EPCRA in New England

Keeping Track of Toxics Through TRI

EPA is strongly committed to expanding the amount of environmental information available to citizens and communities. One of the first right-to-know programs at EPA is the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), a program established in 1987. The TRI program requires facilities that manufacture, process, or otherwise use any of 650 chemicals and compounds to report annually how much they released into the air, land and water or transferred offsite. This information is available in an electronically accessible national database.

The program has been hugely successful, spurring dramatic reductions in the use and discharge of toxics all across the country. From 2001 to 2007 New England facilities reduced their environmental release and other disposal both on- and off-site by 25.5%. Four out of six New England states reduced their total on- and off-site disposal and releases. EPA added a new class of chemicals called Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxics (PBTs) in 2001. These PBTs had very low threshold ranging from 1 to 100 pounds. One class of PBT's was dioxin and dioxin like compounds which had a reporting threshold of 0.1 grams. The core TRI chemicals from 2001 to 2007 have remained constant. The table below is based on the 2001 core chemicals.

NE States TRI 2001-2007 TRI data: Total On- and Off-site Environmental Releases and Disposal
State	2001	2006	2007	%2001-2007	%2006-2007
Connecticut	9,417,299	4,906,829	4,136,192	-56.10%	-15.70%
Maine	10,288,361	10,617,222	11,124,513	8.10%	4.80%
Massachusetts	10,194,022	6,904,049	6,539,205	-35.90%	-5.30%
New Hampshire	4,635,764	4,173,439	4,018,879	-13.30%	-3.70%
Rhode Island	953,634	506,726	519,459	-45.50%	2.50%
Vermont	327,511	404,352	336,289	2.60%	-16.80%
Totals	35,816,591	27,512,617	26,674,537	-25.52%	-3.05%

EPA has expanded the program several times to include additional chemicals and types of facilities that must report - among those, the utilities industry.