facility; Standard
Industrial Classification code; county;
and city.
Others, most notably environmental
groups and the media, have also been
involved in analyzing the TRI data. A
report produced by the Appalachian
Regional Sierra Club in 1989 focused
on air releases reported for calendar
year 1988. This report was completed
and released during Congressional
hearings on the Clean Air Act amend-
ments. In 1990, the Environmental
Action Foundation published "The
Toxic Trail," a report focusing on sev-
eral counties in the southwestern re-
gion of Virginia along the corridor of
Interstate 81. In 1991, the Virginia
Citizen Action published "Poisons in
Our Neighborhoods - Toxic Pollution in
Virginia." Newspaper coverage has
varied from articles outlining Virginia's
national rankings to stories focusing on
a particular region or city.
d. Citizen Suits: In 1990, ten Virginia
firms were notified by the Environmen-
tal Action Foundation (EAF) of their
intent to sue over noncompliance with
Section 313. Some of the notices in-
cluded other sections of the law as
well. EAF spent months researching
various environmental reports submit-
ted by the facilities (NPDES water
permits, air permits, RCRA hazardous
waste reports, EPCRA Sections 311 and
312 reports, etc.). Many of the facilities
have since submitted TRI reports; in
some instances, the facilities submitted
reports for the past three years at one
time. EAF has negotiated settlements
with at least two facilities to date that
require the facilities to explore toxics
use reduction. In addition, funds from
the settlements have been directed to
the Virginia Environmental Endow-
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
ment to support toxics use reduction
training throughout the state.
e. Toxics Task Force Work: The Secre-
tary of Natural Resources, Elizabeth
Haskell, is very interested in develop-
ing mechanisms to track Virginia's
progress in reducing releases of toxic
chemicals. To this end, Ms. Haskell
convened the Toxics Task Force in
1990. One activity recently undertaken
by the Toxics Task Force was an analy-
sis of the 33/50 chemicals in Virginia.
Resources and Funding
a. Resources: The VERC is currently
staffed by six full-time and two part-
time staff positions. As Virginia has
not formally adopted the EPCRA legis-
lation as state law, the VERC currently
has no authority to collect fees or re-
quire any additional information be-
yond that required by EPCRA. The
VERC oversees the activities of 114
local emergency planning committee,
including the review of emergency re-
sponse plans submitted under Section
303 of the law. Program responsibili-
ties under EPCRA have been divided
primarily between two agencies: the
Departments of Waste Management
(DWM) and Emergency Services
(DBS). DES reviews plans submitted
by local emergency planning committee
and oversees the training and staffing
of the eight regional hazardous materi-
als response teams currently in exis-
tence. DWM is responsible for collect-
ing, organizing and disseminating the
various reports received under Sections
302, 304, 311, 312 and 313 of EPCRA.
b. Funding: Funding for the DWM SARA
Title III program is approximately
$300,000, of which $67,000 is devoted
to TRI. Currently, .5 of a full-time em-
ployee and one part-time employee are
devoted to Section 313 activities. The
VERC is projecting expansion to one or
two full-time positions and one part-
time position in the next few years.
New Program/Legislation
a. Integration of SARA Title III and
Pollution Prevention Programs: hi
April of 1991, the SARA Title III and
the Pollution Prevention Programs (also
known as the Waste Minimization
Program) of the Department of Waste
Management were merged. This reor-
ganization reflects the growing interde-
pendence of TRI and waste reduction
activities. At present, the primary
activity of the Waste Minimization
Program is the Interagency Multimedia
Pollution Prevention (IMPP) project,
which seeks to avoid the shifting of
wastes from one environmental media
to another through cooperative efforts
of the three primary Virginia environ-
mental regulatory agencies, the Depart-
ment of Waste Management, the De-
partment of Air Pollution Control and
the State Water Control Board. Tasks
associated with the IMPP project in-
clude agency staff pollution prevention
training and outreach for targeted in-
dustries.
b. TRI Program Enhancement Grant:
Virginia was awarded a $19,000 data
consolidation grant in late 1991. This
funding will support the integration of
the SARA Title III databases, currently
separated by year and reporting re-
quirement. The final database will
enhance the ability to conduct data
trend analysis, such as progress on the
33/50 project and increase the VERC's
ability to accept reports under all sec-
tions on magnetic media.
c. Proposed Consolidation of Virginia
Regulatory Agencies: Currently, two
proposals to create a single, compre-
hensive environmental regulatory agen-
cy are before the General Assembly.
At present, three different agencies
administer the major environmental
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TR1 DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
regulatory programs: the Department
of Waste Management, the Department
of Air Pollution Control and the State
Water Control Board. While each
agency is currently using the TRI data
to some extent, if a single agency is
created, the TRI data would likely
become a "scorecard" of that agency's
progress, thus enhancing the role of the
TRI data and, therefore, reinforcing the
demands for toxics use reduction.
Richard Kleiner
Louisiana. Chemical
Association
LCA 1st Industry Group to go Public
with TRI. Why?
Voluntary public disclosure was a
necessity, not an option
Public opinion is driving environ-
mental performance efforts
Public concern about the environ-
ment, pollution and health in Loui-
siana is very high
Citizens perceive industry as secre-
tive, untrustworthy
Louisiana's emissions are large,
causing more concern
LCA members account for 87% of
all Louisiana's emissions (1990)
(Figure 1).
Decided to lead with TRI and es-
tablish dialogue, not react
Purpose and Objectives
Purpose of the report is to provide
Louisiana citizens and LCA members with
a complete, factual analysis of member TRI
emissions trends.
The TRI report meets LCA objectives
to:
1. To publicly disclose emissions per-
formance
2. Provide timely, thorough response
to public concerns
3. Measure, promote industry perfor-
mance internally
New Pollution Prevention Programs
LCA will continue to use TRI data to
track member performance under a num-
ber of mandated and voluntary pollution
prevention and emissions reduction pro-
grams including:
LA Air Toxics Reduction Act
LA Ozone Task Force efforts
- LaDEQ Corporate Response
Program
- EPA 33/50 Program
- CMA Responsible Care Pollution
Prevention Code
LCA will continue to oppose misappli-
cation of TRI data, such as the factoring of
TRI emissions as part of the criteria for
determining eligibility for industrial tax
exemptions under the new Louisiana Envi-
ronmental Scorecard.
- Although LaDEQ touted the score-
card as a pollution prevention in-
centive, it penalizes many compa-
nies already making significant
investments to reduce emissions
and waste.
- Applicants are given points based
on the ratio of pounds of emissions
to the number of jobs supported by
the facility. We do not believe TRI
data should be used as a litmus test
for determining a company's "envi-
ronmental correctness" or to set up
102
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a scheme that labels a citizen's job
"clean" or dirty."
It makes no regulatory sense for
DEQ to penalize companies for TRI
emissions that the agency itself
legally permits!
LCA's Role in .the Future
Continue to use TRI as a bench-
mark for tracking performance
LCA will continue to invest in
pollution prevention and emission
reduction programs. LCA mem-
ber's emission reduction efforts
represent 98% of Louisiana's total
reduction from 1987-90 (Figure 4)
Continue to share ideas with DEQ,
EPA and CMA
Continue to promote public dia-
logue with TRI
Begin tracking, analysis of pollution
prevention data
Support Louisiana State University
Institute for Recyclable Materials
LA Gulf Coast Waste Exchange
clearing-house
Assist CMA with national chemical
industry TRI report
Packaging the Report
A contractor gathers and compiles the
data and writes the narrative with direc-
tion and guidance from an LCA task
group.
Structure/ format and design was based
upon an excellent model, the 1987 EPA
TRI National Report.
TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
LCA also reviewed recent TRI summa-
ries released by environmental groups
(National Wildlife Federation, Greenpeace)
to help identify areas of concern that we
should also address in our report.
Report's unique features include:
1. Facility summaries explaining
emission changes
2. The first attempt to look at
carcinogens
Report designed to promote public
access, dialogue:
1. Address, phone contact for each
facility
2. Chemical specific list on each
facility
3. Facilities listed and emissions
tallied by parish (county)
4. Report sent to each parish
library
Public Communication
Each fall, LCA publicly disseminates
the report statewide:
1. Editorial board visits
2. News releases to all media
3. Copies to LaDEQ/ other key offi-
cials, legislators, EPA, environmen-
tal groups and Local Emergency
Planning Committees
Resources/Funding
TRI report will continue to be an
LCA priority budget item
Production and printing cost about
103
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
$20,000 annually
Will be working with the contractor
and LCA Waste Minimization
Committee to determine added
costs for tracking new data
requested on waste generation
and pollution prevention
104
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FIGURE 1. TOTAL RELEASES & TRANSFERS
BY LCA MEMBER FACILITIES, 1987 to 1990
1000
Millions of pounds
800
600
400
200
781.2
All chemicals: down 50.9% from 1987 to 1990
All chemicals: down 7.5% from 1989 to 1990
1987
1988
1989
1990
-------
Reduction Efforts
120
100
FIGURE 4. LOUISIANA AIR TOXICS LAW
EMISSIONS BY LCA MEMBER FACILITIES
Millions of pounds
1987 1988 1989 1990
LCA reduction: 30% from 1987 to 1990
Statewide goal, all sources: 50% by 1996
-------
Pollution Abatement Spending
Louisiana Chemical Industry
700
GAC Actual
GAC Estimated
Capital
Gross Annual Costs and Capital Expenditures, 1974-1990, U.S. Bureau of Census
Gross Annual Costs 1990-2000 based on EPA estimates, in constant 1989 dollars
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Joel Lindsey
LA Department of
Environmental Quality
Toxic emissions in Louisiana declined
48% from 1988-1991. A major factor lead-
ing to this decline was public awareness
stemming from passage of Right-To-Know
legislation. Louisiana issues an annual
report each year tracking discharges by
facilities and parish.
The TRI data allow for comparison
between states and facilities. This provid-
2ed new insight to judge pollution reduc-
tion steps, such as Louisiana's Corporate
Challenge. This program resulted in a
commitment from the 30 largest discharg-
ers to reduce toxic emissions 75% over the
next three years. This projected decrease
will mean Louisiana will be fourth behind
Texas, Ohio, and Tennessee.
Another use of TRI data was to tie
industrial tax exemptions to toxic emis-
sions. Facilities that had low discharges or
- had an approved waste reduction plan
received a higher score. Plant managers
saw this as a real incentive to reduce tox-
ics.
TRI information played a role in multi-
media waste reduction programs. Review-
ing each medium separately often led to
transferring waste from one medium to
another rather than an overall reduction.
This approach placed the focus on real
reductions. In one case, Freeport McMo-
ran committed to a 75% reduction in three
years.
TRI data formed the basis for air toxic
reduction legislation. Selection of chemi-
cals was determined by the volume and
toxicity. Passage of this legislation man-
dated a 50% reduction of 100 chemicals by
1996.
TRI assisted in identifying contaminat-
ed waters. Monitoring of rivers and
streams alone is not adequate, other data
coupled with field information helps to
determine toxic discharges. In one inci-
dent in Lake Charles, Louisiana, TRI assist-
ed in pinpointing a major source of pollut-
ants.
Risk assessment is another area TRI
played a role. Emissions' data assisted in
identifying the degree of environmental
risk assigned to air toxics, and water dis-
charges.
Paul Orum
Working Group on Community
Right-to-Knozv
1) Packaging the Data
Basic dynamic: time lag on federal
data leads many activists and re-
porters to the states for TRI num-
bers.
Computerization and electronic
submission are needed to reduce
the costs of data management.
Activists serve an important link in
getting the data out.
