Does the Toxics Release Inventory Program “Work”?
Evidence from the Spatial Distribution of Toxics in California
Antonio M. Bento
University of Maryland
abento1@umd.edu
David HERBERICH (paper presenter)
University of Maryland
dherberich@arec.umd.edu
Scott E. Lowe
University of California, Santa Barbara
slowe@bren.ucsb.edu
Abstract
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The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) is the major federal program to monitor toxic
chemicals that are emitted to the air, water and land in the United States. Because of the
costs associated with applying conventional regulatory instruments to hundreds of toxic
pollutants, the novel feature of the TRI program was to mandate public disclosure of
toxic emissions and, therefore, create a market for informal regulation through public
pressure.
This naturally raises the following two key questions: First, does the TRI program
“work”? In other words, has the disclosure of information – whether in the form of
reporting total volume of releases or relative hazard intensity – resulted in a cost-effective
mechanism to reduce overall concentrations of toxics? Second, what is the impact of the
TRI on the spatial distribution of toxics? That is, does the TRI exacerbate the exposure of
certain groups in the population creating an “environmental justice” problem?
This paper addresses these questions by combining spatially disaggregated TRI
data on chemical releases in the 1068 California Cities between 1990 and 2000 with
measures that describe spatial distribution of population, geography, climate and related
environmental regulations that indirectly affect total concentrations of toxics.
Unlike previous studies, we first develop an analytical model based on the
modern political economy literature that aims to capture the process that influences the
decision of facilities to reduce emissions. This process reflects a game played by the
following agents: a regulatory agency that discloses the information; an environmental
lobby group that uses the information to document exposure of pollution and educate
voters; industry groups that lobby the agency not to release information or to modify the
rules regarding releases; and the populace that elects the representatives to the regulatory
agency and are exposed to pollution. The model clearly illustrates the key determinants of
the changes in the spatial distribution of toxics and is used to guide the choice of
variables in our empirical analysis.
Our preliminary results suggest that the TRI indeed reduced overall
concentrations of toxics in California cities between 1990 and 2000. However, these
reductions were not uniform, reflecting the contributions of other factors to the drops in
the concentrations of toxics. An important result is that because of the impacts of the
Clean Air Act on the migration of facilities (in particular, facilities in southern California
cities which were out of compliance), the impact of environmental regulations which
were not designed to regulate toxics produced a larger effect than the disclosure of TRI
information itself. We also find that poorer neighborhoods experienced greater reductions
in toxics between 1990 and 2000, suggesting that environmental lobbies are using the
disclosure of information to target campaigns against facilities located in those
communities.