Industry Lawsuit Fails To Block EPA From Releasing Facility Enforcement Data On The Internet

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) praised federal Judge Thomas Hogan’s ruling late yesterday refusing to grant the preliminary injunction requested by plaintiffs in Tozzi, et al. v. EPA (Civ. No. 98- 169, District Court for the District of Columbia). Tozzi, a deputy administrator with the Office of Management and Budget in the Bush Administration who is now a consultant with industrial clients, and the US Chamber of Commerce sought an injunction barring the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from placing publicly-available information on the Internet. This EPA effort, known as the Sector Facility Indexing (SFI) project, will place on the Internet information on plant releases, size, enforcement history, and surrounding populations for five industries: auto manufacturing, oil refining, pulp and paper, iron and steel, and non-ferrous metal (e.g., lead and aluminum) plants. EPA is expected to post the SFI information on the Internet within the next month.

The court yesterday handed down its ruling denying the preliminary injunction, and Judge Hogan will release his opinion within the next few days.

The lawsuit asserted that EPA failed to comply with certain procedures under the Paperwork Reduction Act. According to EDF senior engineer Lois Epstein, however, “far from failing to comply with the Paperwork Reduction Act, EPA went beyond what the Act required, and was very responsive to comments from industry, states, and environmental organizations.”

“Mr. Tozzi and the US Chamber of Commerce want to return to the past, to a time before computers and the Internet, when government data were stacked in boxes and the public and regulators couldn’t find what they needed. Making publicly available data accessible on the Internet is the right course for EPA and the rest of government,” said Epstein.

SFI data will greatly enhance the public’s right-to-know by providing facility enforcement data (i.e., the number of violations of laws) on the Internet for the most important environmental laws — the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (which covers hazardous and solid waste). This information, along with facility release and size information, will help the public make better comparisons among similar plants than are possible today. SFI data also will enable the public to compare state enforcement programs under the major environmental laws.

“This lawsuit against EPA’s SFI project, a model governmental effort, never should have been filed,” said Epstein.