The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is having difficulty balancing the demands of its “community right-to-know” regulations with the sensitivities surrounding publication of data on the use of industrial chemicals. After September 11, EPA and other agencies began reassessing the information that is publicly available on its websites, and actually removed some risk management plan (RMP) data which, if it were to fall into the wrong hands, could result in an unintended danger to the public in future terrorist attacks.
According to Elaine Stanley, Director of EPA’s Office of Information Analysis and Access, the Agency is considering use of a tiered approach to disseminating data. For example, general information about facilities and chemicals would be available to everyone on EPA's site, but a second tier of resources that would be more detailed would be available only to registered users who would have to identify themselves to the Agency.
Public interest groups have pushed for increased access to industrial chemical facility RMP data, arguing that citizens have a right to know what the hazards are in their own neighborhoods and communities. However, law enforcement officers, including the FBI, have expressed concern that terrorists with motives could use the information to target their attacks. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies argued successfully, for example, that RMP data and off-site consequence analysis data required under the “Chemical Safety Information, Site Security and Fuels Regulatory Relief Act of 1999” be disseminated only through specifically-designated government reading rooms throughout the country, not on the internet, as initially proposed.
