Stakeholder Forum: TRI Reporting and Metal Mining

This discussion forum will be open until 5 pm on November 25, 2009. Share your thoughts on the posts below to help us define the scope of a forthcoming rule.

The EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program is considering modifications and/or clarifications to TRI reporting requirements and terms that apply to metal mining operations.  Before embarking on the formal phases of a regulatory development effort, the TRI Program decided to confer with a few representatives of key stakeholder groups to gauge their levels of interest in holding further discussions regarding the issues such a rulemaking might cover, and to get a sense of the scope of issues each stakeholder group would want to discuss. In November of 2008, EPA’s TRI Program had an external facilitator solicit informally by telephone the opinions of nine representatives of three stakeholder groups. The stakeholder groups included the metal mining industry, national and grassroots environmental organizations, and technical consultants.

During these discussions, four issues related to metal mining and TRI were raised as topics for further input. These issues are described in the posts below. Share your thoughts on these posts to help us define the scope of a potential forthcoming rule. Your input may guide us as we plan for the data collection and analyses that will support development of such a rule and may help us to uncover points of potential agreement and disagreement between stakeholders.

The discussion forum will be open until 5 pm on October 30, 2009. Comments received before that time will be included in a public docket. We will provide a link to the docket once it is posted. A proposed rule may be published by early 2011.

The four issues are as follows (see below):

Industry representatives stated that some of the data this industry currently reports do not correlate in a direct way to significant environmental or public health impacts.  Nor, in their opinion, does the TRI Program drive environmental improvement within this industry as currently implemented.

Representatives of the environmental community expressed an interest in looking at how actual releases beyond the facility property (e.g., fugitive air emissions, surface and groundwater migration) could be more accurately measured and reported.

Environmental representatives felt that all releases beyond containment, including those currently exempt from TRI reporting, should be made reportable.

Industry representatives stated there are a number of definitional issues that should be addressed in a rulemaking to clarify areas of uncertainty.  These include the issues discussed in key court cases as well as a number of others.

The Agency has posted a summary of the discussions from which these issues were taken. Feel free to share your thoughts on any additional TRI metal mining issues that should potentially be addressed through rulemaking.