01/11/2007
Small business will finally receive some much-needed relief from one of the government's most burdensome regulations, as the Environmental Protection Agency heeded NFIB advice and revised the Toxic Release Inventory program to reduce unnecessary paperwork and reward good environmental behavior.
For more than a decade, NFIB has fought for simplification of the TRI rule and praises recent efforts by the EPA. Small-business owners across the country will benefit from this revision, which takes steps to remedy the previous one-size-fits-all approach to compliance with the program. With these changes, more small-business owners--including those who recycle--will now be eligible to file a much simpler form.
"With the signing of these new rules, the use of a shorter TRI form will be expanded, increasing the ability of small businesses to fulfill their obligations to their communities while still allowing them to run their businesses effectively," said Andrew Langer, regulatory manager for NFIB. "This is the end result of more than a decade of NFIB-led advocacy, and we commend the EPA for recognizing the difference between small and big business."
TRI mandates that all businesses that possess certain substances file an annual report detailing how the substances were used, released or disposed, including if they were recycled. The TRI rule has been one of the most disproportionate mandates small-business owners face. Previous requirements were the same for a 10-person company storing small amounts of toxic substances on-site and a 10,000-person company that released toxins into the environment. The EPA itself estimated that a first-time filer would spend 80 hours--two weeks--to complete paperwork for the TRI lead rule.
When NFIB discovered there were thousands of small-business owners reporting zero releases of toxic substances, yet still forced to spend time and money filling out TRI paperwork, it waged its fight for reform from several angles. The NFIB Legal Foundation focused its efforts on the TRI lead rule, while the NFIB Research Foundation analyzed the impact of the regulation, and NFIB members testified before Congress and spoke out to the media about the rule's damaging effects on small business. When a proposal was released last year, NFIB worked with the EPA to come to a compromise and in December, a final rule was issued.
NFIB applauds the recent changes to the TRI rule, which will allow small-business owners to save a tremendous amount of time and money spent on compliance and instead focus more on growing their business--and the American economy.
