In 1984, a catastrophic accident caused the release of methyl isocyanate— a toxic chemical used to make pesticides—at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, killing thousands of people, injuring many others, and displacing many more from their homes and businesses. One month later, it was disclosed that the same chemical had leaked at least 28 times from a similar Union Carbide facility in Institute, West Virginia. Eight months later, 3,800 pounds of chemicals again leaked from the West Virginia facility, sending dozens of injured people to local hospitals. In the wake of these events, Congress passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA). Among other things, EPCRA provides access by individuals and communities to information regarding hazardous materials in their communities. Section 313 of EPCRA generally requires certain facilities that manufacture, process, or otherwise use any of 581 individual chemicals and 30 additional chemical categories to annually report the amount of those chemicals that they released to the environment, including information about where they released those chemicals. EPCRA also requires EPA to make this information available to the public, which the agency does in a national database known as the Toxics Release Inventory. The public may access TRI data on EPA’s website and aggregate it by zip code, county, state, industry, and chemical. EPA also publishes an annual report that summarizes national, state, and industry data. Figure 1 illustrates TRI reporting using a typical, large coal-fired electric power plant as an example. The figure notes the chemicals that the facility may have to report to the TRI. The primary input to this facility is coal that contains small amounts of a number of toxic chemicals such as arsenic, chromium, and lead. The facility pulverizes coal and burns it to generate electricity. As part of its standard operations, the facility releases TRI chemicals such as hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid to the air through its stack. The facility may also send ash from the burning process to an ash pond or landfill, including TRI chemicals such as arsenic, lead, and zinc. In addition, the facility may release chemicals in the water it uses for cooling. The facility will have to complete a TRI report for air, land, and water releases of each chemical it uses above a certain threshold. Owners of facilities subject to EPCRA comply its reporting requirements by submitting an annual Form R report to EPA, and their respective state, for each TRI-listed chemical that they release in excess of certain thresholds. Form R captures information about facility identity, such as address, parent company, industry type, latitude, and longitude and detailed information about the toxic chemical, such as quantity of the chemical disposed or released onsite to air, water, land, and underground injection or transferred for disposal or release off-site. This information is labeled as “Disposal or Other Releases” on the left side of figure 2. In the PPA, Congress declared that pollution should be prevented or reduced at the source whenever feasible; pollution that cannot be prevented should be recycled in an environmentally safe manner, whenever feasible; pollution that cannot be prevented or recycled should be treated in an environmentally safe manner whenever feasible; and disposal or other release into the environment should be employed only as a last resort and should be conducted in an environmentally safe manner. Consequently, EPA expanded TRI by requiring facilities to report additional information about their efforts to reduce pollution at its source, including the quantities of TRI chemicals they manage in waste, both on- and off-site, including amounts recycled, burned for energy recovery, or treated. EPA began capturing this information on Form R in 1991, as illustrated by “Other Waste Management” on the right side of figure 2. Beginning in 1995, EPA allowed facilities to use a 2-page Certification Statement (Form A) to certify that they are not subject to Form R reporting for a given non-PBT chemical provided that they (1) did not release more than 500 total pounds and (2) did not manufacture, process, or otherwise use more than one-million total pounds of the chemical. Form A contains the facility identification information found on Form R and basic information about the identity of the chemical being reported. However, Form A does not contain any of the Form R details about quantities of chemicals released or otherwise managed as waste. Beginning with Reporting Year 2001, EPA has provided the Toxics Release Inventory–Made Easy software (TRI-ME) to assist facilities with their TRI reporting. TRI-ME leads prospective reporters interactively through a series of questions that eliminate a good portion of the analysis required to determine whether a facility needs to comply with the TRI reporting requirements, including the threshold calculations needed to determine Form A eligibility. If TRI-ME determines that a facility is required to report, the software provides guidance for each of the data elements on the reporting forms. The software also provides detailed guidance for each step through an integrated assistance library. Prior to submission, TRI-ME performs a series of validation checks before the facility prints the forms for mailing, transfers the