Resource: list of TRI reports (fuly-
August Working Notes).
Most of the reports received press
coverage.
Most of the reports were not pre-
pared with data from TOXNET.
Key factors in state reports: 1)
facility specific data; 2) chemical
specific health effects data. Both
were omitted from EPA's first an-
nual TRI report. Also looked for
preventive versus control oriented
analysis.
108
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Test of state reports this year: did
they analyze reasons for reductions
(control, prevention or phantom
reductions)? (Showed Appendix 11
from Citizen Fund's "Manufactur-
ing Pollution" report as a model.)
Suggested EPA's "Roadmaps" ma-
trix for health effects data.
2) Resources and Funding
Relationship to enforcement: a
positive relationship between re-
porting and resources aids enforce-
ment.
Relationship to accuracy of report-
ing: fees on emissions encourage
emissions reductions (real or phan-
tom); fees on forms/facilities en-
courage use (or volume) reduction.
Thus/ program goals are implicit in
funding mechanisms.
Citizens Suits: can reduce pollution
(fines forgiven in exchange for
company TUR program); can pro-
vide some funding to LEPCs (fines
directed to LEPCs).
Right-to-Know builds constituencies
for other programs, and is an in-
vestment of resources in other envi-
ronmental programs.
Additional information sources:
National Governor's Association
document "A Survey of State Ac-
tions" and Ohio compliance bro-
chure to assist LEPCs.
Fines are not a substitute for sub-
stantive programmatic funding.
3) New Programs
TRI plays an important overview
function to help tie programs to-
gether.
TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
TRI helped create the climate for
passage of state TUR and pollution
prevention laws. Those most sup-
ported by environmentalists are the
TUR (toxics use reduction) progr-
ams, i.e., MA, NJ.
Additional information resource:
"An Ounce of Toxic Pollution Pre-
vention" by the Center for Policy
Alternatives and the National Envi-
ronmental Law Center. Rates ele-
ments of pollution prevention laws:
1) definition; 2) planning require-
ments; 3) reporting requirements; 4)
worker/community involvement; 5)
technical assistance; 6) state author-
ity; 7) funding.
4) Future of Right-to-Know
Overhead diagram - progression of
data collection: 1) EPCRA, 2) Pol-
lution Prevention Act, 3) proposed
CRTK More Act.
Chemical use data is where the real
work on pollution prevention be-
gins.
Expansion of chemical lists is im-
portant to find out if other regula-
tory laws are working.
"Regulatory Creep" into TRI,
through fees on emissions and
requirements tied directly to right-
to-know, builds pressure to limit or
restrict reporting. For example,
EPA has received about 50 petitions
from industry to take chemicals off
the right-to-know reporting list.
New regulation should be "de-
linked" from TRI (NOT the same as
suggesting the new regulations are
not needed!).
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
John Ridgway
WA Department of Ecology
Washington State has been very active
in its efforts to implement a successful
pollution prevention program. In 1990, the
State legislature passed the Hazardous
Waste Reduction Act (HWRA), which is
based in part specifically upon Toxic Re-
lease Inventory (TRI) reports.
In Washington, any business which
generates 2,640 pounds of regulated haz-
ardous waste (RCRA and State Dangerous
Waste), or has to file a form R under Sec-
tion 313 of SARA Title III (TRI), must
prepare a waste reduction plan. This plan
is to have an executive summary, which is
to be sent to the State's Department of
Ecology for review. The goal of this legis-
lation is to achieve a 50% reduction in the
annually reported generation of hazardous
waste by 1995. This goal is to be met
through voluntary efforts on the part of all
generators, rather than a mandatory re-
quirement upon each generator. However,
if the goal is not met, there is a good
chance the State will revise the legislation
to be more demanding. The legislation is
to be funded in part through fees based
upon generated waste volumes and a fixed
fee per facility.
In the last year, the State has had to
take a dose look at TRI for a variety of
reasons. There have been a number of
issues related to TRI which are generating
some questions and concerns. This outline
will give a general overview of those is-
sues, and how Washington hopes to deal
with them.
1. How is Washington packaging the
data for the public?
Washington has not had the oppor-
tunity to prepare and distribute a state
report of TRI results. However, we do
have a well publicized "Hazardous
Substance Information Office" which
maintains a toll-free hotline. This ser-
vice is listed in almost every phone
book in the State and spends a large
percentage of time making the TRI data
available. If requested, it can be given
verbally, on a floppy disk (copy of
EPA's), or in print, broken out in any
format the staff can reasonably accom-
modate. This seems to provide the
public with an easy way to receive and
digest the TRI data in a personalized
manner.
Further, there are a number of local
agencies and public interest groups
who receive the entire TRI data and
then work with it to analyze the infor-
mation to address their particular inter-
ests or reflect the community in which
they live.
2. What are the resource and funding
issues for TRI and the HWRA?
For TRI, limited resources exist
Washington has recently been awarded
a grant from EPA to work with TRI
data in the "Data Capabilities Pro-
gram." This will substantially improve
the State's capacity to review and im-
prove the data's usefulness. Up to the
present, the staff resources to work
with TRI data have had to be shared
with all of the other EPCRA programs
and the hotline services.
For the pollution prevention activi-
ties, the State is authorized to Collect $1
million per year for technical assistance
to be provided to the regulated facili-
ties. This will be collected in the form
of a fee, based upon reported hazard-
ous waste volumes generated the previ-
ous year. Further, additional funding
will be available for administration of
the HWRA.
3. What new programs and legislation
have been established for pollution
prevention?
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
As noted above, the State's 1990
HWRA is the foundation for the State's
activities. It is currently in the rule-
making process and has nearly com-
pleted a test case with voluntary facili-
ties, which have been working with the
State to work out details of how the
required pollution prevention plans are
to be written and reviewed.
4. What may/will/should happen in the
future with the TRI program in Wash-
ington?
The TRI program in Washington is
managed by two staff, who have many
other responsibilities. In spite of this
limitation, the program intends to gen-
erate its first state report by mid-1992,
as a result of the EPA grant. Immedi-
ately following, the report and its infor-
mation will be delivered not only in
writing, but also in the form of presen-
tations to county and city councils,
environmental groups, and the various
written, radio and television media. It
is believed that the real key to encour-
aging and supporting public under-
standing of its limitations, usable infor-
mation and implications, can best be
met through this type of direct presen-
tation.
The pollution prevention compo-
nent is relying upon the TRI data to a
large degree. This means more empha-
sis must be seen in TRI reporting com-
pliance and understanding. The pollu-
tion prevention efforts will be tried on
a voluntary basis by the facilities; how-
ever, if the intended goals of a 50% re-
duction are not seen by 1995, the
State's legislature will likely make some
portions of the HWRA mandatory.
Lee Tischler
MN Emergency Response
Commission
The Minnesota Emergency Response
Commission, Department of Public Safety,
is responsible for managing the TRI pro-
gram. While the Commission processes
the data and provides public access to TRI
and other community right-to-know infor-
mation, other agencies, including the Pol-
lution Control Agency, Office of Waste
Management, and Department of Health,
have used the TRI data in existing pro-
grams and to develop pollution prevention
programs.
The Commission prepares an annual
report which identifies the releases and
transfers from each TRI facility in Minne-
sota. The report is widely distributed and
has increased interest in the data and its
application at state and local levels. After
the first annual report was prepared in
September 1989 for reporting year 1988, a
steering committee, which included repre-
sentatives of environmental groups, indus-
try, and state agencies, was established to
discuss pollution prevention. From this
committee, the Minnesota Toxic Pollution
Prevention Act of 1990 evolved. The Act
requires TRI facilities to develop pollution
prevention plans and submit annual prog-
ress reports. Grants and technical assis-
tance for pollution prevention initiatives
are available; and TRI facilities are ass-
essed fees based on the number of chemi-
cals and amount of releases and transfers.
Since the TRI data provides the founda-
tion for the Minnesota Toxic Pollution
Prevention Act, compliance and data quali-
ty are important TRI program issues.
Through a U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency grant, the Commission was able to
identify 142 new reporting facilities, to
identify common errors in reporting, and
to improve the accuracy of release esti-
mates. Minnesota believes that data quali-
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
ty will be critical for assessing pollution
prevention accomplishments in future
years.
The Commission has designed a com-
puter database system to track all data
collected under EPCRA. The TRI compo-
nent is undergoing modifications to allow
access through modem and to include the
new source reduction data fields and relat-
ed summary reports. The Commission
enters selected data fields from Form R.
The Commission has the equivalent of 1.5
personnel to manage the data, provide
technical assistance, and oversee compli-
ance from the 540 TRI facilities. The Com-
mission also has enforcement authority. A
recent U.S. EPA grant will allow the Com-
mission to expand its enforcement efforts.
The TRI program will continue to
evolve in Minnesota both in scope and
application. The Commission has recom-
mended an SIC Code expansion at the
state level, if no national expansion occurs.
The Commission has identified a number
of non-manufacturing sectors for expan-
sion. Source reduction components will be
reviewed to track pollution prevention
progress and compared with reporting
under the Minnesota Pollution Prevention
Act. Annual reports issued by the Com-
mission will be significantly changed to
include source reduction information.
Public outreach should expand consid-
erably. Media and public interest in TRI
data and pollution prevention progress
will require the Commission to develop
mechanisms for increasing data availabili-
ty, for applying data at the local level, and
for interpreting data in terms of health and
environmental risks. Local communities
will expect assistance from the state in
negotiations between industry and com-
munities on pollution prevention issues.
Community Right-to-Know efforts may
need to evolve into community right-to-act
initiatives. Minnesota and other states will
be faced with developing greater expertise
in risk screening and communication and
on the negotiations of "good neighbor"
agreements. The Minnesota Department of
Health has a key role in health risk assess-
ments and has included TRI in its outreach
efforts to physicians on environmental
issues in primary care. The Department of
Health has also prepared chemical fact
sheets to explain the risks associated with
the TRI chemicals that have the largest
releases in Minnesota.
Data quality will remain a concern
about the TRI data. Proposed legislation
in Minnesota would require greater moni-
toring of toxic chemicals. Until media
programs become more confident with TRI
data quality, the opportunities for greater
data integration will be limited.
Finally, the Commission intends to
encourage local emergency planning com-
mittees to be familiar with TRI data, and
to apply the TRI data in local planning for
accident and pollution prevention.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
TRACK III - ENFORCEMENT
AND MULTIMEDIA
PERMITTING
The objective of this session was to explore the range of
state compliance and enforcement activities, identify the
successes of state, federal and citizen enforcement efforts,
and identify opportunities for improving the EPA-state
working relationship. Issues addressed during this session
included: enforcement priorities of EPA and states, coor-
dination between EPA and states, establishment of fee
systems, conducting citizen enforcement action, targeting
methods, and data quality enforcement. The panelists
presented an analysis of their enforcement experiences, fol-
lowed by a discussion between the track panelists and
participants.
Track Leader:
Dennis Wesolowski, US EPA,
Region V
Track Coordinator:
Bridget Sullivan, U.S. EPA, Office
of Compliance Monitoring
Panelists:
Cindy DeWulf, Supervisor of TRI,
OH EPA
Steve Hanna, Chief, Environmental
Information, CA EPA
Casey Padgett, Environmental
Action
Suzy Peck, Toxics Use Reduction
Program, MA Dept of Environmental
Protection
John Ridgway, CRTK Supervisor, WA
Dept. of Ecology
James Tinney, Director, PA CRTK
Program
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Introduction
The goals for the track were to ex-
change information on options for the state
section 313 enforcement or compliance
programs, discuss appropriate roles for
state EPAs, identify state enforcement
priorities, and discuss enforcement poli-
cies. This session made it clear that there
is no right way to approach enforcement
issues. A summary of the questions and
issues addressed are highlighted below.
