When the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to weaken requirements that companies report on the toxic chemicals they use and release into the environment, it said it was making the reporting easier. The agency didn’t take into account how having less information would affect state and federal regulators and the public.

Now the Government Accountability Office, prodded by a group of senators, including Sen. Olympia Snowe, will fill this gaping hole by examining the impact of the proposed changes to the Toxics Release Inventory. This review is overdue and is likely to show that the changes proposed by EPA will diminish the value of TRI rather than improve it.

The proposed changes, announced last year, would require companies to report their toxic releases every other year instead of annually. The threshold for required reporting would rise significantly from 500 pounds of a given chemical to 5,000. This would be especially troubling in Maine, because many of the companies included in the TRI release only small amounts of chemicals.

There are currently 45 Maine communities that have at least one facility reporting in the inventory. If the reporting threshold is increased to 5,000 pounds, 21 communities would have less data available from the inventory and 12 would likely not get any data from the inventory.

Since the TRI disclosure requirement went into effect in 1998, the volume of toxic material released in the United States has been cut in half, however chemical releases increased by more than 10 percent in Maine in 2004, according to the database.

Here’s the EPA’s own description of the program. “Armed with TRI data, communities have more power to hold companies accountable and make informed decisions about how toxic chemicals are managed. The data often spurs companies to focus on their chemical management practices since they are being measured and made public. In addition, the data serves as a rough indicator or environmental progress over time.”

The information is also used by the EPA itself to track chemical use and potential to harm the environment. It is also used by state and local agencies and first responders like those in New Orleans who used the TRI to find out what chemicals were in the water that flooded the city. The EPA apparently did not consider how these entities would be affected by the rule change. Now the GAO will step in to investigate this question.

Congress should demand that the inventory be improved by requiring that more comparative data be included in the TRI. For example, is a company exceeding its permitted emissions or falling far below them? Are a facility’s toxic releases being reduced over time?

That would be a positive change.