First the good news, while the Courant has identifying 7 repeat polluters that have discharged toxins into Connecticut’s rivers, none are in lower Fairfield County. The bad news is that while the 7 are known, not much has been accomplished in stopping and preventing the practice through the usual methods of violation notices and consent decrees.
Chronic violators. Expired permits. Major toxic releases. Few formal consequences. It’s a refrain that ripples through the compliance histories of several of the three dozen facilities in Connecticut with chemical-discharge permits, The Courant found in a two-month review of state and federal records.
The DEP has rarely sought fines or court action against chronic violators - that is, companies that exceed toxin limits on the wastewater they pump into the state’s major rivers - the Naugatuck, Housatonic, Thames, Farmington and Connecticut. The agency, which has the authority to seek fines and court injunctions against polluters, has relied mainly on a stream of violation notices, warning letters, consent orders and negotiation - with spotty results. Environmentalists and some state officials say this informal posture has weakened enforcement of the federal Clean Water Act, which established national water-quality standards in 1972.
DEP officials acknowledged that they could have taken enforcement action years ago against some of the violators. They said they are moving against five of them now, and are taking steps to reduce a logjam of expired permits - some 10 years old - and ratchet up enforcement.
“We’re trying to make that turn” toward stronger enforcement, DEP Commissioner Gina McCarthy said, “but we have some serious backlogs to contend with.”
With that context the idea monitoring industrial pollution has been left to the industrial companies themselves means that it is likely that the CT DEP doesn’t have a good handle on the scope of pollution in our waterways. Including lower Fairfield County. The Courant reports that there are actually 35 major chemical dischargers covered by the Clean Water Act, and that 17 of them are operating under expired permits, because that is what the rules allow. The companies only form of self regulation is in the required monthly reports they have to submit, and even with that 7 companies submitted reports that they had exceeded the discharge limits multiple times by a large margin.
The article is a good read on environmental issues concerning our waterways, click here to get to the full article.
source: Courant, Chronic Polluters, Tainted Waters: Weak Enforcement Lets Violators Go Largely Unpunished, By JOSH KOVNER And REGINE LABOSSIERE, September 9, 2007