What is the motivation for state enforce-
ment compliance activities?
The participants were in agreement
that states have several incentives to make
sure that the reported information is both
accurate and timely. The following state
responsibilities provide an incentive to en-
force compliance:
States supply the information from
the reporters to the public, other
state offices, and the media.
States provide enforcement referrals
for targeting to EPA regional
offices.
States provide information which is
often cross-referenced with informa-
tion collected under other regula-
tions for data verification.
States have the authority to collect
fees associated with the filing and
reporting.
What authority do states have to engage
in enforcement actions or TRI-related
activities?
State legislative activity is required for
states which want to undertake enforce-
ment actions; such authority is not re-
quired for "compliance" action such as
identifying facilities which have failed to
report and urging them to do so or refer-
ring these facilities to EPA for action. Of
the states represented on the panel, three
had enforcement for Section 313.
In what types of enforcement and compli-
ance activities do states engage?
The states represented on the panel dis-
played a range of program development in
the enforcement area. As expected, the
primary limitation to state enforcement
program development is funding. One
state in the panel, Ohio, was the recipient
of one of the two EPA enforcement grants
for FY92. The EPA panelist stated that the
EPA has requested a very large increase in
the funds available for state enforcement
grants for FY93. The EPA panelist ex-
pressed the hope that the state representa-
tives attending the session would begin to
think about which types of compliance
and/or enforcement activities might be
appropriate for their state and whether an
EPA grant could help initiate those activi-
ties.
Ohio conducts inspections for non-
compliance, by actually visiting facili-
ties and issuing notices of violation
from the Ohio EPA. Ohio collects sub-
stantial penalties from facilities and
tries to incorporate pollution preven-
tion projects in their settlement agree-
ments with facilities. Ohio is also be-
ginning a data quality enforcement pro-
gram.
Pennsylvania has chosen not to act on
its enforcement authority at this time,
although they do make enforcement
referrals to the EPA Regional Office
and EPA has taken several enforcement
actions as a result of this information.
Pennsylvania does, however, penalize
facilities for submitting their TRI forms
late, thus creating an incentive for
facilities to report on time.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Massachusetts engages in a thorough
quality control of all TRI submissions
in the state. The state issues notices of
non-compliance to facilities whose re-
ports contain errors or suspect informa-
tion. Facilities are given a period of
time in which to submit a revised re-
port, otherwise they are referred to the
EPA Regional Office for follow-up
action.
Until recently, California has sorted the
list of facilities reporting to EPA with
those reporting to California and re-
ferred to the EPA Regional Office. In
the near future, California, with the
assistance of a data quality grant from
the EPA, will be identifying potential
non-reporters. This information will be
shared with EPA for possible follow-up
enforcement action. California has no
enforcement authority at this time.
In Washington, the TRI program is
very small and does not have enforce-
ment authority; however, the program
has used its resources creatively to
effect compliance. State inspectors will
be visiting every facility which must
comply with Washington's new waste
reduction law; these inspectors will
identify which of these facilities are
Section 313 facilities and will inform
them of their reporting obligation. In
an unique set-up, Washington state has
given small grants to public interest
groups which are trying to locate non-
reporters.
Funding and Resources
Several states have some type of fund-
ing for their TRI programs which they
attained in a variety of ways. There was
no consensus on which method is most
effective in generating resources. Again,
these suggestions are taken from states
represented by the panelists.
Ohio has a rotary account funded
by fees collected from those who
file on a yearly basis.
Massachusetts has a substantial fee
for filing which they have in a dedi-
cated account. People were caution-
ed that dedicated money cannot al-
ways be used for TRI programs. It
helps balance the state's budget to
have $5 million sitting in an
account, so often a state program never
gets to use that money.
California and Washington use a
hazardous waste fee system.
Pennsylvania had a one-time fee in
1989 which helped fund Local
Emergency Planning Committee
(LEPC) activities. In addition, they
issue yearly fees based on the number
of chemicals filed, up to the maximum
of $5,000 per facility.
Interaction with the EPA
This issue was of particular concern to
the EPA. They were pleased to find that
states had good relations with their region-
al contacts, indicating cooperation and
information sharing between the groups
and states.
Citizen Enforcement
Volunteer citizen's groups are an im-
portant link in compliance and enforce-
ment. Casey Padgett of Environmental
Action explained how these groups can
contribute to the enforcement effort. Mr.
Padgett suggested that state should learn
about citizen groups, and build trust and
communication with these groups. En-
courage these groups to use the EPA en-
forcement response policy, which provides
a solid basis for the assessment of penal-
ties that companies have to pay. Lastly, Mr
Padgett explained that Environmental
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Action, as well as other citizen groups, use
supplemental and environmental projects,
SEP's, to help mitigate that penalty. In-
stead of collecting money and sending it to
the U.S. Treasury, these groups explore
pollution prevention activities for the com-
pany and try wherever possible, to incor-
porate these activities into settlement
agreements with these companies.
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TRACK 771 -
PANELIST PRESENTATION SUMMARIES
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Cindy Dewulf
Ohio EPA
Question 1: What is the motivation for
your state's enforcement/compliance activ-
ities? What are your goals?
Answer 1: The Toxic Release Inventory
data provide a valuable source of infor-
mation regarding the toxic releases in
Ohio. While the data fail to provide the
entire universe of toxic releases/ they do
represent the majority of toxic releases
from the manufacturing industries. These
data cannot only be used throughout each
media specific program within the Ohio
EPA, but can also provide the public with
an indication of the toxic releases within
their community. Over 1,600 Ohio facili-
ties report their toxic releases under TRI,
and Ohio is ranked in the top 10 states in
the county for every medium of toxic re-
leases.
Ohio EPA computerizes the TRI data
and distributes the data to state agencies,
the news media, and the public. Ohio
EPA also publishes an annual TRI report
which highlights the top facilities releasing
toxic chemicals, and the top communities
where toxic releases occur. Reporting
facilities often find themselves in the head-
lines and are also the target of voluntary
reduction programs by Ohio EPA. When a
facility violates the TRI reporting require-
ments by not reporting, reporting incor-
recfly, or even reporting late, the integrity
of the data is jeopardized. While Ohio
EPA continually updates the computerized
database, the corrected data is not distrib-
uted to all users. Failure to comply with
the reporting requirements undermines the
integrity of the TRI Program by denying
the public their right-to know about the
toxic releases within their community.
The goal of the Ohio EPA is to bring all
Ohio facilities into compliance with the
TRI reporting requirements. As a compan-
ion to a continual outreach program for
facilities within Ohio, the enforce-
ment/compliance activities increase overall
compliance by the issuance of civil penal-
ties to facilities which are found to be out
of compliance, and by the issuance of
press releases concerning these cases and
settlements. These activities convey the
message that TRI is not merely a report
that is filled out and filed, but is a tool
which is used through the Ohio EPA and
the community.
Question 2: What statutory authority does
your state have?
Answer 2: In December of 1988, the Ohio
legislature passed the Ohio Right-to Know
Law which encompassed all of SARA Title
III. Ohio Revised Code 3751 addressed
Section 313. This law granted Ohio EPA
the authority to: (1) pass rules necessary
to implement Section 313 consistent with
the federal requirements, (2) collect filing
fees which would support the administra-
tion of the program, and (3) enforce the
law by collecting civil and criminal penal-
ties from facilities and individuals failing
to report or falsifying data. Under this
law, Ohio EPA promulgated rules covering
TRI under Ohio Administrative Code 3745
Chapter 100.
Specific enforcement language within
the law authorizes the Director of Ohio
EPA to request the Attorney General's
Office, the County Prosecutor, or the City
Law Director to bring an action to obtain
civil penalties for violations. Rather than
bringing an action to obtain civil penalties,
the Director may issue an administrative
consent agreement to correct the violations,
which includes amounts in settlement of
the Ohio EPA claim for civil penalties.
The civil penalties are not to exceed
$25,000 per violation. Each day constitutes
a violation.
Question 3: In what compliance or en-
forcement activities does your state en-
gage?
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Answer 3: The compliance/enforcement
activities can be broken down by the fol-
lowing potential violations:
Non-reporting: Ohio EPA targets facili-
ties' inspections using permit information,
such as the air permits system and the
RCRA annual generators report/ and in-
dustrial guides, purchasing records,
MSDS's and touring the facility. Facilities
found to be in violation are subject to
enforcement actions. An enforcement
action will result even if a facility has
previously reported for some chemicals,
but has not reported for all required chem-
icals. Ohio EPA has conducted approxi-
mately 100 non-reporting inspections
which resulted in thirty enforcement ac-
tions. To date, administrative orders have
been effective for resolving violations.
Ohio EPA has developed a TRI civil penal-
ty equation for calculating penalties. Fac-
tors in the equation include the number of
years for which the chemicals should have
been reported, the amount of the chemical
released into the environment, and the
toxitity of the chemical. To date, collected
penalties have ranged from $315 to
$25,000.
Late-Reporting: hi accordance with the
fee program established by the legislation,
facilities which report after July 31 are
required to pay a late filing fee of 15% of
the total filing fee. However, Ohio EPA
believes that late reporting will have a
significant impact on its ability to make
the TRI data available to the public. Be-
ginning with 1990 reports, enforcement
action will be taken for reports submitted
after July 31. No action is appropriate for
facilities which are amending previous
submissions. To date, Ohio EPA has is-
sued warning letters to facilities which file
late for the first time. A second violation
results in a penalty of $100 per week.
Only one case involving civil penalties for
late reporting has been settled.
Administrative Errors: Administrative
errors are defined as clerical errors which
are made by a facility when filling out
Form R. The TRI staff reviews each sub-
mission, and issues a letter to the facility
notifying them that their filing is incom-
plete and identifying the error. If a facility
fails to file corrections within fourteen
days, the agency will initiate enforcement
action. To date, no enforcement actions
have been issues.
Technical errors and filing false infor-
mation: The TRI Program operates a data
quality assurance program which was initi-
ated under the 1989 federal grant. Under
this program, the TRI staff requests the
documentation supporting release est-
imates from targeted facilities. Technical
errors are identified by Ohio EPA in which
a facility does not estimate toxic releases in
a competent manner (using standard engi-
neering principles). The magnitude of
error will determine the course of action.
The Ohio EPA may work with the facility
to correct the error, or the technical error
may result in an enforcement action. A
facility which submits false information
will result in immediate referral to the
Attorney General's Office. To date, no
enforcement actions have resulted from
this study.
Question 4: Where in your state agency
does your program operate?
Answer 4: The Ohio EPA administers the
TRI program within the Division of Air
Pollution Control. All activities are operat-
ed within the Central Office Division.
Question 5: How is your program fund-
ed? What is the funding and staffing
level? How much of this is devoted to
enforcement and/or compliance activities?
Answer 5: The TRI program operates a
rotary account which is funded through
fees, enforcement monies, and federal
grants. The level of funding is as follows:
(1) fees - $175,000 to $200,000 per year, (2)
enforcement monies are estimated to aver-
age $100,000 per year, (3) federal grants -
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
$100,000 data quality grant in 1990, $50,000
enforcement grant in 1991. The TRI Pro-
gram current consists of one environmen-
tal supervisor, three full-time environmen-
tal engineers, a full-time clerical assistant,
and a part-time college intern. The TRI
staff works entirely on the TRI program,
which includes enforcement/compliance
activities.
