Civil Justice Reform Lobby Day May 11th was Civil Justice Reform Lobby Day. Nearly 200 tort reform advocates joined with The Business Council and New Yorkers for Civil Justice Reform to meet with 93 legislators on this important issue. We urge all GAC members to write to your legislators in support of this legislation. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno announced his support of the measure last week, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Governor George Pataki did likewise on Wednesday this week. City of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is opposed to the repeal and will bring suit to overturn the new law on the ground that repeal requires City approval.
Legislative passage is slated for next week and gubernatorial approval thereafter.
In summary, the DEC report said that 29.9 million pounds of TRI chemicals were released into the environment in 1997. The 88 page report is available on the DEC's web site. It contains more than 70 pages of charts and tables showing TRI emissions by media, by contaminant and by source. The appendix includes a table identifying releases for all 659 facilities that filed Form Rs last year, and a listing of all 199 substances listed on Form Rs, both in descending order of total releases reported. To obtain a copy from DEC's web site, click here .