§ 25-21,258.Environmental audit; use as evidence; exceptions.

Section 25-21,258 draws a boundary around what the privilege in section 25-21,256 can protect in the first place. Five categories fall outside it altogether: documents or information required to be developed, maintained, or reported under any environmental requirement; documents or information required to be available or furnished to a regulatory agency under an environmental requirement or any other law; documents or information relating to grants or other financial assistance sponsored by the state or federal government; information a regulatory agency obtained through its own observation, inspection, sampling, or monitoring under an environmental requirement; and information obtained from any source independent of the audit itself.

The thread running through all five is that the privilege protects self-generated audit material born of real voluntary effort — not records a business had to keep or produce anyway, not paperwork tied to public funding, and not facts a regulator found on its own without relying on the audit. Because those categories exist, or could be discovered, regardless of whether the audit was ever performed, none of them get the protection the audit itself receives.