Corporations are required to make environmental disclosure statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The statements are intended to inform investors about the risks associated with companies. But the government doesn’t really know if the businesses are actually complying. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Corporations are required to make environmental disclosure statements to the Securities
and Exchange Commission. The statements are intended to inform investors about the
risks associated with companies. But the government doesn’t really know if the
businesses are actually complying. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:
Publicly held companies are supposed to disclose environmental information to the
Securities and Exchange Commission. But what the companies are to report is unclear
and some choose to report very little.
The investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, found the
SEC does not systematically track issues raised in its reviews of companies’ filings. So, it
doesn’t have the information needed to tell whether there’s a problem. The SEC and the
Environmental Protection Agency both gather information about companies’ impact on
the environment, but the GAO found the agencies only periodically share information
and then only when there’s an environment-related legal proceeding against a company.
The Securities and Exchange Commission declined to be interviewed for this story, but in
a letter responding to the GAO report, its director says the SEC is working on the issues
identified by the GAO study.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.