In another example of the Environmental Protection Agency not listening to public or congressional concerns, the agency last week moved ahead with a controversial plan to weaken requirements that companies report on the toxic chemicals they use and release into the environment. By quadrupling the reporting threshold, the EPA said it was making the reporting less burdensome to industry.

Whether the reporting required by the Toxics Release Inventory was a burden remains in doubt and is being researched by the Government Accountability Office, at the behest of Sen. Olympia Snowe and other senators. The GAO is also looking into how having less information on the use and discharge of toxic chemicals would affect state and federal regulators and the public. Since the EPA did not wait for this needed review to be completed before weakening the rules, it is now up to Congress to step in early next year and strengthen the TRI reporting requirements. It should also make them more user-friendly by including information such as whether companies routinely exceeded their licensed discharges.

Last year, the House passed an amendment to maintain the TRI status quo. The Senate never took up the legislation.

Under the revised inventory, for each of 650 chemicals, companies must report the releases into the environment – the air, water and ground – if they exceed 2,000 pounds annually and they handle at least 5,000 pounds of the chemical. Previously, the reporting threshold was 500 pounds.

It could have been worse as the EPA initially proposed to increase the release threshold to 5,000 pounds and require reporting every other year.

Still, the relaxed rules are troubling in Maine because many of the companies included in the TRI release only small amounts of chemicals.

There are 45 Maine communities that have at least one facility included in the inventory. Under the new rules, about half these communities would have less data available from the inventory and 21 facilities would not have to report at all.

The information is used by the EPA to track chemical use and potential to harm the environment. It is also used by state and local agencies and first responders such as those in New Orleans who used the TRI to find out what chemicals were in the water that flooded the city.

According to OMB Watch, a nonprofit group advocating for more government transparency, the EPA received 122,386 comments opposing the rule change and 34 supporting them, mainly from industry groups. Some industry representatives, however, said the TRI was not burdensome and that the reporting requirements encouraged their companies to switch to processes that used more benign chemicals.

This is a reason to restore TRI to its previous reporting requirements and to improve the inventory 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?

These would be welcomed changes.