In 2006, these EPA enforcement officials prepared a confidential and comprehensive analysis of the program. The Inquirer obtained a copy.

"The data in this analysis clearly show that there is considerable non-compliance among [Performance Track] facilities and that many members who are widely touted as meeting or exceeding regulatory requirements actually do not," the analysis said.

At the time, a check of enforcement records showed six Performance Track companies with serious environmental violations and 43 with other pending formal enforcement actions.

Performance Track officials complained that the enforcement division's analysis was faulty because it was based on an EPA database riddled with errors. That database uses the same data EPA posts for public use on its Web site (www.epa.gov/echo).

Enforcement officials acknowledged errors but noted that the problem with bad data worked both ways - the database wrongly identified at least 28 companies as Performance Track members, theoretically entitling them to lower inspection rates. Incredibly, one enforcement official noted in an e-mail, this included the Hanford nuclear facility in Washington state, made famous by the 1983 movie Silkwood. Fiorino said this was a misunderstanding.

Last year, an EPA inspector general's audit confirmed some of the enforcement division's findings. "EPA had hoped to achieve ambitious goals through Performance Track, but EPA cannot show how its program can lead to the desired outcomes," auditors wrote.

Only two of the 30 companies sampled by the inspector general met all four of the anti-pollution goals they set.

Coglianese's extensive research, some of it EPA-funded, said the EPA's claims that Performance Track is beneficial to the environment are simply rhetoric. There are no data to prove this, the Penn dean said.

In fact, said Coglianese, data show that there's little difference between the environmental records of companies that join and companies that don't.

The difference: "Companies who join Performance Track seem to do so because they seek attention," he said. They want that green EPA seal of approval.

James Wilkins, environmental and safety manager at the Marathon Petroleum L.L.C. refinery near New Orleans, said that seal of approval was more important to his workers than for executives seeking regulatory benefits or good publicity.

"You get validation," said Wilkins, whose company joined Performance Track in 2002, a year after signing a consent decree with the Justice Department over air pollution.

In 2006, Marathon received what EPA cited as one of the best benefits ever conferred on a Performance Track member: Louisiana expedited permits for a 70 percent plant expansion that will make the Marathon refinery the fourth largest in the nation.

Wilkins downplayed the benefit. He said that while Marathon's application was moved to the top of the pile, this probably only saved a month on a year-long process.

Another critic, the advocacy group Environmental Integrity Project, studied Performance Track members' public toxic release reports. It found that seven large factories increased emissions after they joined the program - by a total of two million pounds between 2000 and 2004.

EPA officials said the study contained errors - though they have since decided to review such data to prevent this from happening again, they say.

But an Inquirer review shows that some of the same Performance Track companies that Environmental Integrity raised questions about two years ago continue to increase toxic emissions. According to EPA's latest Toxic Release Inventory data, emissions at the Verso Paper factory in Jay, Maine, have increased 160 percent since 2001, to 1.9 million pounds.

Performance Track relies on states, which enforce most federal environmental laws, to ease regulatory oversight of its members. At least 19 states partner with the program, but others remain wary - including Lisa Jackson, New Jersey's former Department of Environmental Protection chief and now chief of staff to Gov. Corzine.

"For a long time, they tried to pressure us to partner and we said no," Jackson said in October, before she became an Obama transition adviser. "I think it's just one of those window-dressing programs that has little value."

Francine Carlini, regional director for air quality in Southeastern Pennsylvania, said EPA had asked the state to dispense with some of its usual regulatory duties.