Research & Analysis // Research and analyses from academia and other sources.
Wasting Our Waterways 2012 Report Released
Wasting Our Waterways 2012: Toxic Industrial Pollution and the Unfulfilled Promise of the Clean Water Act Released by: Environment America Research and Policy Center Available at: http://www.environmentamerica.org/reports/ame/wasting-our-waterways-2012 For Immediate Release Thursday, March 22, 2012 Washington, D.C.–Five states—Indiana, Virginia, Nebraska, Texas, and Georgia—account for forty percent of the total amountof toxic discharges to U.S. waterways ...
EPA Releases 2010 Toxics Release Inventory National Analysis Today
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 5, 2012 EPA Releases 2010 Toxics Release Inventory National Analysis WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is releasing its annual national analysis of the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), providing all Americans with vital information about their communities. The TRI program publishes information on toxic chemical disposals and other releases ...
Launch of a National Research Council Report: Sustainability and the U.S. EPA
Science and Technology for Sustainability Program Special Event Launch of a National Research Council Report Sustainability and the U.S. EPA Thursday, September 15, 2011 2:30 – 4:00pm Marian Koshland Science Museum Corner of 6th and E Street NW Washington DC Metro: Judiciary Square (Red Line) or Gallery Place-Chinatown (Yellow/Green Line) A new report from the ...
ECOS Publishes Green Report focusing on TRI and Environmental Justice
ECOS, through the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory Program (EPA TRI), recently has focused outreach efforts on assisting the Environmental Justice (EJ) community. Most recently ECOS focused on raising awareness of EJ-TRI related issues through a small grants program. As such, ECOS awarded three grants under its current five-year TRI Cooperative Agreement with EPA. These grants support EJ efforts as they relate to TRI, with particular emphasis on addressing local environmental issues in communities.
Dirty Energy's Assault on our Health: Mercury
By Shelley Vinyard and Lauren Randall, Environment America Research & Policy Center
Our dependence on oil and coal-fired power plants has broad detrimental impacts on our health and our environment. Power plants represent America's single biggest source of air pollution, affecting our waterways, destroying ecosystems, and polluting the air we breathe.1 Pollution from coal-fired power plants in particular contributes to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the United States: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic respiratory diseases.
Dirty Energy's Assault on our Health is a series of reports examining the numerous threats that power plants pose to our environment and our health. Each segment in the series focuses on a different pollutant emitted by power plants.
This report looks at the health and environmental impacts of mercury pollution from power plants.
Coming Clean: Information Disclosure and Environmental Performance
From MIT Press:
Coming Clean
Information Disclosure and Environmental Performance
Michael E. Kraft, Mark Stephan and Troy D. AbelComing Clean is the first book to investigate the process of information disclosure as a policy strategy for environmental protection. This process, which requires that firms disclose information about their environmental performance, is part of an approach to environmental protection that eschews the conventional command-and-control regulatory apparatus, which sometimes leads government and industry to focus on meeting only minimal standards. The authors of Coming Clean examine the effectiveness of information disclosure in achieving actual improvements in corporate environmental performance by analyzing data from the federal government’s Toxics Release Inventory, or TRI, and drawing on an original set of survey data from corporations and federal, state, and local officials, among other sources.
The authors find that TRI--probably the best-known example of information disclosure--has had a substantial effect over time on the environmental performance of industry. But, drawing on case studies from across the nation, they show that the improvement is not uniform: some facilities have been leaders while others have been laggards. The authors argue that information disclosure has an important role to play in environmental policy--but only as part of an integrated set of policy tools that includes conventional regulation.
About the Authors
Michael E. Kraft is Professor of Political Science and Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
Mark Stephan is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Washington State University, Vancouver.
Troy D. Abel is Assistant Professor in the Environmental Studies Department at the Huxley College of the Environment at Western Washington University.
This book is available via MIT Press and may be ordered from its website at http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12537
Using the Toxics Release Inventory to Protect Maryland Watersheds
The following poster was prepared for the November 18, 2010, Maryland Water Montoring Council Annual Conference. It was used to depict how TRI Data is used to protect the Maryland watersheds and it provides a wealth of information and resources.
'Beta' version of a new web-based tool for accessing wastewater pollutant discharge information
The following email was distributed by Carey A. Johnston, P.E. U.S. EPA, Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance:
Online release of North American industrial pollution data reveals significant reporting gaps
This article originated from the Commission for Environmental Cooperation and it can also be viewed on their website.
- Oil and gas extraction, mining, and wastewater treatment stand out as clear examples where data reporting needs to improve
- Taking Stock Online provides integrated, publicly accessible pollution data from industrial facilities across the continent
Montreal, 13 July 2010-Taking Stock Online, released today by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, provides the latest integrated North American data and most comprehensive picture of industrial pollution across North America, documenting reported releases and transfers of 5.7 billion kilograms of toxic pollutants in 2006 from industrial facilities in Canada, Mexico and the United States.
The North American picture is incomplete however, as a combination of national reporting exemptions for certain sectors and pollutants and incomplete reporting by some facilities reveal significant gaps in the portrait of how much pollution is generated and managed by North American industry.
"Regional cooperation on environmental issues depends on comparable and complete data from Canada, Mexico and the United States," said Evan Lloyd, Executive Director of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation. "This information is critical for governments, industry and citizens to address pollution and ensure healthy communities and ecosystems."
Taking Stock Online, published today, presents the latest integrated data set from North America's pollutant release and transfer registers (PRTRs) and features an integrated, multi-year database covering over 500 toxic substances and almost 100 major industrial sectors reporting to the PRTRs of Canada, Mexico and the United States. The site also features new tools to assist in data analysis, including a tool to explore data on pollutants transferred across national borders.
Information As Regulation: The Effect of Community Right to Know Laws on Toxic Emissions
Shameek Konar1 and Mark A. Cohen2
1Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University
2 Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University
Abstract
There is growing academic and policy-level interest in the use of information as quasi-regulatory mechanisms, such as toxic release inventory (TRI) and “green labels.” Mandatory disclosure requirements have been touted as “market-based incentives” that may affect firm behavior. We provide new evidence on the effectiveness of disclosure requirements by examining firm behavior in response to disclosures of TRI emissions. We find that firms with the largest stock price decline on the day this information became public subsequently reduced emissions more than their industry peers. This is consistent with the view that financial markets may provide strong incentives for firms to change their environmental behavior.
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