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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Broader Reporting Of Toxic Waste Releases Proposed

Associated Press

The Clinton administration proposed a major expansion of reporting requirements for toxic industrial releases Wednesday as the latest data on hazardous emissions from manufacturing sites showed a continuing decline.

The proposal, expected to become final before the end of the year, for the first time would require electric utilities, mining companies and hazardous waste treatment companies among others to report how much toxic pollution they put into the air, water and ground.

Currently the reporting requirements are limited to a broad sweep of manufacturing sites including refineries and chemical plants, giving the public a false impression of how much toxic material actually is released, said administration officials.

“Putting information about local pollution into the hands of the public is the single most effective, commonsense tool available for protecting human health and the environment,” said Vice President Al Gore, who announced the proposed expansion of the reporting requirements.

Requiring seven new industrial sectors to file annual toxic emission statistics would increase the number of industrial sites subject to the reporting from the current 23,000 to nearly 30,000 facilities.

Environmentalists long have complained that some of the country’s major polluters - including mining companies and coal-burning electricity plants - are not required to annually publicize their toxic emissions data.

While announcing plans to expand the program, the EPA said that in 1994 emissions from manufacturing sites continued to decline as they have annually since 1988.

The EPA said 2.26 billion pounds of toxic chemicals were released by factories, refineries and chemical plants into the air, water and earth in 1994, compared to 2.8 billion pounds reported for 1993.

But the year-to-year decline in actual releases was not as dramatic as those numbers suggest, because the agency removed several widely used industrial chemicals off the toxic list in 1994. That meant more than 300 million pounds reported in 1993, was not counted as pollution in 1994.