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Legislation to restore our right to know
On July 31, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved Environment America-backed legislation to restore the public’s right-to-know about toxic pollution. The bill would overturn rollbacks that allow more than 3,500 polluting facilities to keep silent about their toxic releases.
What's at stake
Every year, factories and manufacturers release thousands of tons of
dangerous pollutants, toxic metals, and poisonous fumes into our air,
water and communities.
Despite overwhelming public opposition, in December 2006 the
Bush administration’s EPA issued a rule exempting more than 3,500 facilities
from reporting their pollution under the Toxic Release Inventory program. The rule also allows polluters to keep the
public in the dark about releases of up to 500 pounds of persistent
bio-accumulative toxins. The Toxic Right-to-Know Protection Act would reverse these
rollbacks and restore public access to information about the toxic
pollution released into communities.
We need to be doing more, not less, to monitor toxic
pollution. That’s why we’re standing with the public against powerful special
interests to make sure we know what polluters are dumping into our communities.
