Environmental Information Disclosure in the United States: Comparing State Policy Actions, Effects, and Needs

Environmental information disclosure has been much discussed but only infrequently studied systematically to determine the effects of making various kinds of information available to the public. This paper draws from a comprehensive study of environmental information disclosure in the United States, most of the results of which have been reported in Coming Clean: Information Disclosure and Environmental Performance (MIT Press, 2011). The book uses ten years of comprehensive data from the Toxics Release Inventory; a nationwide survey of corporate officials; a comparable survey of federal, state, and local officials directly involved in the implementation of the TRI program; and illustrative case studies of selected industrial facilities and communities. Taken together, these data allowed the project team to rigorously examine the effects of information disclosure on industrial facilities and the communities in which they are located. The paper analyzes the effects of information disclosure in the 50 states, the variation among the states in efforts to make information available to the public, the use of TRI information by state and local officials, and the views of those officials regarding actions that might be taken to improve public understanding of environmental and public health risks. Particular attention is given to how the TRI program might be changed to improve the flow of information to the public and to enhance public understanding of environmental risk data of this kind. Increased public understanding and involvement would provide additional incentives for facilities to improve environmental management and performance over time. The fifty states vary widely in environmental performance as measured by changes from year to year in the release of TRI chemicals and the risk associated with those chemicals. Among the most significant variables explaining the differences are state political conditions (such as strong environmental group membership), robust environmental regulations, and innovative pollution prevention policies. Federal, state and local officials report that they use TRI data in a variety of ways, including comparison of emissions by similar facilities, assisting with regulation and enforcement, educating citizens about local pollution problems, checking facility emissions against permit records, and comparing and evaluating public and environmental health risks. However, local officials were far less likely to use TRI data in these ways than were federal and state officials. These officials also report that public understanding of chemical risks could be improved in many ways. These include bringing local officials more thoroughly into the process of information disclosure and chemical management, reporting TRI data with different metrics and especially in terms of public health risks rather than quantities of chemicals released to the environment, improving the accuracy and currency of TRI data, and making use of new and creative ways to reach out to and involve the public, for example, via social networking sites. The paper appraises these suggestions in terms of technical, administrative, and political feasibility and likely their effects on environmental performance.