Overview of Confidential Business Information (CBI) for Environmental Permitting

To get the environmental permits, a facility must reveal great deal of process information in the permit application. Knowing how much is enough is very important to maintain the business advantage. Here is a brief overview of Confidential Business Information (CBI) claim policy followed by EPA and state regulatory agencies.

First and foremost, the confidentiality claim must be declared at the time of the application submission itself, otherwise it is too late, and CBI claim is deemed waived.

Note that some information cannot be claimed as CBI. For example:

• emission information necessary to determine the identity, amount, frequency, concentration, or other characteristics.
• location description and/or nature of the emission source

It is recommended that the permitting manager discuss the content of the application with the business managers. Even though the business managers may wish to disclose very little, the information that can be claimed as CBI include:

• production/throughput data that are not inputs for emission equations
• raw materials consumed that are not inputs for emissions equations
• customer and vendor information
• security information
• trade secret information.

Claiming CBI is can be challenging. To claim CBI, a facility must prove:

• that information is not publicly available from sources other than the company
• that disclosure of the information can cause substantial harm to the company
• that the company is implementing measures to maintain the information as confidential

It is important to protect the proprietary business information in the permit applications, which can become accessible to competitors. We have assisted numerous facilities submit environmental permit applications using the CBI claims. Contact Sam Joshi at (215) 389-2811 if you have any questions regarding protecting CBI during the permitting process.