Home » post » GAO report on EPA proposal to change TRI threshold

Our mission

Free Government Information (FGI) is a place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information. FGI promotes free government information through collaboration, education, advocacy and research.

GAO report on EPA proposal to change TRI threshold

Hi all,

I’m Chris and, as mentioned, I am FGI’s BOTM for February. Since I’ve admitted to being a Government Accountability Office (GAO) fan, I thought I’d kick things off with a pertinent GAO report.

The GAO released a preliminary report today critical of how the EPA handled a proposal to change the threshold of toxic chemical releases that must be reported for inclusion in the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI).

Currently, if a facility releases annually 500 pounds or less of toxic chemicals, it can fill out the short Form A instead of the long Form R. The information in Form R is included in the TRI, which is available to the public. In January, the EPA proposed changing the minimum amount of releases that require the use of Form R to 2,000 pounds.

In its initial findings, the GAO found that the EPA “did not adhere to its own rulemaking guidelines in all respects when developing the proposal to change TRI reporting requirements.” It found that EPA management essentially forced the threshold change into the decision-making process of the work group that was analyzing changes to the TRI reporting guidelines, then gave the internal and regional offices little time to review the change.

PDFs of the full report and its highlights is available on the report’s abstract page.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.


Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Archives