data to diskette, or submits the information electronically over the Internet. Each year, EPA compiles the TRI reports and stores them in a database known as the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). In 2004—the latest year for which data are publicly available—23,675 facilities filed a total of nearly 90,000 reports, including nearly 11,000 Form As. In total, facilities reported releasing 4.24 billion pounds of chemicals to the environment and handling 21.8 billion pounds of chemicals through other waste management activities. EPA recently embarked on a three-phase effort to streamline TRI reporting requirements and reduce the reporting burden on industry. During the first phase, EPA removed some data elements from Form A and Form R that could be obtained from other EPA information collection databases to simplify reporting. As part of the second phase, EPA issued the TRI Burden Reduction Proposed Rule, which would have allowed a reporting facility to use Form A for (a) non-PBT chemicals, so long as its releases or other disposal were not greater than 5,000 pounds, and (b) for PBT chemicals when there are no releases or other disposal and no more than 500 pounds of other waste management (e.g., recycling or treatment). The phase III changes that EPA was considering proposing would have allowed alternate-year reporting, rather than yearly reporting. The phase II and III changes generated considerable public concern that they will negatively impact federal and state governments’ and the public’s access to important public health information. Although we have not yet completed our review, our preliminary observations are that EPA does not appear to have followed its own rulemaking guidelines in all respects when developing the new TRI reporting requirements. Throughout the rule development process, senior EPA management generally has the discretion to depart from the guidelines, including by accelerating the development of the proposed regulations. Nevertheless, we discovered several significant differences between the guidelines and the process EPA followed in this case: (1) late in the rulemaking process, senior EPA management directed consideration of a burden reduction option that the TRI workgroup had considered but which had subsequently been dropped from consideration; (2) EPA developed this option on an expedited schedule that appears to have provided a limited amount of time for conducting various impact analyses; and (3) the expedited schedule afforded little, if any, time for internal stakeholders to provide input to senior EPA management about the impacts of the proposal during Final Agency Review. First, the TRI workgroup charged with identifying options to reduce reporting burdens on industry identified three possible options for senior management to consider. The first two options allowed facilities to use Form A in lieu of Form R for PBT chemicals, provided the facility has no releases to the environment. Specifically, the workgroup considered and analyzed options to facilities to: report PBT chemicals using Form A if they have zero releases and zero total other waste management activities; or report PBT chemicals using Form A if they have zero releases and no more than 500 pounds of other waste management activities. The third option was to create a form, in lieu of Form R, for facilities to report “no significant change” if their releases changed little from the previous year. According a June 2005 briefing for the Administrator and interviews with senior EPA officials, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had suggested increasing the Form A eligibility for non-PBT chemicals from 500 to 5,000 pounds as a possible burden reduction option. However, the TRI workgroup had previously dropped that option from consideration. In fact, EPA’s economic analysis—dated July 2005—did not evaluate the impact of raising the Form A reporting threshold because the TRI workgroup pursued the “no significant change” option. Nonetheless, by the time the TRI burden reduction proposed rule was published in October 2005, it included the option to increase Form A reporting eligibility from 500 to 5,000 pounds. Second, although we could not determine from the documents EPA provided or the discussions we held with EPA officials what actions the agency took between the June 2005 briefing for the Administrator and the October 2005 publication of the TRI proposal in the Federal Register, the Administrator provided direction after the briefing to expedite the process in order to meet a commitment to OMB to provide burden reduction by the end of December 2006. Subsequently, EPA staff worked to revise the economic analysis to consider the impact of raising the Form A reporting threshold. However, that analysis was not completed before EPA sent the proposed rule to OMB for review and was only completed just prior to the proposal being signed by the Administrator on September 21, 2005 and ultimately published in the Federal Register for public comment on October 4, 2005. Third, it appears that EPA management received limited input from internal stakeholders, including the TRI workgroup, after directing that the proposed rule include the option to increase the Form A reporting threshold from 500 to 5,000 pounds. EPA conducted a Final Agency Review burden reduction proposal, as provided for in the internal rulemaking guidelines.