Environmental democracy in action: The Toxics Release Inventory |
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Authors: | Frances M Lynn Jack D Kartez |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 27599-8165 Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA;(2) Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center, Texas A & M University, 77843-3137 College Station, Texas, USA |
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Abstract: | The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) created by the 1986 Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act initially received
limited attention. During the early years of its implementation, the TRI has become the basis for a national experiment in
voluntaristic problem solving among citizens and industry, but that process of environmental democracy hinges on citizens'
ability to actually acquire, understand, and apply the new data on industrial toxic emissions. A national study of TRI-using
organizations in the public and private sectors reveals that effective citizen access depends in part on the efforts of intermediary
public interest groups to bridge individual needs and right-to-know data. Although the TRI has had early success as a supplement
to conventional command and control regulation, questions exist about the extent to which state and federal government should
or must provide special efforts to make environmental information access work for citizens. |
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Keywords: | TRI Pollution Information systems Citizen participation |
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