BANGOR – Backed by the Penobscot River, once famed for its pollution, a group of environmental activists gathered Wednesday to protest corporate use of toxic and hazardous chemicals.

“Citizens have a right to know when and where these toxics are being used – it’s our water, it’s part of our lives,” said Adam Lacher, a college student from Belfast and employee of the Maine People’s Alliance. “We have a right to participate in the decisions that have an effect on our environment,” he said.

The citizens group, which has 16,000 members statewide, expressed its opposition Wednesday to Maine’s law governing corporate use and disposal of toxic chemicals.

Ten years ago, the Alliance joined labor and environmental groups in lobbying for the Toxics Use Reduction Act. The law required corporations to set their own goals for the reduction of toxic chemical use, and to report their progress to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection at regular intervals, said John Dieffenbacher-Krall, Bangor director for the Alliance.

By 1998, environmental groups were celebrating their success. The Alliance on Wednesday touted a 37 percent decrease – more than 144 million pounds – in toxic chemicals used in Maine over the past decade.

But in 1999, legislators were called to renew the law. After complaints from corporations, the new Toxics Use Reduction Act does not require companies to set or meet goals for reducing their use of dangerous chemicals, Dieffenbacher-Krall said.

In an interview Wednesday, Ron Dyer, director of the toxic reduction program of the DEP, defended the new law as “an experiment in government.”

Environmental law regarding toxic chemicals is already strict, and legislators wanted to give corporations the opportunity to be proactive, Dyer said.

At present, the Alliance has not drafted a proposal to strengthen the law, but environmentalists have not ruled out the possibility.

“Our policy position is still that mandatory [toxics] use reduction is better,” Dieffenbacher-Krall said. “It costs a whole lot of money and takes a whole lot of work to clean things up after you have a toxic mess.”

Alliance members called the regulatory change “tragic,” predicting that companies would not choose to reduce their use of toxic chemicals without government pressure to keep them honest.

“We know there have been instances of fudging,” Dieffenbacher-Krall said. “Given the news these days about corporations and their disclosure, there is cause for concern.”

Dyer pointed out, however, that in exchange for the removal of mandatory reductions, corporations agreed to publish the DEP data online so citizens can see details about the companies in their own communities.

“You can really see the trends, see who’s working hard,” Dyer said. “It’s also powerful if you see a company lagging behind.”

Activists, too, applauded this attempt at public disclosure, but complained that the DEP Web site does not feature current data. The most recent figures available date from 1999, although a new report was completed July 1, 2002.

Dyer said Wednesday that July data would be available as soon as state regulators complete their audit of the figures, likely by January.

For activists, that isn’t soon enough. The time lag in reporting raises other suspicions about corporate behavior, they said.

“I have a message for the Department of Environmental Protection, for corporate leaders and for Governor King – the Maine People’s Alliance is watching,” Dieffenbacher-Krall said, facing a bank of television cameras Wednesday.

His fellow Alliance members were confident that a massive grass-roots campaign being conducted this summer would result in better public access to DEP toxics data.

“That’s what we need more of – pressure on the government from a citizen democracy,” Lacher said. “We’re working within the system to make a difference.

“All we are is Maine people. We don’t have a lot of money, we just have a lot of voices,” he said.