Question 6: What do you anticipate for
the future of your program?
Answer 6: Ohio EPA operates a fully
integrated TRI Program. The program
activities include: (1) maintenance of the
TRI database, (2) a public outreach pro-
gram which includes filing requests and
issuing press releases, (3) establishing a
TRI file/reading room, (4) a data quality
assurance program, (5) a quality control
program which reviews the TRI submis-
sions for completeness, (6) an industrial
outreach program, including the publish-
ing of a TRI newsletter to update facilities
on changes in the regulations, and activi-
ties of the TRI Program, (7) a TRI inspec-
tion/enforcement program for non-report-
ing facilities, and (8) publication of an
annual TRI report.
Through the federal grant, the Ohio
EPA has increased the number of non-
reporting inspections which will be con-
ducted over the next year. The Ohio EPA
will continue its enforcement efforts, while
it continues to ensure that the TRI data is
provided to the communities.
Question 7: What are your program's
interactions with EPA? What is and is not
successful in these interactions?
Answer 7: The Ohio EPA maintains an
informal agreement with US EPA Region 5
concerning enforcement. We exchange
lists of facilities which are targeted for
inspections, and agree not to duplicate
inspections, or overfile enforcement ac-
tions. This cooperation has been success-
ful. Ohio EPA attempts to work with
Region 5 and cooperate with them when-
ever possible. Ohio EPA also maintains a
good relationship with headquarters. EPA
provides copies of the federal enforcement
policy. This is helpful in evaluating the
state TRI penalties. US EPA has always
answered any questions that we posed.
Additional Information: Ohio EPA has
developed an enforcement policy and
workplan which are followed to adminis-
ter the TRI Reporting Requirements.
Steve Hanna
CAEPA
I. California interacts routinely with US
EPA Region 9 staff to synchronize the
filers of states and federal copies of the
TRI forms. California's primary goal in
this instance is the improvement of data
quality.
II. The California TRI program has no
statutory authority.
III. The only compliance/enforcement
activity we engage in is sharing our data
with US EPA Region 9 staff. US EPA
Region 9 has TRI enforcement authority in
California.
IV. The California TRI program is located
within the California Environmental Pro-
tection Agency, in the Office of Environ-
mental Protection Information.
V. The program is funded from hazardous
waste fees which have been directed for
the funding of EPCRA activities. Approxi-
mately $120,000 is available annually; this
funds one full-time high-level programmer
analyst plus temporary help. Links to
specific program activities such as pollu-
tion prevention may develop.
VII. We share our data freely with US EPA
Region 9 staff as soon as it is available,
which is within two months of the annual
submitted. Our relationship with Region 9
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
staff has been especially positive and coop-
erative in nature.
Casey Padgett
Environmental Action
A. Citizen Enforcement Action
(1) What citizen enforcement has oc-
curred?
Citizens have sent several dozen Notic-
es of Intent to Sue to alleged EPCRA viola-
tors. Most of the early Notices were in
Virginia, New York and New Jersey. Ad-
ditional citizen enforcement efforts have
commenced or are expected soon in Mary-
land/ Michigan, Illinois, Texas, California
and other states.
Most of the EPCRA violations substan-
tiated by citizens have been, or will be,
resolved through negotiated settlement
agreements or consent decrees entered
with the courts. For example, Environ-
mental Action Foundation (EAF), in con-
junction with the Natural Resources De-
fense Council (NRDC) and Trail Lawyers
for Public Justice (TLPJ), entered a consent
decree in a Virginia federal court resolving
a Richmond company's eleven section 313
violations spanning three reporting years.
The most significant aspect of this
settlement is the requirement that the
company investigate and implement ways
of reducing its facility's use of chemicals
subject to TRI reporting. The consent
decree obligates the violator to spend at
least $115,000 on "toxics use reduction"
efforts as that term was defined in the
decree. In exchange for this commitment,
the money expended on toxics use reduc-
tion efforts may be credit against the pro-
posed penalty of $140,000.
The salient feature of this and other
EPCRA settlements reached by citizen
groups is the emphasis on including in the
agreement what the Agency calls "supple-
mental environmental projects" (SEPs). In
other words, rather than limit the scope of
the EPCRA settlement to requiring the
violator to submit TRI data and pay a civil
penalty, citizen enforcement has focused
on requiring multimedia pollution pre-
vention efforts as a condition of settlement.
(2) Where is citizen enforcement of
EPCRA headed?
Citizen enforcement of EPCRA report-
ing requirements is likely to expand signif-
icantly in the next few years for three
reasons.
First, the early court opinions that have
addresses EPCRA citizen suite authority
have confirmed the rights of citizens to
enforce EPCRA reporting requirements,
including the annual reporting deadlines,
even if Form Rs are submitted prior to the
filing of the suit. Second, the size of the
estimated enforcement burden is so sub-
stantial that the opportunity, and need, for
citizens to devote resources toward en-
forcement is very substantial. Third, as
citizen organizations become more sophis-
ticated in analyzing TRI data, their ability
will expand to use these data to cross
check a facility's compliance with other
regulatory programs or evaluate the suffi-
ciency of its TRI reports.
(3) How can citizen enforcement be
most effective?
Citizen enforcement will be most effec-
tive if it is coordinated with State and
Federal enforcement efforts. Achieving the
necessary coordination requires a willing-
ness to work together on the part of all
parties.
B. What are the causes and solutions of
the noncompliance problem?
Based on EAF's experience, ignorance
of the law and the potential consequences
of being found in violation are major caus-
es of non-compliance. Ignorance stems
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from two interrelated factors: a relative
lack of company resources dedicated to
environmental programs coupled with a
reactive approach by the corporation to
environmental requirements. Each factor
contributes to the other.
Although the capacity of enforcement
agencies to educate facilities about their
environmental obligations or persuade
them to invest additional resources to meet
those obligations is limited, targeted out-
reach to small and medium sized facilities
that explain the criteria which trigger
EPCRA's reporting requirements, might be
beneficial. The Agency might evaluate the
viability of establishing some type of limit-
ed amnesty period during which facilities
could file delinquent reports without pen-
alty. But when violators are discovered,
penalty assessments and other settlement
requirements must be significant enough
to send a dear message. EPCRA viola-
tions are not simply "paper violations" of
no great consequence but instead are con-
sidered just as serious as exceeding emis-
sion limits or otherwise harming the envi-
ronment.
C. What interactions involving EPCRA
enforcement between public interest
groups, EPA and the States are success-
ful and how can these relationships
yield greater success?
The interactions between EPA, State
and public interest group representatives
vary widely depending largely on the
individuals involved. Generalizations,
therefore, are difficult.
Nevertheless, successful relationships
are those which maximize the efficient and
effective use of enforcement resources. To
do this, individuals should communicate,
cooperate and coordinate as much as pos-
sible.
TRl DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Suzy Peck
MA Department of
Environmental Protection
I. Motivation and Goals of Compliance
Programs
GOAL: To identify all "large quantity
toxic users" and to ensure that they submit
the Form R's, the companion state Toxic
Use Reduction Form S's, and that the sub-
missions represent good faith characteriza-
tion of the facility.
MOTIVATION: Massachusetts has a
toxic use reduction act that has a goal of
50% reduction in the quantity of toxic
chemicals wasted by 1995. The Act is
based on the assumption that once compa-
nies and the public realize the quantity of
the chemicals they are wasting and ana-
lyze the economics of various reduction
strategies, companies will voluntarily re-
duce waste. Thus, the law requires all
large quantity toxic users to submit annual
reports on their use of toxic chemicals and
the progress they are making in toxic use
reduction at the "production unit" level. In
addition, these firms have to complete
biennial toxic use reduction plans in which
they evaluate alternative toxic use reduc-
tion techniques, and state, which, if any
they plan to implement DBFs main goal
for enforcing TRI filing is to ensure that
firms pay attention to their use of toxic
chemicals, in order to achieve the waste
reduction goal.
In addition, the TRI data are important
to help establish priorities for and among
our media-based enforcement programs,
and to help choose facilities that should be
subjected to multimedia or "whole facility"
compliance inspections.
II. Statutory Authority
The Massachusetts Toxic Use Reduction
Act (TURA) gives us the authority to en-
force the Form R and TURA filing require-
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
ments, with automatic penalties for late
payment of the fee and the authority to
issue administrative penalties or civil pen-
alties for failure to file the forms.
III. Compliance/Enforcement Activities
1) Reviewing all forms for internal consis-
tency and completeness, sending defi-
ciency letters for forms that appear to
be incorrect, sending notices of non-
compliance for incomplete reports,
follow-up enforcement as necessary.
2) Conducting multimedia inspections at
80 facilities. Inspections will include
screening questions designed to deter-
mine whether or not a firm should
have filed TRI and TURA reports. We
hope to expand this effort in future
years.
3) Minimal efforts to review other data-
bases (SEISS, previous year TRI filers,
hazardous waste biennial reports, other
EPCRA filings) to identify firms that
potentially should file. This activity
was done in one region last year, and
we found an additional 10% of filers.
This review has not been initiated in
the other three regions as yet.
4) Eventually conducting compliance
inspections of filers to review the "accu-
racy" of the reports.
5) DEP has a database into which we are
entering all of the TURA data, as well
as the "release" data from the Form R's.
This database is linked to our Air Pol-
lution, Water Pollution and RCRA
databases.
IV. Program Organizational Structure
DEP is a matrix organization. Staff are
assigned to one of several Bureaus which
have a programmatic orientation. They
also are assigned to either regional offices
which have an operational focus (permit-
ting, inspections and enforcement), or to
the central office which primarily has a
program development and policy focus,
but which also performs some operational
functions that are too small to be decen-
tralized.
The TRI/TURA endorsement program
is located in the Bureau of Waste Preven-
tion which also includes the Air Pollution
Control, Solid Waste Management, RCRA,
and Industrial Wastewater programs. The
reports are filed in the Boston office where
the initial review for completeness and
internal consistency and necessary formal
or informal follow-up occurs. Screening
inspections, and database reviews occur
out of our regional offices.
V. Funding
The TURA program is funded with an
annual fee that is based on the number of
chemicals used and company size. The fee
ranges from about $3,000 to a maximum of
$31,450. DEP received $700,000 of this
amount this year, and expects to receive
about $1 million in future years.
The rest of the approximately $5 mil-
lion raised through this fee goes to the
state's Office of Technical Assistance to
help firms identify and implement Toxic
Use Reduction techniques and to the Toxic
Use Reduction Institute which provides
training and research in toxic use reduc-
tion.
In addition, DEP has a pollution pre-
vention grant which is funding some of
our regional enforcement activities.
Finally, the extent that the agency be-
gins to incorporate TURA/TRI screening
inspections into our routine "multimedia"
inspections, the program will also be sup-
ported by state appropriations, annual
compliance fees paid by air and water
pollution sources and hazardous waste
generators, and by the federal air pollu-
tion, water pollution and RCRA grants.
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TR1 DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
DEP probably spends about $150,000 on
enforcement/ exclusive of the cost of devel-
oping the reporting database management
system.
VI. Program Future
DEP hopes to expand its compliance
program along the lines outlined above.
Additionally, once the TURA database is
up and running and linked to DEPs "Fa-
cility Master File", we hope to use the
TURA, Form R data in conjunction with
the data from our other compliance pro-
grams contained in the FMF to help set
agency wide compliance inspection priori-
ties and procedures.
VII. Relationship with EPA
Current DEP receives assistance from
EPA in the details of the From R filing
requirements. We also send EPA copies of
our Notices of Noncompliance for any
"nonfilers" we discover through the course
of our inspections.
