Under Governor Rick Scott, pollution enforcement implodes ... by gimleteye

The $890 million deal between the state and federal government to fix the Everglades shifts permitting authority of polluters to the state and away from the federal EPA. As we noted last week, Marco Rubio has taken up a similar charge in the US Senate with a bill to knee-cap EPA's ability to protect Florida's water from ongoing pollution.

So how is that likely to work out: giving the state permitting authority in the Everglades? Here is a timely (very) answer from an organization that supports public employee whistle-blowers: "Pollution Enforcement Implodes Under Florida's Scott." (Thomas Frank, columnist for Harper's Magazine, writes an excellent editorial following up on his "What's The Matter With Kansas?", noting the ways that the extraordinary political hysteria by an ultra-conservative GOP is being exported to other states, prominently Florida. He is right.)

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility News Release (www.peer.org):

POLLUTION ENFORCEMENT IMPLODES UNDER FLORIDA’S SCOTT — Big Drop in Cases and Fines as DEP Staff Instructed to Avoid Enforcement

Tallahassee — Basic enforcement of anti-pollution laws in Florida has nose-dived during the first full year of Governor Rick Scott’s tenure, according to agency figures released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Dramatic declines in the number of cases brought and amounts of fines levied across virtually all districts and all forms of pollution appear to reflect directives that state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) staff should avoid pursuing enforcement if at all possible. (click, 'read more')


“These latest figures show significantly poorer performance in almost every
major program in every district,” stated Florida PEER Director Jerry
Phillips, a former DEP enforcement attorney, who conducted the analysis.
“Due to recent relaxations in pollution discharge permit standards, there is
every reason to believe this downward trend will continue, if not
accelerate.” The DEP figures show that in 2011 –

* The total number of enforcement cases fell by more than a fourth (28%) and
the DEP Office of General Counsel received the third lowest number of case
reports in agency history;
* Pollution penalty assessments dipped by a similar proportion (29%) while
penalties actually collected dropped by more than half (57%). The number of
big fine cases (more than $100,000) also was cut by half; and
* Enforcement actions with compliance follow-up (long-form consent orders)
plummeted nearly two-thirds (62%) from 2010. Other enforcement orders sank
to levels not seen since the mid-90s.
These deep, consistent drops in enforcement seem to reflect a deliberate
policy shift, rather than drift. In a November 19, 2011 memo from Jeff
Littlejohn, the DEP second-in-command and Deputy Secretary for Regulatory
Programs directs staff to refrain from taking enforcement action except as a
last resort:

“Where noncompliance occurs despite your best efforts at education and
outreach, your first consideration should be whether you can bring about a
return to compliance without enforcement.”

“There are several problems with this ‘enforcement last’ approach; First, it
rolls the dice on environmental protection. Second, there is no
compensation for public resource damages, so it becomes a back-door taxpayer
subsidy to polluters,” Phillips said, noting this ‘compliance first’
approach also entails that compliance be monitored, a dubious strategy given
that declining penalty revenue reduces financial support for DEP programs,
making monitoring even less feasible. “In fact, DEP has no idea whether
they are actually achieving greater pollution compliance. To make matters
worse, the Scott administration is taking a number of steps that make it
even harder to track whether compliance is maintained over time.”

The extent of these problems was underlined in a new audit report from the
DEP Inspector General which found a breakdown in air pollution enforcement
in the Southwest (Tampa) District so severe that it “may have damaged the
reputation of the Department with the local regulated community and federal
regulatory agency (EPA).”

PEER also has a pending legal complaint before EPA to disqualify DEP
Secretary Herschel Vinyard from all clean water permitting decisions due to
his prior industry ties violating federal conflict rules. “If regulated
industries had a playbook for how to dismantle pollution controls, it could
not have worked better than what has already taken place,” Phillips
concluded.

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View 2011Florida Pollution report card


Read Littlejohn memo on avoiding enforcement actions


Look at new DEP Inspector General audit report


See unraveling of discharge permit standards


Revisit Vinyard conflict-of-interest controversy

View previous enforcement report cards