The PIRGs have a long history of work on several of the issues raised by two of the bills being considered today. Increasing citizen involvement in federal government decision-making, ensuring agency accountability, protecting the public from toxic hazards, and ensuring that the public has access to information about toxic hazards are all long-standing aspects of the PIRGs' environmental work. The state PIRGs have worked to pass right-to-know laws and toxic waste cleanup laws for several decades, including Massachusetts' Toxics Use Reduction Act and New Jersey's Pollution Prevention Act.
U.S: PIRG welcomes the opportunity to testify in support of Senator Allard's bill, S.1763, The Ombudsman Reauthorization Act, and Senator Lautenberg's bill, S. 2800, The Streamlined Environmental Reporting and Pollution Prevention Act of 2000. Both of these bills take important steps toward making government, in this case the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more responsive to the public whose health it is the Agency's mission to protect. The Ombudsman Reauthorization Act helps to ensure agency accountability to the public and the Streamlined Environmental Reporting Act increases the efficiency of the Agency's information management and resources.
The Ombudsman Reauthorization Act of 1999, S. 1763
U.S. PIRG supports The Ombudsman Reauthorization Act of 1999. The bill re-authorizes the of lice of the Ombudsman at EPA, requires a report to Congress on the status of health and environmental concerns raised by the Ombudsman's investigations, and directs the Administrator of the EPA to re-structure the of lice to conform with the American Bar Association's model Ombudsman statute.
The EPA National Ombudsman serves as an ``EPA watchdog,'' receiving requests or complaints from Members of Congress or citizens concerning EPA's actions in cases involving the Superfund or other hazardous substances programs. The Ombudsman conducts investigations into these complaints and then makes findings of fact and recommendations to the Agency on how to resolve the dispute(s).
This office has provided valuable service assisting communities who have felt EPA was unresponsive to their needs. In particular, the Ombudsman has investigated and helped to resolve disputes at a number of Superfund sites around the country. In the last eight years, the National Ombudsman's Office has assisted citizens in Montana, Ohio, Missouri, Idaho, Texas, California, Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Washington. A few of the Ombudsman's successful investigations include:
Houston, TX_Community residents near a toxic waste site at an abandoned facility that had been used by Monsanto and other companies for storing a reprocessing chemical waste had worked for years to have the site cleaned up. In the early 1990s, the EPA's Region 6 office in Dallas approved a plan to dispose of the contaminated soil from the site by incineration. However, community activists who had worked for years to have the site cleaned up, were concerned that digging up the contaminated soil and burning it would only further disperse the chemical pollutants. They took their case to the EPA Ombudsman who conducted an investigation and recommended that EPA adopt an alternative plan, an action EPA took.
Denver, CO_At the Shattuck Chemical Superfund site, Denver residents had been requesting that EPA ensure that the radioactive soil from the site was removed to a licensed disposal facility. Instead, the Agency decided to employ the too-often preferred solution of capping the site rather than cleaning it up. In this case, the contaminated soil was to be capped on the site in the middle of Denver. The residents contacted Senator Allard, who took the case to the National Ombudsman. The Ombudsman's investigation showed that a capped pile of contaminated soil could leak into the community. EPA later agreed they would have to remove the contaminated soil.
These cases and others show the importance of an independent, empowered Ombudsman in making the EPA an agency that is accountable to the public whose health the Agency's mission is to protect. Another case shows the importance of ensuring and strengthening the Ombudsman's independence and authority:
Lock Haven, PA_Similar to the situation in Texas, residents near the Drake Chemical Superfund Site were concerned that EPA planned to incinerate contaminated material and that such action would worsen rather than solve the contamination problem. The residents contacted Senator Specter, who requested the Ombudsman's assistance. The Ombudsman was critical of the studies and methods used to determine that incineration was an appropriate means of remediation and recommended that the incineration not go forward until further testing was done. According to Vicki Smedley, one of the concerned residents, the community could not gain access to the Ombudsman's interim report and after the recommendations were issued, the Ombudsman was told not to continue work on the case. The incineration started before the Ombudsman's final report was issued.
