Toxic Chemical Releases

Survey of State Toxics Release Inventory Coordinators (GAO-08-129SP), an E-supplement to GAO-08-128 Gao ID: GAO-08-129SP November 30, 2007

This is an E-supplement to GAO-08-128, which was released on November 30, 2007. The Environmental Protection and Community Right-to-Know Act requires certain facilities to submit Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reports to their respective states, which have a created range of TRI programs. In order to learn about states' TRI activities, we conducted a survey of state TRI coordinators in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. This document presents selected results of our survey. A link to the survey was e-mailed to TRI coordinators in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and we obtained a 100 percent response from the recipients. In this e-supplement, we do not include responses from individual states, nor do we include narrative responses that the state coordinators provided. Additionally, this supplement does not contain responses to questions 4 through 7, because many states answered inconsistently and responses could not be presented reliably. A more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology is contained in our report: "Toxic Chemical Releases: EPA Changes Could Reduce Environmental Information Available to Many Communities", GAO-08-128 (Washington, D.C.: November 30, 2007). We administered the survey from January 2007 through March 2007 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.



GAO Report


Read the Full Report Toxic Chemical Releases: EPA Changes Could Reduce Environmental Information Available to Many Communities (GAO-08-128)
  • Background Information
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Background

The Environmental Protection and Community Right-to-Know Act requires certain facilities to submit Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reports to their respective states, which have a created range of TRI programs. In order to learn about states’ TRI activities, we conducted a survey of state TRI coordinators in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. This document presents selected results of our survey. A link to the survey was e-mailed to TRI coordinators in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and we obtained a 100 percent response from the recipients. In this e-supplement, we do not include responses from individual states, nor do we include narrative responses that the state coordinators provided. Additionally, this supplement does not contain responses to questions 4 through 7, because many states answered inconsistently and responses could not be presented reliably.

A more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology is contained in our report: "Toxic Chemical Releases: EPA Changes Could Reduce Environmental Information Available to Many Communities", GAO-08-128 (Washington, D.C.: November 30, 2007). We administered the survey from January 2007 through March 2007 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

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