Toxic Release Inventory Reporting Changes for 2008

On Tuesday, April 21, 2009 the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program announced the release of the TRI-MEweb to all TRI reporting facilities for the Reporting Year 2008 (RY08), including new facilities that have to file TRI reports for the first time.  

TRI-MEweb allows you to submit your RY08 TRI forms via the internet through EPA’s Central Data Exchange (CDX). The following states are participating in the TRI State Data Exchange program: Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington.   TRI-MEweb will send TRI reports directly to the states participating in the TRI State Data Exchange. TRI-MEweb will be able to print forms or save files to CD or diskette to submit to states not participating in the State Data Exchange Program. 

Melyssa Savage, Title III coordinator with the WV Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Response, indicated that WV is able accept either CD or diskette submissions from WV sources. At this time, she was not aware of any plans by WV to join the EPA’s Central Data Exchange program.  

TRI-MEweb has several advantages over the TRI-MEdesktop software, including the following: 

1.   TRI-MEweb is web-based, there is no software to download, and can be accessed anywhere. 

2.   TRI-MEweb calculates Section 8 column b automatically based on entries in Section 5 and 6. 

3.   RY08 forms will be pre-populated with data from RY07 in order to save time and data entry. 

4.   Facility and Chemical Quicklists to allow facilities to choose which sections of the form are applicable to them, and  

5.   You can compare current year data against last year’s filings to see if there are large percentage changes in reported values that might indicate a possible data entry error. 

Requirements to submit using TRI-MEweb for RY08: 

1.   You must have Internet access. 

2.   The individuals who will use TRI-MEweb to prepare and submit data to CDX (“preparers”) and individuals who will use CDX to certify forms submitted by TRI-MEweb (“certifying officials”) must have CDX accounts. You may register for an account or access your existing account at http://cdx.epa.gov. 

3.   To meet the government wide initiative to increase security of electronic reporting, the certifying official must sign an Electronic Signature Agreement (ESA) and mail this to the TRI Data Processing Center (TRIDPC) prior to being able to certify a TRI submission prepared by TRI-MEweb. The ESA must be received and processed by the TRIDPC before a submission can be certified. This process may take up to five business days. The certifying official needs to get this in as soon as practical.  

4.   Preparers can gain access to their facility’s TRI data in the TRI-MEweb with the unique facility access code emailed to the facility Technical Contact by US EPA or by entering the last year’s Technical Contact’s name and phone number for the facility. 

Please Note: TRI reporters that are required to report Dioxin will need to use TRI-MEweb or paper forms.  

If you plan to utilize TRI-MEweb it would be advisable to start the process early for the following reasons. 

·        The CDX accounts for the preparer and certifier need to be established. 

·        The Certifying Official must sign and mail an Electronic Signature Agreement.

·        Most website slowdown with increased traffic. The closer to the due date the more users will be on the system. This can result in site crashes.  

TRI-MEdesktop is available for download at www.epa.gov/tri/report/software/index.htm. This is the last year that TRI-MEdesktop will be available. It should be noted that TRI-MEdesktop is not compatible with the Windows VISTA operating system.    

Form A changes:

Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) reporting requirements changed on March 11, 2009, as a result of a change in federal law. The Omnibus Appropriations Act, return TRI reporting requirements back to the rules in effect prior to December 22, 2006. These changes affect TRI reports due July 1, 2009. The change requires that all reports on persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic (PBT) chemicals be submitted on “Form R,” the more detailed form. For all other chemicals the shorter form, “Form A” may be used only if the “annual reporting amount” is 500 pounds or less and that the chemical was manufactured, processed or otherwise used in an amount not exceeding 1 million pounds during the reporting year.     

For some basic information on Toxic Release Inventory, see the following web site:  http://www.epa.gov/tri.   

This article was excerpted from publically available information, and was authored by Joyce Gentry, Acacia Environmental Group LLC. For more information on the author see here.