To ensure that the Ombudsman's work can be effective in making the Agency accountable, the Ombudsman position should be re-structured to include several key elements:
1) Independence of the Ombudsman from control by an officer of the agency.
2) Authority and freedom to investigate any action or failure to act by any Agency official or entity. The Ombudsman must be able to investigate the appropriateness of the action or failure to act, but also the correctness of Agency findings, the procedural propriety, and the Agency's motivations and reasons for acting or failing to act at the national level.
3) Access to all public records the Ombudsman finds relevant to the investigation, as well as authority to compel testimony by the Agency, its personnel, or its contractors.
4) Accountability of the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman should be accountable to Congress and any Agency official, entity, or contractor criticized by the Ombudsman should have opportunity to present their answer to the criticism.
The Ombudsman Reauthorization Act directs the Administrator to re-structure the office to conform to the American Bar Association's model Ombudsman statute. This step could result adoption of the elements needed to strengthen the Ombudsman's independence and authority. However, U.S. PIRG recommends that the bill explicitly grant the National Ombudsman necessary authority rather than relying on the Administrator to do so "to the maximum extent possible."
Some have expressed concern that strengthening the Ombudsman's independence and authority would grant too much power to the Ombudsman. It is important to note, however, that with the strengthening measures put forth by this legislation, the Ombudsman would not have the authority to: Compel any decision by the Agency; Create, change, or set aside any law, policy, or Agency decision, nor compel any entity or person to make such a change; or Substitute for an administrative or judicial proceeding determining anyone's rights.
One more critical means of strengthening the Of lice of the National Ombudsman is adequate funding. The Ombudsman has to date carried out his important work with limited staff and resources. Congress should ensure that the Of lice of the National Ombudsman has the funding necessary to carry out its important work.
The EPA National Ombudsman provides an invaluable service in responding to and investigating problems faced by communities and individuals whose health may be threatened by hazardous waste. The Ombudsman increases EPA's accountability and provides recourse to communities and citizens who have problems with EPA's procedures or actions. Simply re-authorizing the Of lice of the Ombudsman is an essential action for Congress to take in its final weeks, but essential to that action are the elements of this bill that would ensure the Ombudsman's independence and authority.
The Streamlined Environmental Reporting and Pollution Prevention Act of 2000, S. 2800
U.S. PIRG supports The Streamlined Environmental Reporting and Pollution Prevention Act of 2000 as an essential reform at EPA that improves EPA's management of important environmental information. The reforms made in this bill, without in any way reducing or increasing the types of information collected and disseminated by EPA, have the potential to vastly streamline EPA's information systems. This would make EPA's information systems more efficient and easier to use for those reporting information to EPA, as well as for those using EPA's information resources.
The Act requires EPA to establish an integrated electronic reporting system. This integrated system would:
-- allow reporting to one point of contact within EPA, rather than to multiple programs and of rices; establish and improve electronic reporting systems for reporting information to the Agency;
-- identify environmental or occupational safety and health reporting requirements not administered by EPA and communicating those to reporting parties;
--consolidate reporting requirements that would otherwise have be reported more than once; and
-- provide important information on pollution prevention to reporting parties at the point of reporting.
These actions address a long-standing problem at EPA, namely, EPA collects a wealth of information, but various pieces and types of information are reported to a number of different offices or programs within EPA at various times during the year. This not only means that information collection and storage is dispersed throughout the Agency, but that in some cases, the same or similar pieces of information are reported under more than one program and potentially more than once during the year. In addition to some pieces of information being collected multiple times, some types of information are not collected at all.
