Toxics Release Inventory

The U.S. Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, 1986, requires owners and operators of covered facilities to self-report specific data including aggregate and trend data that are to be available to the public. Based on the principle of community right to know, this publicly accessible record is referred to as the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). The data to be reported are the release into the environment of substances and the threshold quantities listed in the regulations. Since its introduction, the TRI has been amended by the Pollution Prevention Act (1990), which requires data on enterprise waste management and source reduction to also be reported in the TRI. Similar registers are maintained in other countries. In Canada, the registry is known as the National Pollutant Release Inventory, first published by authority of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act in 1995 containing data reported for 1993. In Australia, the National Pollutant Inventory was officially available in 2000. Because the registers now include release and transfer data, they may accurately be termed pollutant release and transfer registers. Complementary reporting requirements may also exist in some local jurisdictions.

The legal obligation for an enterprise to self-report is not unlike the obligation to file income tax returns. Standard forms are annually available for the enterprise to complete and return to the responsible agency, which compiles the data and makes them available to the public as the TRI. Access to such records is now available on the Internet.

The TRI alone cannot be used to determine whether or not the specified substances may be legally sourced, used, released, and transferred in the course of business operations. Unless otherwise regulated, to be in compliance with the TRI, an enterprise must first determine whether a facility is subject to the reporting requirement. This determination is made by identifying whether any substances at a facility are identified in the regulations and, if so, in what quantities they occur. Once that determination is made, the second part [Page 396]is to calculate the quantity by which a substance has exceeded the threshold quantity, if any, and report such data in the required form to the responsible agency. As noted, the expanded concept of the TRI includes the transfer of regulated substances beyond the property of the enterprise, however that boundary may occur. As a result, releases into the air, the water, and land—whether intentional or not—are all reportable. The term transfer recognizes that regulated substances may be intentionally removed from the enterprise property either as waste or by agreement, whether for off-site recycling, treatment, or disposal. With the inclusion of reporting sources, as well as the transfer of the regulated substances, it is possible to systematically track their movement and enable means of intentionally implementing actions at multiple levels and for various reasons.

Knowledge is power, and its disclosure is of interest to all parties. Reporting enterprises' business interests must be balanced with the public's right to know. The requirement to maintain records can therefore be considered from the perspective of the reporting enterprise, as well as of the public interest. Public access to the TRI allows a broad range of stakeholders and a corresponding complex regime for accountability in the matter of the listed substances. Where perception is reality, the TRI database would be a correspondingly significant descriptor of reality.

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