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Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Environment - "IDEM actions raise eyebrows, questions"
Here is a story, reported by Rod Shaw, that appeared in the Dec. 23rd edition of the Martinsville Reporter-Times:
Activists and some elected officials fear recent actions by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management represent a step backward for public health and the envrionment. * * *IDEM has raised eyebrows with three decisions:
— It is canceling longtime contracts with six local pollution control agencies and assuming authority for all permitting, compliance inspection, air monitoring and complaint response activities in Indiana. Contracts with agencies in Indianapolis, Evansville, Anderson, Gary, Hammond and Vigo County have been funded with money the state receives annually from the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
— It is eliminating its enforcement branch as a separate office within the agency and reassigning enforcement specialists to existing programs.
— It is proposing to change its official enforcement policy in ways that critics say will make it harder to take action against polluters.
IDEM has said that the moves will improve efficiency and compliance with environmental regulations. Critics aren’t buying it.
Janet McCabe, an advocate for children’s health and a member of the Indianapolis Air Pollution Control Board, called the decision to eliminate local agency contracts “a bad one for children’s health in Indiana.”
“With limited state resources and the loss of local expertise, we are certain that the attention to local air quality issues will decrease,” she said in a statement posted on the Web site of the organization she heads, Improving Kids’ Environment.
And it isn’t just activists who are asking questions.
“I am concerned this action by IDEM could be a big step backward in terms of our efforts to mitigate air quality issues,” Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel said in a statement posted on his office’s Web site.
Lack of notice is a major complaint of IDEM’s critics. Local agencies said they had no warning their contracts were being axed prior to an IDEM news release on Dec. 1, and there was no formal announcement of the elimination of the IDEM enforcement office before the Gary Post-Tribune broke the news in a story this week.
“Since no specific information has been made available to the public, it is very difficult to determine what the net effect of these changes will be,” wrote Jesse Kharbanda, executive director of the Hoosier Environmental Council, in a letter to IDEM commissioner Thomas Easterly that was posted on the HEC Web site.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 24, 2008 11:05 AM
Posted to Environment