A 27-year-old U.S. program intended to warn the public of the presence of hazardous chemicals is flawed in many states due to scant oversight and lax reporting by plant owners, a Reuters examination found.

 

Under the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, private and public facilities must issue an inventory listing potentially hazardous chemicals stored on their properties. The inventory, known as a Tier II report, is filed with state, county and local emergency-management officials. The information is then supposed to be made publicly available, to help first responders and nearby residents plan for emergencies.

 

But facilities across the country often misidentify these chemicals or their location, and sometimes fail to report the existence of the substances altogether.

 

And except for a handful of states, neither federal nor local authorities are auditing the reports for errors.

 

Reuters identified dozens of errors in Tier II reports in recent years and found several facilities that failed to report altogether.

 

There are hundreds of thousands of sites nationwide required to report hazardous chemical inventories under the Tier II system. Some 500,000 chemicals are subject to the requirement.

 

Since 2005, accidents at facilities storing 140 Tier II chemicals that have been deemed most dangerous by the Environmental Protection Agency have resulted in approximately 60 deaths, more than 1,300 injuries and more than $1.6 billion in onsite and off-site damages, according to a 2013 EPA report to Congress.

 

EPA officials declined to discuss the reporting program. In a statement, the agency said state and county officials are responsible for ensuring the accuracy of the reports.