Defending Your Right To Know  Before the U.S. Supreme Court  

In what may be one of the most important environmental cases before the U.S. Supreme Court in a decade, CBE is defending your right to know about toxic chemicals stored, released into the environment or used in your community.  These chemicals pose serious health and environmental problems for workers in the shop and people in the community.

EPCRA - Your "Right to Know" Law
Many people do not realize that Congress gave us the right to know about toxic chemical releases when it passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) in 1986.  EPCRA is widely regarded as one of the nation’s most successful environmental laws.  It informs the public about the types and quantities of toxic chemicals being annually released by industrial facilities into the land, air and water.  EPCRA also requires emergency planning to protect the public in case of an accidental release of particularly hazardous chemicals.
 
How Does EPCRA Work?
Unlike most other environmental statutes, EPCRA does not achieve environmental goals through regulating emission limits.  Instead, by simply requiring companies to disclose their polluting activities, EPCRA has spurred significant reductions in our nation’s toxic pollution.  Whether the result of public pressure or a byproduct of the reporting process itself, the effects of EPCRA have been dramatic.  Since EPCRA was passed, firms complying with this law have reduced their reported releases of  toxic chemicals by 46%.
 
What About EPCRA Compliance?
EPCRA is clearly a success story.  Although the majority of companies comply with the law, many do not, and the law depends on self-reporting.  In 1991, the U.S. General Accounting Office estimated that over 30% of the facilities that should be submitting reports under EPCRA were not -– at least in part because of limited governmental enforcement efforts.  While hopefully the compliance rate has improved since 1991, overall compliance remains a serious problem.

CBE’s Goal is to Ensure Your Right to Know
CBE has made it part of our  mission to improve compliance under EPCRA.  As a result of our efforts, we have landed in the U.S. Supreme Court, where we are fighting to preserve your right to know.  At issue is whether citizens will be able to continue to enforce compliance with the law. Because of limited resources, the federal government has relied heavily on citizens to identify and pursue non-complying companies.  Therefore the federal government, as well as 15 state attorney generals and a host of environmental organizations filed briefs supporting CBE’s position before the Court.  If  CBE prevails, compliance will continue to improve and citizens will have access to the information to which they are legally entitled.  Just as important, continued reductions in toxic chemicals releases are likely to occur.

The Importance of Citizen Suits
Virtually all of our major federal environmental laws allow citizens to force a polluter into compliance with the law.  Citizen suits are important for several reasons.  First, governmental resources are simply not sufficient to watchdog every facility, and, in fact, it is frequently local citizens who first notice that something is amiss.  Just as important is that citizens who file enforcement actions against non-complying companies may be able to negotiate settlement agreements that include "supplemental environmental projects" (SEPs).  These projects allow companies to reduce the penalty they would normally pay to the federal treasury in return for carrying out an environmental project that improves the community.

While SEPs cannot be legally required, many companies agree to implement SEPs because of the goodwill generated by "paying back" something to the community that has suffered from its illegal practices.  CBE believes that they can be a particularly useful tool in addressing issues of environmental justice in low-income and minority communities.

CBE’s EPCRA litigation is a good example.  Not only do CBE’s EPCRA suits bring companies into compliance with the law and ensure that citizens have access to the information to which they are legally entitled, but they are an important part of our pollution prevention program.  As part of CBE settlements, many companies have agreed to develop pollution prevention plans with the assistance of qualified outside consultants.  Still others have invested in new equipment or changed industrial processes in order to reduce their use and release of toxic chemicals.  Some have donated funds to state and local agencies involved in emergency planning.
 

As a result of CBE serving a notice of intent to sue, the foundry hired a toxic use reduction expert to perform an environmental audit and recommend pollution prevention measures that could be implemented by the company.  Not only does this foundry now comply with EPCRA reporting requirements, but it has  reduced its use of hazardous pollutants, thereby reducing worker exposure and minimizing waste and liability.

A consent decree in the tannery case also required an environmental audit of its facility, designed to identify opportunities for improving pollution prevention and reducing the use of toxic substances.  Some of the funds that would have gone to the federal treasury were instead used to sponsor a seminar to educate Milwaukee area industries on compliance with EPCRA and to help the Milwaukee County Local Emergency Planning Committee improve its emergency spill planning efforts.

Send comments and or questions to  cbewi@igc.org