ecoRI News — Statehouse has Long Kept DEM Tied to Puppet Strings
Despite urging from environmental groups and scientists to set climate-change policy based on scientific research, Rhode Island lawmakers often weaken climate-change bills before passing them, or refuse to vote on them altogether, according to those who attended a rally outside the Statehouse last summer. (ecoRI News)
Feb 5, 2016
By Frank Carini / ecoRI News Staff
PROVIDENCE — Political influence has eroded enforcement of Rhode Island’s environmental laws, creating a system that puts complying businesses at an economic disadvantage and rewards polluters. Enforcement alone, however, isn’t the solution to protecting the Ocean State’s priceless collection of natural resources.
In mid-January, at a Statehouse press conference, Rhode Island’s largest environmental advocacy group, along with an unlikely ally, the state’s builders association, called for better enforcement of environmental laws. The pleas sounded like an echo from 1991.
Twenty-five years earlier, that same advocacy group, Save The Bay, had made basically the same request. In a report titled “It Pays to Pollute: Environmental Law Enforcement in Rhode Island,” the nonprofit painted a picture of lax enforcement, paltry fines, a backlog of enforcement cases, little follow-through and poor record keeping by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM).
For instance, the report noted that from 1988 through 1990 DEM’s Solid Waste Division “collected only one-half of one percent of the fines it assessed, leaving $136,250 in polluters’ pockets.” The report found that while penalties issued by DEM increased between 1988 and 1990, fine collection dropped from 24 percent to 14 percent, forgiving some $2.1 million in penalties.
The 16-page report also used a few case studies to illustrate the agency’s alleged dysfunction. In October 1989, a North Providence jewelry-plating operation was issued a notice that contained six violations, including three drums of hazardous material being left in a parking lot, and about 25 unattended, open and unlabeled barrels containing metal-laden liquid sludge. The business was fined $9,200, but the fine was reduced to $4,800 without a formal hearing.
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