Environmental Groups Drop Lawsuit Following EPA Finalization of TRI PFAS Reporting Rule

Environmental and health advocate groups, including the National PFAS Contamination Coalition and Union of Concerned Scientists, have dropped their lawsuit against EPA, challenging two of the Agency’s rules related to PFAS reporting under the Toxics Release Inventory of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act. The 2022 lawsuit alleged that the Agency’s rules Implementing Statutory Addition of Certain Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances; Toxic Chemical Release Reporting and Implementing Statutory Addition of Certain Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) to the Toxics Release Inventory Beginning with Reporting Year 2021, weakened PFAS reporting requirements imposed by the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by allowing di minimus and alternative threshold exemptions.

The Plaintiffs agree that the issues raised in their 2022 complaint have been sufficiently addressed in EPA’s October 2023 final rule Changes to Reporting Requirements for Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances and to Supplier Notifications for Chemicals of Special Concern; Community Right-to-Know Toxic Chemical Release Reporting which modified the TRI reporting requirements. The amended rule eliminates the di minimus reporting exemption with the purpose of increasing the amount of data on PFAS chemicals released to the environment required to be submitted to the Agency beginning in 2025. More detailed information on the new TRI PFAS reporting requirements can be found here. In both the proposed and final rule, EPA stressed that the two prior rules, the ones at issue in the litigation, resulted in minimal reporting on PFAS releases, and therefore, eliminating exemptions was necessary to achieve the goals of the NDAA.