02/23/2009 - IDEM chief defends cutbacks (Gary Post-Tribune)
IDEM chief defends cutbacks
By Gitte Laasby
Post-Tribune staff writer
Some businesses in Indiana's largest cities will be inspected for pollution violations less frequently starting April 1. A downstate city official warns that will have health consequences to residents.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management takes over inspections of businesses in cities such as Gary, Hammond, Evansville and Indianapolis on April 1. Under contracts with IDEM, the cities currently perform inspections to make sure polluters comply with their air permits.
City officials have expressed concerns that IDEM would inspect facilities less frequently, and IDEM?Commissioner Tom Easterly acknowledged that will be true in some cases.
"We will inspect, and we always do; sources that have more problems get more attention. Sources that don't have any problems when you go there, they'll be on the normal schedule we have," Easterly said in an interview with the Post-Tribune.
Asked whether that means inspecting according to the federally mandated minimum of every two years for bigger facilities and every three years for smaller ones, Easterly replied, "Yes. It depends on what size and everything."
Some cities, including Evansville, have inspected all facilities in their jurisdiction once a year.
"But if people are in compliance, what does that add?" Easterly said.
He said bringing air inspections in-house will save money and make the agency more efficient and effective.
"On the monitoring side, we are hiring four new monitoring positions to do that work. If that's the only people we actually have to hire, that means we've replaced $2 million a year in work to local agencies with about $400,000 total cost. So the savings are higher than I expected," Easterly said.
Dona Bergman, director of Evansville's Environmental Protection Agency, said IDEM is more concerned with enabling polluters than enforcing regulations.
"They should be embarrassed to admit ... that they think the health of the people in the largest cities in Indiana is only worth about a million dollars a year," she said.
Easterly said IDEM's main reason for canceling the contracts was to get better service to the public.
"Our permitting speed's better. We think our actual fixing problems is better. Getting things through to return to compliance. So we just think this will be better," he said.
City officials, including Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott Jr., have said they received no warning from IDEM that the agency was unhappy with their environmental departments' performance.
"Better for whom?" Bergman asked. "There's absolutely no way they can improve on enforcement and making sure companies are in compliance when they only inspect 70 percent of the largest sources every two years ... When all you're going to do is just write a letter when you do find a violation, that creates an atmosphere of neglect. Companies are going to feel not as conscientious."
