The EPA established the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) in 1986 by Section 313 of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act and later expanded by the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990.
The goal of TRI is to provide communities with information about toxic chemical releases and waste management activities and to support informed decision-making by industry, government, non-governmental organizations and the public.
Who Needs to Report
The law requires all “Designated Facilities” to partake in the submission of a TRI, and these facilities would include…
- ALL Federal agencies
- Coal and metal mines
- Manufacturing companies
- Electric power utilities
- Sanitation companies
- Petroleum product wholesalers
- Businesses with 10 or more full-time employees (or equivalent part-time and/or seasonal employment) who produced, prepared, imported, processed or compounded more than 25,000 lbs of any chemicals listed at…
- 40 CFR 372.65 (alphabetical listing of toxic chemicals)
- 40 CFR 372.28 (chemicals of special concern NOTE: these have lower thresholds!)
What You Need for the Report
Facility Information
- Company name
- Location
- Identification numbers
Data on releases to…
- Air (up stacks and fugitive emissions)
- Water (direct discharges and into sewer systems)
- Waste shipments
Pollution prevention data…
- Recycling activities
- Waste reduction
How to Submit Your Report
Simply use the Tri-Me (TRI Made Easy) web application! Especially as there are no other options with hard copy reports no longer being accepted as of March 5, 2012.
The eleven steps are…
- Add a facility data profile to your TRI-MEweb account if it is not listed
- Start your chemical report in TRI-MEweb.
- Verify that the designated certifying official has an approved ESA
- Correct any error detected by the validation checks that are built-in to TRI-MEweb
- Validate TRI data using TRI-MEweb before transmitting data to CDX
- Transmit validated TRI forms to CDX for certification by the facility’s certifying official
- Check the status of the transmitted, yet uncertified submission
- Email notification that pending submission is ready to be certified
- Certifying official logs into CDX account to certify the facility’s TRI Form submission
- Confirmation is sent upon successful certification and submission of TRI forms
- Automatic TRI Form submission to EPA and the State where your facility is located
The final reporting deadline is July 1, 2013. And remember to hang onto a copy of your report for three years from the date of submission. For more information, just got to www.epa.gov/tri.
It good to have a professional worth through this process with you because this report is a very time consuming and tedious. In the busy, understaffed and overworked society we live in today, many companies and employees will find it a challenge to work through this reporting process along with everything else they are tasked to complete.
Contact us (859-689-9222) today for help with your TRI reporting!