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How Hard Are You TRI-ing?

For more information, contact Elena Rivera at 512.329.5544. 

EPA's Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) program (SARA/EPCRA 313) specifies that certain facilities that "release chemicals" into the environment must provide a full accounting of those releases to the EPA and the public by July 1st of each year. Even though this program is mature, many of our clients are unsure about who is affected and how to adequately document compliance.

If the EPA believes a regulated facility should have been reporting a chemical "release" into the environment and has failed to do so, enforcement is typically swift and severe - EPA's enforcement web site states that "penalties for violations of EPCRA may be up to $27,500 per violation, per day".

Many companies have developed systems to maintain their TRI programs, have been reporting for years, and have probably just completed your submittals for the 2003 reporting year. However, we recommend that you never become complacent about your TRI submittals - the EPA will hold you to the representations you make and will likely penalize you if your submittals are incomplete or inaccurate.

Generally, it's a good idea for any facility with even the potential for TRI reporting obligations to audit its TRI status, beginning with an overall applicability determination. This determination, however, is no small matter. For example, we are familiar with the owner of a small foundry in Central Texas who assumed that he had "no" significant releases to the environment, with the possible exception of some baghouse dust that was below any TRI quantity threshold. However, the large quantities of metal that were recycled on and off-site by that facility did, in fact, exceed TRI thresholds, and the facility owner should have been submitting TRI reports annually. After an EPA audit he quickly caught up with past reports once he understood the reporting obligations. Nonetheless, he was assessed a fine in excess of $150,000.

Even if you are relatively familiar with the TRI reporting obligations, it is important to carefully monitor changes that EPA makes in the reporting requirements almost each year. For example, in recent years EPA has added chemicals and types of facilities, modified thresholds and reportable physical forms, and changed the layout of the Form A and Form R reports.

So our words to the wise continue to be: "You may be trying, but are you TRI-ing - hard enough?"