John Ridgway
WA Department of
Environmental Quality
I. What is the motivation for Washing-
ton's enforcement/compliance activi-
ties? What are the State's goals?
There are two primary factors which
motivate Washington to improve TRI com-
pliance and enforcement: coordinated
compliance with the State's Hazardous
Waste Reduction Act (HWRA); and a more
complete knowledge of toxic releases in
the state. The goal for the HWRA is a
voluntary 50 percent reduction in hazard-
ous waste generation by 1995. Goals for
the TRI program are to obtain a more com-
plete knowledge of toxic releases, includ-
ing greater reporting compliance, increased
local involvement between industry and
community, and inclusion of toxic release
data from facilities which are presently
exempt from TRI reporting.
II. What statutory authority does/will
Washington's program have?
Washington does not currently have
statutory authority to enforce TRI report-
ing directly. However, the State's various
"Air Pollution Control Authorities" do
have authority to require facilities, which
release wastes into the air, to report direct-
ly to those local authorities. Further, if the
50% reduction goal is not met in the vol-
untary manner as established, the State
plans to require hazardous waste reduc-
tions.
III. What are Washington's compliance
and/or enforcement activities?
As noted above, the primary enforce-
ment activities are seen at the local (usual-
ly county) level Enforcement varies
amongst the different authorities, with the
most assertive being the Puget Sound Air
Pollution Control Authority (PSAPCA).
PSAPCA tracks approximately 135 facilities
in its four county region (greater Seattle).
Specifically, PSAPCA requires air release
information (of greater detail than TRI's)
from facilities, including those that do not
report under TRI. PSAPCA collects fees
based upon the amount of reported re-
leases. Further, they will begin tracking
approximate releases from an additional
4,000 facilities not required to report (in-
cluding gas stations and dry cleaners).
They also have engineers who conduct
inspections on-site and analyze the report-
ed data for QA/QC purposes.
The State's Waste Reduction Recycling
and Litter Control (WRRLC) program will
be quite active in monitoring compliance
of the HWRA as it is implemented over
the next three years.
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
IV. Where in Washington do these pro
grams operate?
Washington's Department of Ecology
has two programs which coordinate on
TRI issues and compliance. One is the
Information and Planning Section within
the Solid and Hazardous Waste Program,
which collects and manages the TRI data
(and all other EPCRA data). The other
program is WRRLC (see III.)/ which will
oversee waste reduction efforts tied to TRI.
V. What are the funding and staffing
resources, and how much goes towards
enforcement and compliance?
There are three funding sources: Da
portion (approximately $150,000 per year)
of dedicated funds, based on fees from
businesses which have hazardous materi-
als on site, is used to find 1.5 full-time
staff to maintain the TRI data and Com-
munity Right-to-Know efforts; 2) a fee of
$35 per facility covered under the HWRA,
to fund the waste reduction planning ac-
tivities; and 3) for the HWRA applicable
facilities, there is a per-pound-of-waste fee
to provide $1 million per year to cover
technical assistance and administrative
costs. Items 2 and 3 will finance approxi-
mately thirty full-time staff to manage and
provide technical assistance towards waste
reduction efforts.
VI. What are Washington's future an-
ticipated program activities?
Washington hopes to greatly improve
its QA/QC efforts on the TRI data to im-
prove its usefulness. Further, since the
HWRA requires all TRI facilities to prepare
reduction plans, coordination efforts to
identify non-reporters are going to increase
the EPA, hazardous waste (RCRA) inspec-
tors, and local air authorities. Simulta-
neously, the State must begin to make the
information useful by targeting potential
high-risk areas and following up with
efforts to reduce those potential risks.
VII. What are Washington's interactions
with EPA, and what is/is not suc-
cessful in those interactions?
Interactions with EPA on TRI have
been generally good but somewhat inter-
mittent due to staff limitations at both the
state and federal level. Waste reduction
efforts have been somewhat awkward in
the coordination of the 33/50 project with
the State's program.
James Tinney
PA Dept. of Labor & Industry
Slides provided on 129-136.
128
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SARA Title Ill/Act 165
Organization Structure in Pennsylvania
PEMC
PEMA
Lead
Role
L&I
DER
HEALTH
STATE
POLICE
PUC
FISH
COMM.
TRANS.
TURN-
PIKE
COMM.
ARGIC.
LEPC
COUN-
TIES
-Report
-CRTK
-Outreach
-Lead
Agency
on
Response
-Tech.
-Tech.
-------
SARA TITLE Ml EMPLOYER REPORTING
TOXIC CHEMICAL RELEASE INVENTORY FORMS
Total Number of Facilities
1987
862
1988
1,077
1989
1,175
1990
1,199
Chemicals Reported
1987
3,560
1988
4,399
1989
4,528
1990
4,297
-------
8.00%
214)0%
329 Requests
1.00%
SARA ii FLE III
REQUESTS FOR SUBMISSIONS
INCEPTION TO DATE
90,132 Pages
11.00%
3.00%
16.00%
Community (40%)
B Spec* Interest Group (16%)
Government (3%)
B Media (21%)
IE Lawyer (8%)
D Consultant (11%)
DLEPC(IX)
10.00%
TRI<83%)
Dottier (2%)
@ Reports (5%)
B TIER 11(10%)
83.00%
-------
SARA
TITLE
III
COMPLETED INQUIRIES
157 Inquirers
Requested 14,909
Equalling
74,545 Pages
6 Consultants
7 Government
10 Lawyers
33 Special Interest Groups
38 Media
63 Community Members
(2,843 Facilities)
LL01-9I
-------
SARA Title III
TRI Submissions
Fees Based on the 1990 Reporting Year
Number of Chemicals
Number of Facilities
Fee
x$250
($5,000 Max)
Revenues
$101,500
106,000
20,000
70,000
64,000
58,500
27,500
,750
5,000
5,000
5,000
-------
HAZARDOUS MATERIAL RESPONSE FUND
STATUS OF RECEIPTS AND COLLECTIONS
AS OF DECEMBER 1, 1991
Current Fund Balance $2,546,270
RY Report Facilities Chemicals
1990 TierU 6,408 33,649
1990 TRI 1,214 4,298
-------
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania - TRI Compliance Penetration
Based on SIC Comparison (10 or more employees)
1244
20
1451
Potential Universe
TRI Submissions
200 400 600 800 1000
FACILITIES
1200
1400 1600
-------
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania - TRI Compliance Penetration Based
on SIC Comparison
544
2796
Potential Unive
TRI Submissions
500
1000
1500
FACILITIES
2000
2500
3000
-------
TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
TRACK IV - PROMOTING USE
OF TRI DATA
The objective of this session was to exchange informa-
tion about innovative ways in which TRI is being dissemi-
nated and used. Speakers described their experiences as
information providers, as well as users. This set the stage
for "focus groups/1 where participants explored alternatives
for accessing/receiving the TRI tools for data analysis and
manipulation, and linking TRI with other information sou-
rces to expand its usefulness. Speakers in the sessions
included approximately 60% state and federal officials and
40% public interest, acedemics, and industry representa-
tives.
Track Leader:
Linda Travers, U.S. EPA, Office of
Pollution Prevention and Toxics,
Information Management Division.
Track Coordinator:
Jan Erickson, U.S. EPA, Office of
Pollution Prevention and Toxics,
Information Management Division.
Panelists:
Karl Birns, Manager, R-T-K, KS
Department of Health and
Environment
John Chelen, Director, Unison
Institute
Terry Greene/ Research Associate,
JSI Research & Training Institute
139
-------
Introduction
Several issues were explored through-
out the presentations including: Which
other databases need to be utilized to en-
hance TRI's utility? How does the infor-
mation get out to the public? What are the
best means to do that? What are the dis-
tribution chains? Should they be coming
from the federal and state level? Should
there be people who are in-between?
What are the types of support that the
various programs need? Who is the pub-
lic?
Four major categories surfaced from
these questions: 1) data linkage; 2) out-
reach efforts; 3) data use and; 4) media use
of the data. Below is a summary of these
four categories.
Data Linkage
Data linkage is the networking or ac-
cessing of other users' databases. The lack
of data linkage, or even the lack of know-
ledge of the various available databases,
by the federal and state governments was
a major concern of the panelists. The
participants definitely believe linkage to
other databases (i.e., health, environmental,
census) would be beneficial.
A point that came up in several presen-
tations, was the separation of the 313 pro-
gram from the other EPCRA programs:
sections 302,304,311,312. Some people
felt that there is a real advantage to coordi-
nating those programs at the federal level
and state level. This coordination would
also encourage better linkage of data. Such
linkage is important for programs that
automate the 311 and 312 data, for they
could analyze that data along with the 313
data.
Outreach
Outreach activities are programs that
try to educate potential TRI users about
use of data applications, in order to build
TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
a constituency for the TRI data at the local
level. These activities are an important
link between the federal and local levels.
The panelists pointed out that outreach
programs have been under-funded at all
levels. The group suggested more involve-
ment by Local Emergency Planning Com-
mittees (LEPCs), and turning LEPCs into a
more formal mechanisms of outreach.
Some states are already using LEPCs, oth-
ers are not using them at all. LEPCs
should be made stronger in all states, be-
cause they offer an opportunity to get
down to the local level.
A major question facing outreach pro-
jects is how to get more funding: Many
outreach programs do not even have the
resources to do demonstration projects that
help build a constituency. Without a con-
stituency, outreach programs will be un-
able to pressure for more resources the
cycle continues.
The Information Management Division
at U.S. EPA has an outreach effort that has
low level funding called the TRI User
Support Service, or 'TRI Us." Publicity for
the program is limited because it is sup-
ported by one person who dealt with
about 1,000 requests last year. The group
encouraged the EPA to obtain more re-
sources for 'TRI US", because it provides
an opportunity for EPA to give people
actual data analysis, and tell them about
other data solutions.
In addition to state and federal agen-
cies, intermediaries such as public interest
groups, are an effective means for getting
the information to the public.
Finally, education is a long-term prob-
lem. A good method to get die informa-
tion out into the community is through the
schools at all levels, including intermediate
and secondary.
141
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Data Use
Data use had some overlap with the
data linkage. There are interesting activi-
ties occurring at all levels with TRI, but no
mechanism is available to let users know
what other users are doing.
A strong point was made that informa-
tion is not only needed at the national and
state level, but is also needed at the local
level. Local officials are potential TRI
users for their land use and pollution pre-
vention planning, and environmental tar-
geting. Some states successfully dissemi-
nate this information. Others, because of
resource constraints, are unable to reach
the local level.
An interesting TRI data application sur-
faced during these discussions. In Missis-
sippi and Louisiana, TRI data are being
used for tax purposes based on levels of
releases. Such programs will be of interest
to other states, again indicating a need for
information sharing.
When using TRI data, one must re-
member that TRI is the beginning point for
helping to screen release information. It is
not data that will tell you about a particu-
lar risk in a community, for which addi-
tional data is needed.
The consensus was that availibility of
the tools is not a barrier to TRI - the tech-
nology is available. In some cases, it is a
question of resources, but in many instanc-
es lack of awareness is a greater barrier.
Uses of geographic tools, in particular,
is increasing rapidly. GIS applications are
of great interest to the states in using the
TRI in combination with other data.
Media Use of the Data
Media and press coverage have a major
role on the impact that the TRI data have
on users, legislators, and industry. The
morning session felt that the press was
underutilized, and that there needed to be
ongoing press coverage, not just once a
year when the data are released. The
afternoon session, held a completely op-
posing view and thought that they needed
to work with the press to orient them
toward general public use of the data, and
not to simply publicize the aggregate num-
bers, which simply highlights the biggest
and the worst of each category.
