Pollution Penalties Plummet In FL
Topic: Yesterday's News?22. March 2006 Comments
Pollution prosecutions by the Florida Department of Environmental
Protection hit historic lows in 2005, according to an analysis of
agency data released today by Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility (PEER). Last year’s slide continues a decline that
started shortly after Governor Jeb Bush took office.
The state’s figures for 2005 pollution enforcement reveal that –
• Civil penalties were down more than 19% from a year ago. The
state assessed less than $8 million in fines during the entire year,
down from nearly $10 million the year before; and
• In some of the fastest growing areas of the state, hazardous waste,
industrial waste and asbestos enforcement which should be high due to
all of the construction activity were virtually non-existent.
“Pollution enforcement by the State of Florida has gotten just plain
pitiful,” stated Florida PEER Director Jerry Phillips, a former DEP
enforcement attorney. “Since DEP funds its inspections out of fine
revenue, the situation will only worsen because the state will have
even less money for enforcement next year.”
Although the state opened more cases than last year, fewer were closed
with any meaningful enforcement action. The most common form of
enforcement, however, was the least serious: a short-form consent order
that carries a small fine, no clean-up requirements and no follow-up by
the state. In 2005, all all-time high (60%) of all DEP
enforcement actions were short-form consent orders.
“In Florida we now have a pay-to-pollute system in which environmental
violations are just a normal cost of doing business,” Phillips
added. “It is a lot cheaper to pay the state’s penny ante fines
than it is to clean up the pollution.”
One area of particular concern is the sharp curtailment of actions to
protect the public and workers from exposure to deadly airborne
asbestos fibers. Last month, Florida PEER called for an
investigation by the Inspector General of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency into the utter breakdown of asbestos enforcement by
the state.
The PEER analysis breaks down the performance of each of DEP’s five
regional offices (“districts”) by violation type and includes
comparisons of recent performance to historic averages. In 2005, the
DEP Northwest District, located in Pensacola, has the weakest record
while the Southwest District, in Tampa, had the strongest.
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Read the Report on 2005 Florida DEP Enforcement Efforts
http://www.peer.org/docs/fl/06_22_3_enforcement_report.pdf
Look at the internal survey of Florida’s pollution cops
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=655
Trace the six-year decline in Florida pollution enforcement
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=488
understandinggov.org