Subj: 2003 TRI toxics release inventory - releases to POTWs numbers 2000 - 2003 EWG DISHONORABLE DISCHARGE - TRI = only 5% Date: 5/11/2005 8:00:15 PM Central Daylight Time From: [email protected]
found it . . . . . . http://www.epa.gov/triexplorer/chemicaltransfer.htm - but these numbers are just the tip of the iceberg . . . . according to EWG - TRI accounts for only about 5% of all toxic pollution each year . . . . per GAO and EPA !!
discharges to POTWs - sewage treatment plants . . . . 2003 269,226,240 pounds toxic chemicals . . . . . . . . metals 1.8 million pounds . . . plus over 76 grams of dioxins
2002 303,272,901 pounds toxic chemicals - - metals >1.9 million pounds . . . plus 59 grams dioxins
2001 343,034,659 pounds toxic chemicals 2.2 million pounds of metals and 45 grams dioxins
Under existing federal pollution control laws, the American people are kept in the dark about the vast majority of toxic pollution spewed into the environment by U.S. industry. Even the most comprehensive toxic pollution reporting system in the nation, the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), accounts for only about 5 percent of all toxic pollution of the environment each year (GAO 1991, EPA 1996c).
Most pollution of America's waters is unregulated and unmonitored -- allowing polluters to pollute with little fear of regulation or disclosure. A 1994 study by the General Accounting Office, a research and auditing arm of the Congress, found that the majority of toxic pollutants discharged from 200 of 236 pesticide, pharmaceutical, and paper plants it examined, were so-called "uncontrolled" pollutants that are exempt from regulation under the pollution permitting process of the Clean Water Act (GAO 1994). The Environmental Working Group estimates that the total load of toxic pollution in most rivers, streams, lakes, and bays over the past five years may be 20 times greater than the amounts reported in Dishonorable Discharge.
More than one billion pounds of toxic chemicals were discharged directly to America's waters between 1990 and 1994, according to TRI records analyzed in Dishonorable Discharge. An additional 450 million pounds were discharged to the nation's waters by polluting facilities, via sewage treatment plants built and operated at the expense of American taxpayers.
The Most Polluted Waters More than 700 million pounds of toxic chemicals were reported dumped into the Mississippi River between 1990 and 1994, more than twice the amount of toxic chemicals dumped into all other U.S. waters combined. Ninety percent of this pollution came from three fertilizer plants in Louisiana, which dumped 643 million pounds of toxic substances in the Mississippi during this five year period. The next most polluted waters, in terms of toxic chemical discharges, were the Pacific Ocean, the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers, the Houston Ship Channel, Ward Cove in Alaska, the Savannah River between Georgia and South Carolina, and the Delaware River, between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. More than 1 million pounds of toxic chemicals were dumped directly into each of 63 different rivers, harbors, and bays between 1990 and 1994.
For 80 percent of rivers and waters receiving toxic pollution, one polluter accounted for all reported toxic discharges during the five year period analyzed; for 92.7 percent of all waters, three or fewer polluters accounted for all reported toxic discharges during this time. Bearing in mind the significant shortcomings with TRI data, these figures nonetheless suggest that significant water quality improvements in some watersheds might be achieved through efforts that target a few major polluters.
More rivers receive huge amounts of toxic effluent via "publicly owned treatment works" (POTWs), commonly known as sewer systems. Huge amounts of toxic material are "transferred" to sewage treatment plants by polluters, in part because regulations governing disposal of toxics in this fashion are even weaker than the discharge permits required under the federal Clean Water Act. The EPA does not count these transfers as releases to the environment in the TRI, although the agency estimates that 25 percent of the toxic chemicals sent to sewage treatment plants flow through these facilities to receiving waters (EPA 1996b).(and most of the other 75 % ends up in the sludge ??)
Dishonorable Discharge presents the first estimates of the portion of these so-called toxic "transfers" to POTWs, a large share of which is discharged to specific rivers and bodies of water. In many cases rivers that receive relatively little direct toxic pollution are the targets of enormous amounts of toxics via sewage treatment plant outflow. For example, less than 1 million pound of toxics were directly dumped into the Illinois River between 1990 and 1994, compared to an estimated 13 million pounds discharged to the river basin via sewage treatment plants during that same period of time. Gravelly Run in Virginia received 6.3 million pounds of direct discharges, between 1990 and 1994, in contrast to an estimated 20 million pounds of toxics that may have been dumped into it via the sewage treatment plant during that same five year period. By EWG estimates, the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, the Sacramento River in California, and Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, New York, may have received more than 95 times the amount of toxic chemicals via sewage treatment plants than were directly discharged into these waters. EWG estimates that the Raritan River in New Jersey received 50,000 times more toxic pollution from POTWs (12.6 million pounds) than the TRI reported as being directly discharged into that river between 1990 and 1994.