They did agree, however, that the
length of time it takes the EPA to process
the data is a significant issue. Often in-
dustry can provide their information to the
public, prior to even reporting date, so
they are getting press information out
prior to July 1st. The group suggested that
more emphasis be placed on industry to
provide the information on magnetic me-
dia, which would speed up the processing
time.
142
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TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
TRACK IV-
PANELIST PRESENTATION SUMMARIES
143
-------
TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
Karl F. Birns
KS Department of Health &
Environment
It is a great pleasure to be here today
and talk to you about the tools available to
assist in understanding Title III data.
Right-to-know implies the right-to-act.
Action is the final step of a process built
upon data. We, in the information man-
agement field, can view this process as
taking data, converting that into informa-
tion, which is further acted upon to pro-
duce knowledge. With that knowledge,
we can then make informed decisions
resulting in action. These actions may
include regulation, clean-up, risk mitiga-
tion, and other managerial decisions on
where to commit scare resources.
When Title III, the Emergency Planning
and Community Right-to-Know Act, was
mandated to the states, the Kansas legisla-
ture acted to implement its provisions
under the sanction for state statute. Our
own Kansas Emergency Planning and
Community Right-to-Know Act K.S.A. 65-
5701 et.seq. established the authorities of
the State Emergency Response Commis-
sion (SERC) and authorized the Kansas
Department of Health and Environment
and the Adjutant General's Department,
under the direction of the SERC, to carry
out the federal mandates. This state data
system is linked to local users through a
state-wide CAMEO network. The state of
Kansas provides data entry for all the Title
III information and downloads it through
state provided CAMEO network. The
state of Kansas provides data entry for all
the Title III information and downloads it
through state provided CAMEO software
to LEPCs and other selected users. Includ-
ed with the downloaded facility informa-
tion, the state provides response informa-
tion data sheets (RIDS) and U.S. Census
Service maps (Tiger Files). In addition to
the software, the state also provides user
training.
As an adjunct to the ongoing functional
capabilities of the data management sys-
tem, we have applied for and received
OTS and OSWER grants in fiscal years
1991 and 1992. These grants have been
used to support research in data manage-
ment and usage. Last year we developed
an expert system for identifying facilities
that were not complying with Title III and
which should have. This expert system
was based upon the development of a
learning system using extensive existing
data on commercial facilities. The learning
system identified key attributes associated
with Title III compliance and these attrib-
utes and associated rules were incorporat-
ed into the expert system. This allows the
expert system to analyze pre-existing data
on a facility to determine if it is a potential
Title III facility and to what level of proba-
bility. The prototype system was demon-
strated at the National Governor's Associa-
tion National State Emergency Response
Commission Meeting in Kansas City last
November and is available for demonstra-
tion at the conference.
In Kansas, we have accomplished this
by providing the support CAMEO net-
work at the local level through Local
Emergency Planning Committees and
other emergency responders. We would
like to further expand this system to allow
immediate access by the public through
local libraries and by personal computer
through modems. Ultimately, however,
this information is meaningless without an
understanding of the health and environ-
mental impact of hazardous chemicals.
The failure of the scientific community,
both public and private sector, to study the
interactions between chemicals, and the ef-
fects of chemicals and multiple chemical
mixtures on health and the environment
will continue to undermine the credibility
of risk assessment based upon TRI or other
Title III data. At this time, to err on the
side of safety and protection of the world
we live in is the only rational course avail-
able to us.
145
-------
TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
John Chelen
Unison Institute
Based upon the RTK NET experience
working with users of the TRI data, I de-
scribed the aspects of public access that
should be emphasized. First, public access
should be seen as a mixture of four func-
tions:
Information and referral
Communications
Technical Assistance
Technical Training
These functions should be focused with
the following assumptions in mind:
Databases should be organized
around "facilities" as the basic
unit of analysis
Tools should be available for a
variety of users, ranging from
notices to experts
Target users are knowledge
workers who rely upon PC's
and typical PC-based software
Data should have both a local
and national focus - local in
format and layout to help grass-
routs, national in scope so that
it is useful anywhere in the
country
The RTK NET experience emphasizes
that several additional pieces need to be
added:
More data are necessary, both a
broadening of TRI itself, and
linkages to several key EPA
databases on permits;
Better tools are necessary for
analyzing the data; these tools
relate to alternate options for
cross-linking files
A larger base of cross-sector
groups and users is necessary
to further address toxic use
reduction and pollution preven-
tion options
Better networking is necessary
to better address common is-
sues and approaches
More training is necessary to
adequately reach community
activists who can help advance
TUR and PP goals
The publication of TRI data
must significantly be accelerat-
ed to take full advantage of it is
inherent value
Terry Greene
JSI Research & Training
Institute
"We need new, systematic means
for getting information into people's
hands, and for teaching them how
to use it. Information is power, but
only if you know how to use it.
Information by itself is impotent."
Peter Montague
The availability of the Toxic Release
Inventory represents a major step forward
in fulfilling the public's right and need to
know about chemical hazards in their
communities. The collection and dissemi-
nation of such data contributes to vital
public participation in the protection of
each communities health and environment.
However, data provision alone is not
adequate. A need exists to concurrently
provide the resources which will allow the
data to be understood and utilized.
Through JSI's community technical assis-
tance program, funded by a grant from the
C.S. Mott Foundation, JSI strives to con-
146
-------
TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
tribute to this goal by providing consulta-
tion services to community/ labor and
environmental groups.
Some community groups call JSI be-
cause they know they have a local source
of pollution and want to know possible
health effects. Other groups call because
community members are experiencing
health problems and want to know wheth-
er hazards in the environment might be a
cause. Using the RTK-NET database as an
access point to the TRI, we have respond-
ed to a number of requests for information
about toxic releases. Cape Cod residents/
for example, are using a report on industry
discharges to Boston Harbor to push for
better treatment and source reduction.
Communities such as North Andover, MA,
have examined TRI releases, while evaluat-
ing plans to site new facilities in the com-
munity. Citizens in Deny, NH are con-
cerned about high rates of childhood brain
cancer, used the TRI in efforts to locate
and diminish potential risk factors for the
disease.
We generally recommend that commu-
nity groups use the TRI data as a start
point for understanding potential expo-
sures. There are, of course, important
caveats in the use of TRI data, including
the following:
1. It covers only a fraction of the
potential sources of exposure in
a community;
2. It is only recent data, and ef-
fects from chronic exposures or
exposures twenty or thirty
years ago cannot be inferred
from TRI data;
3. The connection between docu-
mentable health effects in the
community, such as unusual
reproductive outcomes, cancer
incidence, or mortality of a
variety of types, and emissions
from plants is based on "ecolog-
ic" reasoning and is not a
statement of cause and ef-
fect."
Nevertheless, the TRI can be extremely
valuable, especially when put together
with other information on federal and state
databases, as well as historical information
about industrial practices, along with toxi-
cological and health data, to begin to de-
scribe the environmental health of the
community.
To supplement our direct consultations,
we have developed a tutorial entitled
"ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH: Invest-
igating Community Environmental Health
Problems", which describes this process
using a case study of Woburn, Massachu-
setts. The Woburn community faces ele-
vated rates of childhood and adult leuke-
mia, kidney and liver cancer/ colo-rectal
cancer, birth defects, heart system, immune
system and nervous system disorders. The
Toxic Release inventory for Woburn in
1987 showed 766,794 pounds of annual
hazardous releases, 489,038 pounds of this
total are air releases of dichloromethane -
noted on the Massachusetts Substance List
to be a carcinogen and an "extraordinarily
hazardous" substance. (An important note
of success for both the TRI and TUR pro-
gram as well as citizen efforts is that the
Woburn facility releasing dichloromethane
has switched to an aqueous based process,
which they expect will eliminate these
emissions.)
The TRI offers a glimpse of but one
piece of the picture. The City has been
plagued by over 150 years of improper
waste disposal practices. With two Federal
Superfund sites and 40 state Superfund
sites, its highly contaminated water supply
was in use for over 15 years. The tutorial
is based on the actual experience of a com-
munity group in Woburn which has at-
tempted to address these problems, and
may serve as a model for groups in other
communities.
147
-------
TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
The tutorial emphasizes specific details
on how the TRI information can be ob-
tained, what is and is not reported, and
both the advantages and limitations in
using the data for community health pur-
poses. The tutorial proceeds to describe
how to obtain and use complementary
information on health in order to interpret
release data. Sections of the tutorial are
also devoted to finding and analyzing
sources of public health information that
can help determine the status of health in
the community. Finally, means of using
the information to protect the community
health, among them fostering toxic use
reduction efforts, are pointed to.
148
-------
TRI DATA USE AND POLLUTION PREVENTION
ROSTER OF ATTENDEES
149
*U.8. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 19B2-624-327
-------
Last Nimt
Allen
Atman
Amato
Anderson
Ande no n-Ubar
Anthony
Au
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ThelmaY.
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Mfchaei
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Martin (Buzz)
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Robert L
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Karl
George
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James J.
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Connor
Matthew
Joanna
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Lewis
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Keith R
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Robert
John
RyanH.
Till*
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Environmental Engineer
Env. Protection SpadaBst
Planntrg Specialist
Assistant Administrator
Tech Info Specialist
Emergency Response Coord
Env Protection Specialist
Director. Occupational Safety
Vice President
Chief, Information Mansgment
Programs Administrator
Chief, Exposure AppL
Director
Env. Protection Spedafcst
PoEcy Analyst
Director. Env. Affairs
District Managar
Senior Engineer, Environment
Managar, Emergency Planning
Organization
Alabama Dept ol Erw. Managmenl
PR Environmental QuaBy Board
U^. EPA. Office ol the Admin.
US. EPA. Poautton Prevention
ICF. Inc.
US. EPA, PoDUton Prevention Div.
Texas Air Control Board
Abt Associates Inc.
U.& EPA, Region X
NIEHS
Onto EPA
U. of Nevada, Smal Business Dev.
U.S. General Accounting Office
US. Senate (UN)
Natural Resource Council of Maine
BCP
Santa Clara County Mfg. Group
U.S. EPA, OHice ol Pollution Prev.
Tulane Environmental Law Clinic
DE Dept. ol Natural Resources ft Env.
U.& EPA, Region VII
US. EPA, Ofe. ol Pollution Prevention
AR, DepL of PolUton Control
U.S.EPA.OPPTS
U.S. EPA, OPPTS Library
LA DepL of Environmental Qoaity
U& EPA. OPPTS
Amalg. CWWng ft Tex«e Worker-s Union
Environmental Quality Corporation
U.S. EPA, OHIc* ol SoHd Waste
OK Slate DepL of Heath
U.&EPA
Toxics Use Reduction Institute
U.S.EPA
U.S. EPA
BASF Corporation
Amalg. Clothing ft Textile Worker's Union
Weslinghouse Savannah River Co.
IBnotoEPA
Street
1751 Cong W.L Dickinson Drive
P.O. Box 11488
401 M. Street, S.W.
401 M. Street, S.W.
9300 Lee Highway
401 M Street SW
12124 Park 35 Circle
55 Wheeler Street
1200 Sixth Avenue (HW-1 17)
111 Alexander Dr.P.O Box 12233
1800 Watermark Drive
College of Bus. Admin., MS032
200 W.Adams, Suite 700
271 Stale Street
P.O. Box 427
5201 Great America Pkwy. M26
401 M. Street, S.W.
7039 Freret Street
P.O. Box 1401. 89 King's Hwy.
