State tries to ease environmental rules

Many state environmentalists charge that the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s plans to change environmental enforcement could make Indiana dirtier.

IDEM announced in December plans to combine the office of enforcement with the separate offices of air, water and land quality. It also announced it would require “actual” or “significant” threats to public health or damage to the environment before imposing penalties, a move some environmentalists say will cause less regulation and more environmental harm.

Kim Ferraro, founder and executive director of the Legal Environmental Aid Foundation in Valparaiso, said she believes it will be more difficult to enforce regulations now. She said the enforcement program move “undermines the separate minds of enforcement.”

She said the change of compliance procedure would inhibit the office’s ability to stop polluters, saying that environmental harm is sometimes not apparent until 10 years later.

But Amy Hartsock, an IDEM public information officer, said that the move of the office of enforcement is “aimed at enhancing communications.”

“The reorganization of the enforcement program and the physical relocation of IDEM enforcement specialists to within the compliance programs will help to enhance IDEM’s ability to respond to compliance issues,” Hartsock said in an e-mail.

She also said that requiring “actual proof” of harm by potential violators would “improve efficiency.”

But in response to concerned residents, Hartsock said a revised proposal will be posted on IDEM’s Web site by the end of January. She said it will be available for review and anyone interested should make comments.

Lucille Bertuccio will be president of the Center for Sustainable Living in Bloomington and said the changes reflect “another unraveling of regulations that were meant to safeguard people’s health.”

“We should be using the precautionary principle, which says that unless an activity is proven to be harmless, it should not be done,” she said. “What we do now is wait until the activity is harmful, and then we stop it – by then it is usually too late.”

Ferraro said that if these changes are implemented, she would take legal action against IDEM.

She also said that without a centralized office of enforcement, it will be harder for IDEM to recognize repeat violators that pollute water, land and air.

“Everything is connected,” she said, adding “pollution in the air will fall into the water.”

When one violator continues to pollute, Ferraro said IDEM won’t be as organized.
In 2007, Forbes magazine ranked Indiana the 49th cleanest state in the country.

Ferraro said that the state has been increasingly friendly to business and it continues to promote “dirty industry.” She believes the state government’s mindset is that “environmental laws get in the way.”

“We’re already ranked the second most polluted state in the nation,” she said.