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Environmental Reporting and Disclosure Bylaws: Worth considering for your community? - Environmental Communication Options/Huff Strategy

Environmental Reporting and Disclosure Bylaws: Worth considering for your community?

Mar 17th, 2008 7:14 AM

To the Editor: This is an article from a series of monthly columns by Environmental Law Specialist Dianne Saxe, one of the top 25 environmental lawyers in the world. These articles are available for publishing at no charge, provided Dr. Saxe is cited as the author. She can be contacted at (416) 962 5882 or admin@envirolaw.com. For more information, visit http://envirolaw.com. Environmental Reporting and Disclosure Bylaws: Worth considering for your community? Each day, the average adult breathes between 15,000 and 20,000 litres of air. Do we need to know more about what’s in it?. The Ontario and federal governments currently track some emissions of potentially dangerous air pollutants, but only major emissions from large sources in Canada,. These large businesses report emissions above a certain threshold to the National Pollution Release Inventory (NPRI), . Websites like www.pollutionwatch.org then turn NPRI data into useful information by allowing you to perform a postal code search for NPRI emitters in your neighbourhood or community. In this way, it lets you map large facilities that report releases and transfers of pollutants, greenhouse gasses, toxic pollutants (such as mercury and arsenic) and Criteria Air Contaminants (pollutants that cause smog an acid rain). These sorts of reports are undoubtedly useful. U.S. Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) is credited with decreasing large company emissions by 46%between 1988 and 1999. Canada’s NPRI has helped to reduce the emissions of our major companies by 27% since 1993. But many sources of air pollution aren’t caught by NPRI.– According to a City of Toronto report, for instance, only 3% of local businesses are large enough to submit emissions reports to NPRI. Toronto Public Health (TPH) recently identified 25 substances as being of particular concern, because of their high concentrations in the city’s air, and their potential impact on human health. Lead, mercury, volatile organic compounds (VOC’s), particulate matter 2.5 (airborne particles in solid or liquid form) and carbon tetrachloride all made the list. TPH estimates that more than 80% of the sources of these pollutants go undisclosed to NPRI. Toronto is therefore considering Canada’s first municipal Environmental Reporting and Disclosure Bylaw, which would require even small businesses to submit annual reports on the use and release of TPH’s 25 priority substances. More information about the proposed bylaw can be found at: www.toronto.ca/health/hphe/enviro_info.htm, and a full list of chemicals to be tracked is available at: www.toronto.ca/health/hphe/enviro_info_1.htm. The City hopes that this bylaw would stimulate local businesses to reduce their emissions, and supply missing information that will assist the city to react to emergencies and to protect health. Some American cities, such as New York, have found such bylaws very effective.. Still, it could be challenging, and expensive, for Toronto or other cities to make such a bylaw a success. For one thing, more than half of Toronto’s air pollution comes from elsewhere. This means that key sources of local contamination aren’t governed by the City, which will limit the accuracy of the City’s data. The City must also strike a difficult balance between accuracy, cost and fairness; for example, small businesses must be able to use cheap, if inaccurate, methods of estimating their emissions. Accuracy will be further eroded by the many reporting exemptions. For example, vehicles are excluded, even though they're major contributors to the presence of PM 2.5 in our air. Small businesses, on the other hand, produce relatively minor amounts of PM 2.5; should they be required to report those emissions? A third problem is that emissions and contaminants interact in complex ways; it will be hard to translate emitters’ data into meaningful information about local health impacts. For more details, don’t miss the Ontario Bar Association’s analysis of this important initiative, available at http://envirolaw.com under the category “Hot”.