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Congress should consider legislation to reverse EPA's recent changes to the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), the Government Accountability Office recommended last week. EPA relaxed the right-to-know regulations in December 2006, thus allowing many facilities to provide less information about their toxic releases. GAO has strongly criticized the agency's move before, saying it provides only a modest savings to many companies while the public loses a substantial amount of data (C&EN, Feb. 12, page 58). In its new report, GAO says EPA was under pressure from the White House to reduce industry's TRI reporting burdens by the end of 2006. The agency's expedited schedule for issuing the rule did not allow complete economic analysis of the rule or adequate input from EPA's own regulatory programs that rely heavily on TRI data, the report says. In addition, the agency did not effectively substantiate its claims that the less stringent reporting requirements provide incentives for companies to cut toxic releases. "Reducing the amount of information that those facilities must disclose would provide less accountability for facilities to reduce emissions," GAO says.
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