726 Minnesota Avenue
401 M. Street, S.W.
P.O. Box 891 3
401 M. Street, aw.
401 M. Street, S.W.
7290 Bluebonnet Blvd.
401 M. Street. S.W. (TS-779)
15 Union Square West
259 Tmberlane Road
401 M. Street. S.W.
1000 N.E10lh Street
401 M. Street, S.W, (RCW89)
Unfv of Massachusetts - Lowell
401 M. Street, S.W. (TS-779)
401 M. Street, S.W.
8 Campus Drive
P.O. Box 1332
P.O. Box 616, BWg. 742-A
2200 ChUtcHB Rd, Box 19276
City
Montgomeiy
Santurca
Washington
Washington
Fairfax
Washington
Austin
Cambridge
Seattle
Research Tr. Pk
Columbus
Ram
Chicaeo
Washington
Augusta
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Washington
New Orleans
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Washington
Washington
Baton Rouge
Washington
NY
Tallahassee
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Washington
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Stet*
AL
PR
DC
DC
VA
DC
TX
MA
WA
NC
OH
NV
IL
DC
ME
LA
CA
DC
LA
DE
KS
DC
AR
DC
DC
LA
DC
NY
FL
DC
OK
DC
MA
DC
DC
NJ
AL
SC
L
Zip Cod*
36130
00910
20460
20460
22031
20460
78753
02138
98101
27709
43215
89557-0100
60606
20510
04330
70734
95054
20460.
70118
19903
66012
20460
72219-8913
20460
20460
70810
20460
10003
32312
20460
73117-1299
20460
01854
20460
20460
07054
36420
29802
62794-9276
Telephone
(205)260-2702
(809)
(202)260-4724
(202)260-7876
(703)934-3544
(202)260-4168
(512)908-1541
(617)492-7100
(206)5534501
(919)541-5141
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508)9344275
(202)2604449
(202)2604669
(201)3974835
(205)222-1129
803)725-4953
217)524-1008
-------
Last Hum
Green
Green*
Greenwood
Graves
Grey
Guka
Hadden.Jr.
Hafey
Hate
Hal
Hal
Hamtton
HammaB
||M .- III! Ill
muuiiiuMiuiii
Harm
Hansen
Harris
Haitt
Hassetl
UfW*
HflXIOn
Head
Heame
Heknan
Uan
nvfz
H9
Ha
HI)
Hi
Hflsr
HoH
Haksy
HoBster
Hudson
Husnefgardt
Hughes
nnes
Jacks
Jackson
James
First Nam*
Susan
Teny
Mark
racnvo T .
Has)
Gary
W. Jarnes
Carton D.
Vfcki
Loren
Mke
Gary
R Bruce
Karen
Stephen D.
kiefl
Cathy L
Jerry
Kathy
lifnnrim
VHUUH
Rsbecca
Shelley A.
MehaelK.
UMRaam 1
VnHOTl v,
Caroline K.
Don
MeredHh
PaulL
Emerson
Metafile
Tammie
Sondra
Valerie
George K. :
Joseph T.
Al
WillamB.
DarmyS. {
Dick
Till*
Environmental Analyst
Research Associate
Director
Environmental Specialist III
Hazardous Materials Division
President
TRJ Program Manager
GIS
Chief, RRGS/RGDS
n.m alrfnrj
rrewOvni
Systems Analyst
LA OB Soil Coordinator
Senior Environmental Scientist
CNef. Env. Information
CRTKSpedaBst
Env. Program Manager
Environmental Specialist
Secretary
Env Protection Spocinltet
Director
Research Sdontist
Assodat* Professor
Dinctor.Technical Iran.
Director, Technical Assistant
Env. PoRcy Specialist
President
Consultant
Staff Assistant
Chemist
Deputy Commissioner
AfrQuaByEnvironmentalW
Hazardous Waste Expert
Associate Director
_ . i r i
Environmental engineer
Chief, Asbestos 4 Toxics
Technical Assistant
Organization
DepL of Environmental Protection
JSI Research ft Training Institute
U.S.EPA.OPPT
Stale of Maine DEP-BAQC
National Environmental Law Center
Agency of Natural Resources
Intelligent Advisors, Inc.
US. EPA, Region IV
US. EPA. Region VII
U.SEPA.OPPTS
Regulations Management
VIGYAN, Inc.
Office of the Governor
U.S.EPA(RD-689)
CaHomiaEPA
DepL of Ecology
VA DepL of Waste Management
C-K Association, Inc.
AZ Division of Emergency Services
J.S.EPA
Washtenow County ECO
NJ Office of Pollution Prevention
Dickinson College
JniversHy of Alabama Chemical Eng.
MSSTAP
MISSTAP
PA DepL of Environmental Resources
National Institute for Chemical Studies
}ata General Corporation
CEPP.EPA
Nebraska DepL of Environmental Control
U.a EPA, OPTS, OPPTS, EED
KY DepL lor Environmental Protection
UUlf4illa_du4nuitnk f^nnntu Unnfth
FVtcnlta uoogwiCK uounry neann
dlEHS Worker Training Program
WWTAR
American CyanamU Company
MS DepL of Environmental QuaRy
US. EPA, Region VI
Street
One Winter Sleet, 7th
210 Lincoln Street
401 M. Street, S.W.
State House Station 17
29 Temple Place, Second Floor
103 South Main Street
2400 Weslover Road
345 CourUand Street
226 Mtoneaota Avenue
401 M. Street. S.W., TS-778
201 Dorrington Blvd.
6203 LeesburgPk. MOO
P.O. Box 94004
401 M. Street. S.W.
555 Capitol Mall
Mai Stop PV-11
101 North 14th Street
17170 Perkins Road
5636 E.McDowel Road
401 M. Street, S.W.
101 E. Huon/P.O. Box 8645
CrW02
Env. Studies/James Center
P.O. Box 870203
Drawer CN
Drawer CN
P.O. Box 2063
2300 MacCorkle Ave., S.E.
3400 Computer Drive
401 M. Street, S.W.
P.O. Box 98922
401 M. Street, S.W. (TS-798)
18 Rally Road
1 900 E. 9th Street
P.O. Box 12233. MD-1802
1313 5th Street, S.E.
10800 River Road
2380 Hoghway 80 West
1445 Ross Avenue
City
Boston
Boston
Washington
Augusta
Boston
Waterbury
Austin
Atlanta
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CKympia
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Trenton
Carlisle
TUBCflloOfifl
MS Stale
Miss State, MS
Harris burg
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Lincoln
Washington
Frankfort
WfchHa
Research Tr. Pk
Mnneapols
Westwego
Jackson
Dallas
Stata
MA
MA
DC
ME
MA
VT
TX
GA
KS
DC
LA
VA
LA
DC
CA
WA
VA
LA
AZ
DC
Ml
NJ
PA
AL
MS
MS
PA
WV
MA
DC
NE
DC
KY
KS
NC
MM
LA
MS
TX
Zip Coda
02108
02111
20460
04333
02111
05671-0404
78703-1216
30365
66012
20460
70005
22041
70804-9004
20460
95814
98503
23219
70810
85008
20460
48107
08625-0402
17013
35487
39762
39762
17111
25304
01580
20460
68065
20460
40601
67214
27709
55414
70072
39204
75202
Telephone
(617)292-5582
(617)482-9485
(202)260-2090
(207)289-2437
(617)422-0880
(802)244-8702
(512)474-4719
(404)347-1033
(913)551-7247
(202)260-3931
(504)832-3031
(703)931.1100
(504)342-7015
(20212604919
(916)324-9924
(206)459-6312
(804)225-2631
(504)755-1000
(602)231-6346
(202)260-2709
(313)994-2398
(609)984-5339
(717)245-1338
(205)348-1102
(601)325-8454
(601)325-2480
(717)772-2724
(304)346-6264
(508)366-8911
(202)260-4514
(402)471-3378
(202)260-3390
(502)564-2150
(316)268-8351
(919)541-0217
(612)379-5995
(504)431-6259
(601)981-5171
(214)655-2277
-------
Last N»me
Johnson
Johnson
Johnson
Johnston
Jones
Juchate
Juras
Kate
Kale
Kate
Kartez
Kaster
Kenneally-Baxter
KBberg
KRpatrick
Kleiner
Knight
Koch. Jr.
Ku
Kuzmack
Lwigborsl
Laska
tayne
Lemcfce
Lepislo
Debt
Lindsey
Unn,Jr.
Loon*
topaz
Macto
Matek-Witey
Markos
Martin
Marting
McDonald
McLaughSn
McManus
Meredfth
Flrat Nam*
Janice
MaxD.
Sharon
JonD.
Cathy
Amy
Mfchael
Gerald A.
Je ruder
Stanley P.
Jack
Pam
Sharon
ErioJ.
EmUy
RttnVu
Maurice
CarlM.
Calvin
Arnold M.
David
Shirley
Wwvbn
Bob
Christy
DavidS.
JoelL
MS.
Jim
Nora
Carole
Darryl
Cynthia
Dean
Robert E
Kevin
Louise
Dorothy
David
Title
EPS
Chemical Safety Chief
Environmental Chemist
THIelllChtel
Program Analyst
toxtoologtst
EPCRA Coordinator
President
Stall Consultant
rechnlcsl Assistant
QenlorFeDow
President
Env. Programs Analyst
Program Coordinator
SARA Coordinator
PubBc Affairs Director
PoMon ft Planning Admia
Management Analyst
Air Section Chief
Senior Science Advisor
Executive Director
Director
313 Coordinator
Environmental Planner
Environmental Engineer
Pollution Prevention Spedafis
Former Deputy Secretary
Environmental Scientist
Planner IV
TRI Coordmalor
Senior Editor
Chat- RCRA Campaign
Evaluator
RCRA Unit Chief
Environmental Coordnator
Senior Environmental Planner
Analyst
Env. Protection Specialist
Organization
US. EPA
Dept. ol Pubic Safety - EMB
NC Pollution Prevention Program
U.S. EPA. Region IV
U.S. EPA, OSWER
NH Div. of Public Health Services
South Carolina DHEC
Regulatory Consultants, Inc.
Regulatory Consultants, Inc.
US. EPA, Region IX
Hazard Reduction ft Recovery
Citizens lor a Clean Environment
VA DepL ol Waste Management
MN Pollution Control Agency
NC Div ol Emergency Management
Louisiana Chemical Association
Dept of Environmental Quality
US. EPA
MO Dept. ol Natural Resources
US. EPA. Office ol Water
Citizen Action of Alabama
Department of Sociology
US. EPA. Region VI
WA Stale DepL of Ecology
American Cyanamid Company
University ol Wisconsin
LA DepL of Environmental Quafty
AL Emergency Repsonse Comm.
FL DepL of Community Affairs
US. EPA. Region II
Bureau of National Affaire .
