NY State - Cut, Privatize Monitors For Hazardous Waste Sites - NYT

[hatrack]

WHITE PLAINS, Nov. 3 - "State environmental regulators have proposed eliminating a longstanding policy requiring state monitors at most hazardous waste sites.

The change would also allow the owners of most of the sites where monitoring would still be required to hire private inspectors.

The proposal by the Department of Environmental Conservation has worried some environmental groups, which contend that the proposed change would gravely weaken the policing of the state's worst polluters and jeopardize natural resources and the health of residents.

"Are they saying that facilities that violated the law on a regular basis are safe and don't require monitoring?" asked Mike Schade, the western New York director of the Citizens' Environmental Coalition, a group based in Albany. "We're talking about facilities that can pose an incredible threat to surrounding communities." The current policy, which has been in effect for at least 15 years, specifies a range of sites and activities that require monitoring by on-site inspectors from the Department of Environmental Conservation, including commercial hazardous waste landfills, commercial hazard waste incinerators, hazardous waste sites undergoing cleanup and sites that process and treat hazardous waste."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/nyregion/04enviro.html