Public interest groups have long held that EPA must improve its data management in order to determine what information it does and does not have. U.S. PIRG, along with a coalition of environmental and other public interest organizations, have long advocated for increasing the information on environmental hazards and conditions that is available to the public. This bill, without adding any new information reporting requirements, improves EPA's environmental information resources in ways that will not only improve information, but could also improve environmental protection by creating a significant opportunity for industries to prevent pollution and reduce environmental hazards.
First, consolidating reporting requirements into one system gives facilities the opportunity to view all of their environmental information in one place. This would make it easier for companies to assess their environmental impact and identify, on their own, ways of reducing that impact. It would also help companies better translate information generated by environmental management systems into EPA's reporting requirements and formats. At the same time, the integrated system would provide information on pollution prevention to reporting facilities during the process of reporting. This means that industries would be simultaneously given the opportunity to review their own environmental impacts and at the same time the tools for reducing those impacts through pollution prevention.
Second, the bill could increase pollution prevention simply by making it easier to report accurately and consistently. Reporting all environmental information to the same point of contact and through the same system would make it easier for the facility to identify and reduce reporting errors before even submitting the data to EPA. This would lead to increased compliance with laws and regulations as it would be easier for industries to reduce or address problems that may come about from simple confusion created by the myriad reporting requirements. This increased compliance and/or improved data quality would in turn lead to better policy-making and enforcement by EPA.
This bill also addresses a concern raised primarily by industry representatives - that EPA should reduce the "burden" of reporting environmental infommation. The reporting of environmental infommation should not be seen as a burden, but rather as one part of industry's duty to protect human health and the environment. Nonetheless, U.S. PIRG supports efforts to increase the efficiency and ease with which infommation can be reported to EPA.
Unfortunately, most of the "burden reduction" measures proposed by various EPA of floes and by the White House Office of Management and Budget would reduce the infommation available to the public or compromise its quality. These are reactive responses to industry's burden claims; they would weaken environmental infommation at EPA and in most cases would not make reporting easier. U.S. PIRG and a coalition of public interest organizations have strongly opposed these initiatives as hammful to EPA's environmental infommation resources and ultimately harmful to human health and the environment.
This bill, in contrast, seeks to proactively refomm infommation management at EPA, which public interest groups have long supported. It would improve, not compromise, EPA's environmental infommation resources, and ultimately aid the protection of human health and the environment, while at the same time making it easier for industry to comply with EPA's reporting requirements.
While this bill presents a great opportunity to improve the management of environmental information and potentially improve environmental protection, care must be taken to ensure that the integrated reporting system does not allow small loopholes to compromise the entire system. One potential flaw is that reporting parties are not required to use the new integrated system. Having some parties use the system while others choose not to could compromise EPA's data holdings by resulting in databases with inconsistent data or data that are not internally comparable. Similarly, the bill allows EPA to establish different methods of providing infommation to facilitate use of the system by different sectors, sizes, and types of reporting entities. Both of these provisions could result in an infommation system in which internal comparisons cannot be made, significantly undermining EPA's ability to effectively use the information it gathers.
The bill should be amended to clarify that whatever flexibility is allowed for small businesses that may not be technologically capable of reporting electronically there is a guarantee that the data can be integrated into the integrated system. One solution would be to ensure that even if electronic reporting is not required, use of the integrated reporting system is, so that even if information is not submitted electronically, it can be integrated into the larger information management system. A simple waiver could allow those few facilities choosing not to report electronically to report on paper to the integrated reporting system.
U.S. PIRG's final comment is that the bill does not address a significant information management problem at EPA - the numerous data gaps in EPA's systems. Important infommation, ranging from toxic pollution released by some industries to data on ambient environmental quality, is not collected by the Agency. This bill improves the Agency's infommation management without adding any new infommation to that already collected, but future efforts must address the need to fill these gaps in infommation necessary to protecting the environment.
While there are several improvements that could be made in this legislation, U.S. PIRG supports this bill as an important improvement to EPA's infommation management and as an opportunity for industries to prevent pollution. This bill embodies a common-sense information refomm that the Congress should immediately pass into law.