Sierra Club
U.S. General Accounting Office
Missouri Dept. of Natural Resources
LA DEQ, Air Quality Division
MN Office ol Waste Management
Information Research
US. EPA, Chemical Emergency
U.S. EPA, Ofc. ol Compliance * Monitoring
Street
401 M. Street, aw. (OS-301)
4491 Cerrillos Road
3825 Barrett Drive. 3rd Floor
345 Courtland Street
401 M. Street, S.W. (OS-120)
6 Hazen Drive
2600 Bull Street
202N.Monil
202N.MorriU
75 Hawthorne Street
TexasAftMUntversity
12322 N.Lakeview Drive
14lhFl. 101 N. l4lhSt.-
520 Lafayette Road. North
1 16 N. Jones Street
One America Place, Suite 2040
P.O. Box 82263
401 M. Street, S.W.
205 Jefferson SL, P.O.Box 176
WH-6S1.Rm.E737
3604 Debby Drive
University ol New Orleans
10931 Stone Canyon Road
WSPV-11
10800 River Road
610 Langdon Street
11643 Prior Port Hudson Road
do ADEM. 1751 Dickinson Drive
2740 Centerview Drive
2890 Woodbridge Avenue
1231 25th Street. NW
616 Adams Street
200 W.Adams, Suite 700
2710 W. Main/P.O. Box 3133
P.O. Box 82135
1350 Energy Lane
251 Florida Street *402
401 M. Street, S.W. (OS-120)
401M.Sreet.S.W.(EN442)
City
Washington
Santa Fa
Raleigh
Atlanta
Washington
Concord
Columbia
Hiawatha
Hiawatha
San Francisco
College Station
Baton Rouge
Richmond
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Raleigh
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Washington
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Washington
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State
DC
MM
NC
GA
DC
NH
SC
KS
KS
CA
TX
LA
VA
MM
NC
LA
LA
DC
MO
DC
GA
LA
TX
WA
LA
Wl
LA
AL
FL
NJ
DC
LA
IL
MO
LA
Mi
LA
DC
DC
Zip Code
20460
87504
27609
30385
20460
03301
29201
66434
66434
94105
77843-3137
70810
23219
55155
27603-1335
20825
70884-2263
20460
65102
20460
36116
70148
75230
98504
70094
53703
70791
36109
32399-2149
08837
20037
70118
60606
65102
70884
55108
70801
20460
20460
Telephone
(202)260-7559
(505)627-9223
(919)571-4100
(404)347-1033
(202)2604353
(603)271-4664
(803)9354336
(913)742-3900
(913)742-3900
(415)744-1069
(409)847-9480
(504)7664232
(804)225-2581
(612)296-8843
(919)7334865
(504)344-2609
(504)765-0720
(202)260-2739
(314)751-4817
(202)260-5821
(205)288-9399
(504)2864472
(214)655-7244
(206)438-7632
(504)4314659
(606)265-2360
(504)6544847
(205)2604714
(904)488-1972
(908)9064890
(202)452-4030
(504)8654708
(312)220-7600
(314)5264371
(504)7654186
(612)6494744
(504)387-3678
(202)2604606
(202)260-9335
-------
Last Nairn
Mner
Mirhosselnl
Monel
Montana!
Moora
Mounca
Mouwa
Muffins
Murphy
Nevte
Newel
Noonan
Oppeiman
Orgeron, Jr.
Or
Drum
Packman
Padgett
Paquette
Palal
Patlon
Paxton
Paavey
Peck
Paddy
Pepper
Pemky
Phalte
Podniesinskl
Pridgeon
Raudys
Reck
Ridgway
Robert
Robertson
Roe
toosevett
ROM
Rudek
First Name
Wffiam
Shamsy
CarolJ.
Laurie
Fred
Larry
Frank H.
PhB
Bob
Pamela B.
Owen
Jim
Andy
Jwnos J.
MaryteeM.
Paul
Jonathan
Casey
Mke
JayS.
AmyE.
Blaine
DwighlG.
Suzy
Don
Eugene
HaroU
PrakashN.
MaryEHen
Ronald C.
Leo
Dan
John
Theresa O.
Lewis
Daniel
Dean
Steven
teymond
Title
Env. Emergency Coordinator
Program Analyst
Chief. Pollution Prevention
Research Associate
Chairman
Program Manager
Stafl Engineer
Chief, Pesticides
Chairman
Economist
C-R-T-K Manager
Environmental Scientist
ESI Intern
Executive Director
Coordinator
Environmental Engineer
Environmental Engineer
Environmental Engineer
President
TFd & 33/SO Coordinator
Title III Coord.
Senior Environmental Planner
Inspector
Environmental Engineer
Biologist
Environmental Engineer
Environmental Policy Analyst
C-R-T-K Supervisor
Board of Directors
Region 6,33/50 Coord
SARA Title III Coord
President
School of Journalism
Associate Engineer
Organization
New York State DEO
LADEQ
U.S. EPA
California EPA. Public Health
Union Carbide
LA Emergency Reponse Commission
KS Dlv. of Emergency Preparation
Atlas Processing Company
EPA, Region VI
St. Bernard Citizen's for Env. Quality
Research Triangle Institute
Purdue University
NJ Dept of Environmental Protection
LA DEO, Air Quality Division
LEAN.
Working Group on C-R-T-K
U.S. EPA, Ofc. of Compl. MonK
Environmental Action
VIGYAN, Inc.
Uniroyal Chemical
CIBA-GEIGY Corporation
TUane Green Club, Univ. Center
U.S. EPA, Region 1
MA Depl. of Environmental Protection
Iowa Emergency Response Commission
Ola of Env. Coord., Env. Managment
U.S. EPA
University ol Nevada
U.S. EPA/OPTS/OCM
NC OHice of Waste Reduction
MN Pollution Control Agency
Abl Associates Inc.
WA Depl of Ecology
Save Our Selves, Inc.
U.S. EPA, Region VI
Arizona Emergency Services
Amalg. Clothing ^Textile Worker's Union
Columbia University
Merck & Co., Inc.
Street
South WoH Road
P.O. Box 82135
345 Courtland Street, N.E.
601 N. 7th Street
39OURidgeberryRoad
2332 Florida Blvd.
2600 South Topeka Blvd.
3333 Midway Street
1445 Ross Ave.
3223 Jackson Blvd.
Institute Drive
Civil Engineering BMg.
401 East State Street
P.O. Box 82135
5559. Tammany
215 Pennsylvania Ave. S.E.
401 M. Street, S.W. (EN-342W)
6930 Carrol Ave, 6th Floor
5203 LeesburgPk. #900
P.O. Box 397
3905 River Road, Box 1 1 .Hwy 76
Tulane University
One Congress Street
One Winter Street
1 000 E. Grand Avenue
83 Park Street
841 Chestnut BUg-3AT31
4505 Maryland Parkway
401 M. Street, S.W.
3825 Barrett Dr., Box 27687
520 Lafayette Road
55 Wheeler Street
Mai Stop PV-11
General Delivery, Hwy 44
1445 Ross Avenue
5636 EMcDowel Road
1051 Cedar Creek Rd
10016lh Street
P.O. Box 2000
City
Albany
Baton Rouge
Atlanta
Sacramento
Danbury
Baton Rouge
Topeka
Shreveport
Dallas
Chalmelte
Research Triangle Pk
W. Lafayette
Trenton
Baton Rouge
Baton Rouge
Washington
Washington
TakomaPark
Falls Church
Geismar
St. Gabriel
New Orleans
Boston
Boston
DesMoines
Providence
Philadelphia
Las Vegas
Washington
Raleigh
SI. Paul
C&fnbnQQB
Otympla
Bumside
Dallas
Phoenix
Ml. Vemon
NY
Rahway
State
NY
LA
GA
CA
CT
LA
KS
LA
TX
LA
NC
IN
NJ
LA
LA
DC
DC
tJO
VA
LA
LA
LA
MA
MA
IA
Rl
PA
NV
DC
NC
Mi
MA
WA
LA
TX
AZ
AL
NY
NJ
Zip Code
12233-
70884-2135
30365
95814
06817
70802
66601
71109
75150
70043
27209
47901
08625-0405
70884
70806
20003-1155
20460
20912
22041
70734
70776
70118
02203
02108
50319
02903
19107
89154-4009
20460
27611-7687
55155
02138
98509-8711
70738
75238
85008
36560
10027
07065
Telephone
(518)457-4107
(504)765-0134
(404)347-7109
(916)327-7333
(203)794-2948
(504)389-5255
(913)266-1431
(318)632-4201
(214)655-7235
(504)279-0525
(919)541-6798
(317)494-5037
(609)633-1154
(504)765-0109
(504)928-1315
(202)546-9707
(703)308-8289
(301)891-1100
(703)931-1100
(504)387-5112
(504)642-1685
(504)861-4952
(617)565-3230
(617)292-5575
(515)281-8460
(401)277-3434
(215)597-7820
(702)597-4124
(202)260-7422
(919)571-4100
(612)297-2316
(617)492-7100
(206)438-7252
(504)647-6112
(214)655-7244
(602)231-6309
(205)624-6364
(212)854-7328
(908)302-7397
-------
Lut Nam*
Saussy
Schaum
Schfflman
SchMsleln
Schemer
Shabazz
Shelman
SNstar
ShuH
Smarkel
Sn*h
Smlh
SrnUi
Soettto
Sotockl
Stalnauer
Stephens
Steven*
Stevenson
SuBlvan
Tano
Twitino
Taylor
Thinostad
Thomas
Tinney
TtocWer
Tlw
Toehes
Tomlyanovich
TonM
Travels
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EPCRA Coordinator
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r. * V 1
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New Orleans Times-Picayune Newspaper
Texas Instruments, Corp. Env.
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Street
2600 Bull Street
401 M. Street, S.W., (RD-689)
401 E State Street
3800 Howard Avenue
8330 LBJ Freeway ,Ctr III.M310
841 Chestnut Blvd.
1350 New York Avenue. NW
Rural Route 6, Box 163
3580 W. Hiawatha
P.O. Box 806
7411 Park Place Blvd.
523 E. Capitol
760 North First Street
2005 N. Central Ave.
DepL of Geography
P.O. Box 98922
P.O. Box 0
P.O. Box 66323
ISReltyRoad
401 M. Street, S.W.
1899 Broadway «600
P.O. Box 2000
1950 West North Temple
P.O. Box 2077
SOON. La* SL. Suite 500
Room 503 Labor & Industry BUg
175 Bestow BUg,450 Syndicate
105 S. Meridian Street
1200 Sixth Ave, (HW-1 17)
175 Bigetow. 450 N. Syndicate
Ponce de Leon Ave. 0431, 2nd Floor
401 M. Street, S.W.-TS-793
401 M. Street, S.W., TM 22A
Q-130CoroallHullBldg.
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P.O. Box 2357
726 Muuwsota Avenue
214 W.Jones Street
2785 Botton Terrace South
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29201
20460
08625
70140
75243
19107
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66046
48864
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77087
57501
95112
85282
32306
685094922
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20460
60202
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84114-4840
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5S104
46206
98101
55104
00916
20460
20460
37247-4012
49401
17105-2357
66101
27603
97301
Telephone
(803)935-6444
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(503)378-3473
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Warren
John
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Wheeler
WMHan
Wtoch
IJInnrttas
nomv]
?a*ar
Dennis
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Thomas E.
Km
Stephanie &
OavU
Ralph M.
Km
Proyrani Administrator
Acting ChW, Aibaatoa
Spadal Aadatant
i Wteta Haoucllon
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Raiaaidi Triangh Imttuta
Maiyland D^)t of lha Enviranmant
U.aEPA,RagionV
U5.EP/WOPPT&1MD
SdantHe MormaUon Sarvlcai
MIS Oapt of Environmental Quatty
Wl Oapt. of Natural Rawureaa
US. EPA
NE OapL o» Envbontnanlal Control
U.S. EPA. Region IX
T«xa» Viet* Commission
2500 Broenlng Highway
230 a Dearborn
401 M. Sir**, aw.. (TS-793)
4820 Highway 377 South
Box 10385.2380 Hwy 80 W. 39204
P.O. Box 7021 (TS/3)
841 Chestnut BWg.
301 Centennial Mrt South
75 Hawthorne Street
1700 N Congma Ave. RM11
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